Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

12 A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.
or learning such compositions ; and set down, as accu
rately as possible, such as they can now repeat or re-
cite ; and transmit such their account, and such com-
positions as they repeat, to the committee.
4. If there are, in your neighborhood, any persons
from whom Mr. Macpherson received any poems, in-
quire particularly what the poems were which he so
received, the manner in which he received them, and
how he wrote them down ; show those persons, if you
have an opportunity, his translation of such poems, and
desire them to say, if the translation is exact and
literal ; or, if it differs, in what it differs from the
poems, as they repeated them to Mr. Macpherson, and
can now recollect them.
5. Be so good to procure every information you
conveniently can, with regard to the traditionary belief,
in the country in which you live, concerning the history
of Fingal and his followers, and that of Ossian and his
poems ; particularly those stories and poems published
by Mr. Macpherson, and the heroes mentioned in
them. Transmit any such account, and any proverbial
or traditionary expression in the original Gaelic, rela-
ting to the subject, to the committee.
tj In all the above inquiries, or any that may occur
to in elucidation of this subject, he is re-
quested by the committee to make the inquiry, and to
lake down the answers, with as much impartiality and
precision as possible, in the same manner as if it were
a legal question, and the proof to be invest'gated with
a legal strictness. — See the " Report."
It is presumed as undisputed, that a traditionary his.
tory of a great hero or chief, called Fion, Fion na
Gael, or, as it is modernized, Fingal, exists, and has
immemorially existed, in the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland, and that certain poems or ballads containing