Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

071 the Poems of Ossian. 53
spring. What we have been long accustomed to
call the oriental vein of poetrj'-, because some of
the earliest poetical productions have come to us
from the east, is probably no more oriental than
occidental : it is characteristical of an age rather
than a country; and belongs, in some measure,
to all nations at a certain period. Of this the works
of Ossian seem to furnish a remarkable proof.
Our present subject leads us to investigate the
ancient poetical remains, not so much of the east,
or of the Greeks and Romans, as of the northern
nations ; in order to discover whether the Gothic
poetry has any resemblance to the Celtic or Galic,
which we are about to consider. Though the
Goths, under which name we usually comprehend
all the Scandinavian tribes, were a people altogether
fierce and martial, and noted to a proverb for
their ignorance of the liberal arts, yet they too, from
the earliest times, had their poets and their songs.
Their poets were distinguished by the title of Scal-
ders, and their songs were termed Vyses. Saxo
Grammaticus, a Danish historian of considerable
note, who flourished in the thirteenth century, in-
forms lis that very many of these songs, containing
the ancient traditionary stories of the country,
were found engraven upon rocks in the old Runic
character, several of which he has translated into
Latin and inserted into his History. But his
versions are plainly so paraphrastical, and forced
into such an imitation of the style and the measures
of the Roman poets, that one can form no judg-
ment from them of the native spirit of the original.
A more curious monument of the true Gothic
poetry is preserved by Olaus Wormius, in his book
De Literatura Runica. It is an Epicedium, or
funeral song, composed by Regner Lodbrog ; and
translated by Olaus, word for word from the ori-
ginal. This Lodbrog was a king of Denmark,
who lived in the eighth centurv, famous for his