Ossian Collection > Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland > Volume 4

36{) ROMANCES AND SUPERSTITIONS.
infancy, as we believed, and what we believed, in our
own. As to the matter, India is destined to enlighten us
yet further on this head. There is much to be elicited in
Rajahpootan ; a district which preserves much that we
have hitherto known but as belonging- to our immediate
ancestry. Their Bard is our own ; and the Celtic " Furor"
of Pedigree here rages uncontrouled. Here also the
Music is Caledonian ; and so Caledonian, that we fancy
we can name the very airs of our own mountains and
streams. It is in those primitive regions that we meet
the nearest living originals of the great Celtic nation ; as,
among them also, we find the blue-eyed Scythian, the
progenitor of our own conquering Goths.
But I must end. When the skein does not stop,
we always get to Tartary, or Arabia, or India, to Peris-
tan, or Caucasus, in short, to Shinar, to Babel. If we
could pass Ararat, we might land in Noah's ark, and
thus terminate with the Antediluvians. Mythology, Su-
perstition, Gods, Ghosts, aiid Giants, Deevs and Fairies
and Thumbs and Hickathrifts, they are all brothers;
worshipped, feared, despised ; such is the progress.
After having fought under Odin, we begin by bowing- to
him in the heavens ; we then learn to fear him in the
boiling flood or the midnight forest, we use him to " adorn
a tale," and we end by making him a bugaboo to frighten
our naughty children. But he was a mortal hero first.
Boh, says Warton, was one of Odin's heroes. Narses
was the Boh of Assyrian Mothers. Richard and Huni-
ades have performed the same office in their day. Napo-
leon and Pitt made but one stride from the field and the
cabinet to the Nursery, for their lot was cast in evil days.
In better times, they might have passed through all their
stages ; but even their last metamorphosis is a tale of
other times, and, alas, they will sleep in eternal peace,
like an ancestor of my own, a bold Cuthbert of the dark
wave, once equally terrific, when the exploits of Thor
and Odin shall still terrify or regale the child that is
unborn.