Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

xvi A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.
them was the favourite amusement of Highlanders in
the hours of leisare and idleness ; but that since the
rebellion in 1745, *^p manners of the people had un-
dergone a change so unfavourable to the recitation of
these poems, that it was now an amusement scarcely
known, and that very few persons remained alive
who were able to recite them. That many of the
poems which they had formerly heard were similar
in subject and story, as well as in the names of the
heroes mentioned in them, to those translated by Mr.
Macpherson : that his translation seemed, to such as
bad read it, a very able one; but that it did not by
any means come up to the force or energy of the ori-
ginal to such as had read it ; for his book was by no
means universally possessed, or read among the High-
landers, even accustomed to readini;, who conceived
that his translation could add but little to their amuse-
ment, and not at all to their conviction, in a matter
which they had never doubted. A few of the Com-
mittee's correspondents sent them such ancient poems
as they possessed in writing, from having formerly
taken them down from the oral recitation of the old
Highlanders who were in use to recite them, or as
they nosv took them down from some person, whom
a very advanced period of life, or a particular con-
nexion with some reciter of the old school, enabled
still to retain them in his memory ; * but those, the
Committee's correspondents said, were generally less
* The Rev. Mr. Smith, who has published transla-
tions of many Gaelic poems, accompanied by the ori-
ginals, assures us, that " near himself, in the parish
of Klimnver, lived a person named M'Pheal, whom
he has heard, for weeks together, from five till ten
o'clock at night, rehearse ancient poems, and many of
them Ossian's. Two others, called M'Dugal and
M'Neil, could entertain their hearers in the same
manner for a whole winter season. It was from per-
sons of this description, undoubtedly, that Macpher-
son recovered a great part of the works of Ossian."
A. Macdonald's Prelim. Disc. p. 76.