Ossian Collection > Critical dissertation on the poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal

A DISSERTATION. xi
ilrangely mixed with anachronilms and inconfiltencies. Such being
the opinion of Ware, who had colleded, with uncommon induftry
and zeal, all the real and pretendedly antient manufcripts, concern-
ing the hillory of his country, we may, on his authority, rejedt the
improbable and felf-condemned tales of Keating and O'Flaherty.
Credulous and puerile to the laft degree, they have dilgraced the
antiquities they meant to eftablilh. It is to be wirtied, that fomS
able Irifliman, who underflands the language and records of his
country, may redeem, ere it is too late, the genuine antiquities of
Ireland, from the hands of thefe idle fabulifts.
By comparing the hiilory prelerved by OfTian with the legends of
the Scotch and Irifli writers, and, by afterwards examining both by
the teft of the Roman authors, it is eafy to difcover which is the
moft probable. Probability is all that can be eftabliOied on the au-
thority of tradition, ever dubious and uncertain. But when it fa-
vours the hypothefis laid down by cotemporary writers of undoubted
veracity, and, as it were, finifhes the figure of which they only
drew the out-lines, it ought, in the judgment of fober reafon, to
be preferred to accounts framed in dark and diflant periods, with
little judgment, and upon no authority.
Concern IMG the period of more than a century, which inter-
venes between Fingal and the reign of Fergus, the fon of Ere or
Arcath, tradition is dark and contradictory. Some trace up the fa-
mily of Fergus to a fon of Fingal of that name, who makes a
confiderable figure in Oflian's poems. The three elder fons of Fin-
gal, Oflian, Fillan, and Ryno, dying, without iffue, the fucceflion,
of courfe, devolved upon Fergus, the fourth fon and his pofterity.
This Fergus, fay fome traditions, was the father of Congal, whofc
b 2 fon