Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

THK POEMS OF OSSIAN- 71
searches after the antiquities of his country,
rejects, as mere fiction and idle romance, all
that is related of the ancient Irish before the
time of St. Patrick, and the reign of Leogaire.
It is from this consideration that he begins
his history at the introduction of Christianity,
remarking, that all that is delivered down con-
cerning the times of paganism were tales of
late invention, strangely mixed with anachro-
nisms and inconsistencies. Such being the
opinion of Ware, who had collected, with un-
common industry and zeal, all the real and
pretendedly ancient manuscripts, concerning
the history of his country, we may, on his
authority, reject the improbable and self-con-
demned tales of Keating and O'Flaherty.
Credulous and puerile to the last degree, they
have disgraced the antiquities they meant to
establish. It is to be wished, that some able
Irishman, who understands the language ai;d
records of his country, may redeem, ere too
late, the genuine antiquities of Ireland from
the hands of these idle fabulists.
By comparing the history in these Poems
with the legends of the Scots and Irish writer?,
and by afterward examining both by the test
of the Roman authors, it is easy to discover
which is the most probable. Probability is
all that can be established on the authority of
tradition, ever dubious and uncertain. But
when it favours the hypothesis laid down by
contemporary writers of undoubted veracity,
and, as it were, finishes the figure of which
they only drew the outlines, it ought, in the
judgment of sober reason, to be preferred to
accounts framed in dark and distant periods,
with little judgment, and upon no authority.
Concerning the period of more than a cen-
tury which intervents between Fingal ant) uie