Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal > Volume 1

■Z% A DISSERTATION CONCERNLVG
translation of mine appeared e. How the gentleman
came to see my blunders before I committed them i'3
not easy to determine ; if he did not conclude, that as
a Scotsman, and of course descended of the Milesi-
an race, I might have committed some of those over-
sights, which, perhaps very unjustly, are said to be
peculiar to them.
From the whole tenor of the Irish poems concerir-
ing the Fiona, it appears, that Fion Mac-Comnal flou-
rished in the reign of Cormac, which is placed by the
universal consent of the senachies in the third centu-
ry. They even fix the death of Fingal in the year
ii86f yet his son Ossian is made contemporary with
St. Patrick, who preached the gospel in Ireland, about
the middle of the fifth age. Ossian, though at that
time, he must have been two hundred and fifty years
of age, had a daughter young enough to become the
wife to the saint. On account of this family connec-
tion, * Patrick of the psalms,' for so the apostle cvf
Ireland is emphatically called in the poems, took
great delight in the company of Ossian, and in hear-
ing the great actions of his family. The saint some-
times threw off the austerity of his profession, drank
freely, and had his soul properly warmed with wine,
c In Faulkcncr's Dublin Journal, of the ist December, 1761, ap-
peared the following Advertisement.
*' Speedily will be published, by a gentleman of this kingdom, who
Iiath been for some time past employed in writing Historieal Notes to
FINGAL:
A POEM,
Originally wrote in the Irish or Erse language. In the preface to
wliicii, the translator, who is a perfect master of the Irish tongue,
will give an account of the manners and customs of the ancient Irish
or Scots : and therefore, most humbly e'.itreats the public to wait
for his edition, v;pich will appear in a short time, as he will set forth
all the blunder/and absurdities in the edition now printing in Lon-
don, and she/Sv the ignorance of tlie English translator in his know-
ledge of l:]d\ grammar, not understanding any part 0/ that acei^
denes."