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

xxil A DISSERTATION.
teftimonics of a whole legion of ignorant bards and fcnachies, who,
perhaps, never dreamed of bringing the Scots from Spiin to Ire-
land, till feme one of them, more learned than the reft, difcovered,
that the Romans called the ftrft Iberia, and the latter Hibernia. On
fuch a ni'^ht foundation were probably built thofe romantic lidions,
concerning the Milefians of Ireland.
From internal proofs it fufficiently appears, that the poems pu-
bliftied under the name of Ofiian, are not of Irifli compofition.
The favourite chimsra, that Ireland is the mother-country of the
Scots, is totally fubverted and, ruined. The ficlions, concerning the
antiquities of that country, which were forming for ages, and grow-
ing, as they came down, on the hands of fucceflive fenacbies and
jileas, are found, at laft, to be the fpurious brood of modern and
ignorant ages. To thofe who know how tenacious the Irifli are, of
their pretended Iberian defcent, this alone is proof fufficient, that
poems, fo fabverfive of their fyftem, could never be produced by
an Hibernian bard. — But when we look to the language, it is fo
different from the Irifh dialedl, that it would be as ridiculous to
think, that Milton's Paradife Loft could be wrote by a Scotch pea-
fant, as to fuppofe, that the poems afcribed to Oflian were vvrit in
Ireland.
Th'^, Dretenfions of Ireland to Oflian proceed from another quar-
ter. There are handed down, in that country, traditional poems,
concerning the Fiona, or the heroes of Fion Mac Comnal. This
Fion, fay the Irifti annalifts, was general of the militia of Ireland,
in the reign of Cormac, in the third century. Where Keating and
OTlaherty learned, that Ireland had an embodied miltia fo early, is
not eafy for me to determine. Their information certainly did not
2 come