Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

THE POEMS OF OSSIAX. 9l
(hat time, made great progress in the South of
Scotland. The ancient language, and the tra-
ditional history of the nation, became confined
entirely to the inhabitants of the Highlands,
then falling, from several concin-ring circum-
stances, into the last degree of ignorance and
barbarism. The Irish, who, for some ages be-
fore the conquest, had possessed a competent
share of that kind of learning which then pre-
vailed in Europe, found it no difficult niatter to
impose then- own fictions on the ignorant High-
land senachies. By flattering the vanity of th«
Highlanders, with their long list of Hermonian
kings and heroes, they, without contradiction,
assumed to themselves the character of being
the mother nation of the Scots of Britain. At
this time, certainly, was established that Hiber-
nian system of the original of the Scots, which
afterward, for want of any other, was universally
received. The Scots of the low country, who,
by losing the language of their ancestors, lost,
together with it, their national traditions, re-
ceived, implicitly, the history of their countiy
from Irish refugees, or from Highland senachies,
persuaded over into the Hibernian system.
These circumstances are far from being ide-
al. We have remaining many particular tra-
ditions, which bear testimony to a fact of itself
abundantly probable. What makes the mat-
ter incontestible is^ that the aticient traditional
accounts of the genuine origin of the Scots,
have been handed down without interruption.
Though a few ignorant senachies might be per-
suaded out of their ov.n opinion, by the
smoothness of an Irish tale, it was impossible
to eradicate, from among the bulk of the peo-
ple, their own national traditions. These tra-
ditions afterward so much prevailed, that the
Highlanders continue totally unacquainted witi*