Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

^8 A DISSERTATION CONCERNING
taught to tlieir children, the uninterrupted
cuftom of repeating them upon certain oc-
cafions, and the happy meafure of the verfe,
ferved to preferve them for a longtime un-
corrupted. This oral chronicle of the Ger-
mans was not forgot in the eighth centu-
ry J and it probably would have remained
to this day, had not learning, which thinks
every thing that is not committed to writ-
ing, fabulouf;, been introduced. It was from
poetical traditions that Gaicillaffo coropof-
ed his account of the Yncas of Peru. The
Peruvians had loft all other monuments or
their hillory, and it was from ancient poems,
which his mother, a princefs of the blood
of the Yncas, taught him in his youth,
that he collefled the materials of his hlf-
tory. If other nations, then, that had of-
ten been overrun by enemies, had fent a-
broad, and received colonics, could, for
many ages, preferve, by oral tradition, their
lavv5 aiivl hiTtorics unccrruptcc, it Is much
more probable that the ancient Scots, a
people {o free of intermixture with fo-
reigners, and fo llrongly attached to the
memory of their ancellors, had the works
of their bards handed down Vfith great pu-
rity.
What is advanced in this fliort Dlfferta-
tion, it muft be confcfTed, is mere conje6lure.
Beyond the reach of records, is fettled 4
gloom, which no ingenuity can penetrate.