Ossian Collection > Works of Ossian, the son of Fingal > Volumes 3 and 4

154 C A T H - L O D A :
*) Uthorno, hill of dorms, I behold my
race on thy fide. Fingal is bending, in night,
over Duth - mariino^s tomb. Near him are
the fteps of his heroes j hunters of the boar. —
*) The banis , t\ho were always ready to fupply
what they thought deficient in the poems of Of-
fian, have inferted a great many incidents be"
tvt^een the fecond and thud dit'dn of Cath-loda.
Their interpolations are fo eafily diftinguifhed
from the genuine remains of Offian, that it took
me very little time to mark them out, and to?
tally to rejecil them. If the modern Scotch and
Irifh bards have fhewn any judgment, it is in
afcribing their own compofitions to names of
antiquity : for , by that means , they themfelvesi
have eicaped that contempt , which the authors
of fuch futile performances muft, iiecefTarJly , ha-
ve met with , from people of true taite. I
was led into this obfervatipn , by an Irifh poem,
juft now before me. It concerns a defcent ma-
de by Swaran , Icing of Lochiin , on Ireland ,.
and is the work , fays the traditional preface
prefixed to it , of Ojjian Mm; - Fion. It however
appears, from feveral pious ejaculations, that it
was rather the compolition of fome good prieft ,
in the fifteenth or fixteenth century, for he
(peaks ,