Ossian Collection > Fingal of Ossian

3^ PREFACE.
to exprefs, and were content, as they conceived grofsly, to
be grofsly underflood. After what has been lately talked of
Highland Bards, and Highland Genius, many will ftartle
when they are told, that the Earfe never was a written Lan-
guage ; that there is not in the World an Earfe Manufcript
a hundred Years old j and that the Sounds of the Highlanders
were never expreffed by Letters, till fome little Books of
Piety were tranllated, and a metrical Verfion of the Pfalms
was made by the Synod oi Argyle. Whoever therefore now
writes in this Language, fpells according to his own Percep-
tion of the Sound, and his own Idea of the Power of the
Letters. The Weljlo and IriJJ:> are cultivated Tongues. The
JVelJh, two hundred Years ago, infulted their Englip Neigh-
bours for the Inftability of their Orthography ; while the
Earfe merely floated in the Breath of the People, and could
therefore receive little Lnprovement."
Though yohnfon, at the firfl: fetting out, confeffes he knows
nothing of the Earfe, yet this daring felf-fufficient Man, in the
fame Breath, pronounces it the rude Speech of a barbarous Peo-
ple *. But as he brings no Authority to fupport his Opinion,
let
* Notwithftanding the Greeks, and after them the Romans, had the Vanity to call other
Nations Barbarians ; it muft appear very ridiculous in a Defcendant of the Saxons, a
Branch of the favage Sarmat^, to iligmatize with that Appellation the undoubted Re-
mains of the Cf//<f, a celebrated People, who once polTefled all the Kingdoms from the
Pillars oi Hercules to the Banks of the Vijiula, and from the Hclkfpont to the Shores of the
Baltic. With refpeft to the Highlanders^ we boldly afl'ert the Imputation to be injurious
and falfe : The fhort Account given of their Manners, from Sir 'John Dalrymple'i Me-
moirs, at the End of the Third Book, Ihcws them to have been as much civilized as any
of their Neighbours.