Ossian Collection > Macdonald bards from mediaeval times

proves that more than 350 years ago Ossian was
then held to be an ancient poet and the " King of
Song," and Fingal " the hero of heroes."
Dr John Smith's " Sean Dana " also show that
there were other ancient poems in the Highlands
attributed to Ossian, Orran, Ullin, &c., inde-
pendent of MacPhersons collections, and their
having been known to the Irish puts their
authenticity beyond a doubt. In the writer's
opinion the original character of the poetry is in
itself strongly in favour of its antiquity. It deals
with man in a very primitive state. " There is
no allusion to agriculture, or commerce, to arts or
sciences, to laws or ordinances. There is not the
remotest reference to Christianity, or to any of
the great moral and social changes Avhich it
brings in its train. There is no abstraction or
generalisation of ideas. Objects are dealt with
individually as they present themselves at the
first glance. And least of all is there a trace of
that subjective self-reflecting, moral picturing of
the outer world which we find in the poetry of
modern days." " Ossian describes the face of
nature simply and purely as it impresses itself on
his eye, without a trace of self-colouring the
image, but he depicts the image so vividly and
clearly as to show the true poetic vision. Many
of his descriptions are unsurpassed, if not un-
equalled, by any other poet, ancient or modern."*
As regards the language of the original poems,
though the vocables seem the language of modern
times. Dr. Clerk held that the syntax is certainly
ancient. The Norse language, as Professor Miiller
testifies, remained unchanged for seven centuries,
and the Greek language has undergone no vital
change for two thousand years — these are excep-
tions. Where the Celtic scholars flounder is in
drawing too hard and fast a line. There was a
Monkish and a bardic Gaelic, and the vernacular
would in time be bound to differ in some respects
from the learned dialect written by scholars. A
Kintail man, an Arisaig man, a Skye man, and a
Lewis man can all be easily distinguished by their
dialects, some of these would spell some of their
words differently, recite differently, and would
have some differences in their written MSS. of
oral traditional poetry. In a charter written in
Gaelic in May 1408, and granted by MacDonald,
* The Poems of Ossian, by the Rev. Archd. Clerk.
Lord of the Isles and Earl of Ross, to Brian
Vicar MacKay, there is only one word in it that
has become obsolete. In the " Book of Deer,"
written in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
there are entries where the adjective is placed
before the substantive, and where two or three
spellings of the same word occur in the same
sentence.* Another thing that must never be for-
gotten is that in early times, out of all the fearful
trouble and confusion that existed, men were
always to be found, especially in the church, apart
from the bards, who devoted themselves to the
preservation in literary form, with a tendency to
moral edification, of the ancient songs and legends
of their country, bringing them out in new
versions to meet the changing conditions inherent
in all nations, and their languages, and committing
them to parchment as the most certain means of
their preservation, but many circumstances inter-
vened to alter this order of things as regards the
Ossianic poems. The severance of the ties between
Ireland and Scotland, the Norse rule for centuries
in the West, the anglicising of state and church,
and the severe repression of all that partook of
Paganism, and Popery, by the Protestant Church,
the original Gaelic became gradually almost
unintelligible to the people, who still, however,
remembered, sang, and recited portions of them
in a more or less connected manner, though they
may not have been written, and in correct gram-
matical form, as may be seen in the Dean of
Lismore's phonetically spelt Gaelic.
The fragments of Ossian's poetry, of such un-
equal merit, gathered and published by Mac-
Pherson, were the living remains of the endeavours
of bards and scholars to transmit to posterity
what they had themselves learned from their
predecessors. MacPherson's error was in present-
ing these portions of songs and recitations, as
complete compositions, and of having come down
thus intact from the days of Ossian.
I believe with many Highlanders capable of
judging, that Honn (Fingal) was a great chief in
remote times, beyond the dawn of written history,
and his son Ossian, a great bard, and moral power
for heroism and noble feeling. A language that
was not expressed in written signs in their time,
their deeds would come down at first in a tradi-
* Ibid— Dr. Clerk's Ossian.