Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

192 A CRITICAL dissertation:
the fpirits of the hill. Thefe are gentle
fpirits J defcending on fun-beams •, fair-
moving on the plain 5 their forms white
and bright j their voices fweet ^ and their
vifits to men propitious. The greatell
praife that can be given, to the beauty of
a living woman, is to fay, " She is fair as
" the ghoft of the hill, when it moves in
** a fun-beam at noon, over the filence of
** Morven." — " The hunter (hall hear my
*' voice from his booth. He fhall fear, but
** love my voice. For fweet (hall my voice
" be for my friends j for pleafant were they
*' to me."
Befidcs ghofts, or the fpirits of departed
men, we find in Oflian fome inftances of
other kinds of machinery. Spirits of a fu-
perior nature to ghofts are fometimes al-
luded to, which have power to embroil the
deep ; to call forth winds and ftorms, and
pour them on the land of the ftranger ; to
overturn forefts, and to fend death among
the people. We have prodigies too -, a
(hower of blood; and when fome difalier is
befalling at a diftance, the found of death
heard on the firings of OHian's harp : all
perfe(flly confonant, not onlv to the peculiar
ideas of northern nations, but to the gene-
ral current of a fuperftitious imagination in
all countries. The defcription of Fingal's
airy hall, in the poem called Berrathon,
and of the afccnt of Malvina into it. de-
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