J. F. Campbell Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

446 SUPPLEMENTAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE
MSS. in possession of the Highland Society of Scot-
laud, written between the yth and l6th centuries, as
the reader can refer to many of theni iii the Report
of the Committee of the Highland Society piil)lished
last year, and to the Descriptive Catalogue siihjoined
to this volume, ■which, independent of all other
proofs, carry the strongest conviction of the Gaelic
being a written language from very remote periods,*
Mr. Lhuyd, in his Archasologia Britannica, has
given us a catalogue of various Irish MSS. existing
in Ireland, particularly of those deposited in Trinity
College, Dublin ; but as they will be mentioned in
the notices of books and manuscripts at the end, it
would be improper to detail them in this place.
Here then we have decisive proofs of the actual
existence of Gaelic and Irish manuscripts written
atdifFerent periods since the ninth century.f Those
writers, who have denied the existence of Gaelic
MSS. in Scotland, ought also to have denied the
evidence of the ancient Irisii MSS, deposited more
than a hundred years ago in Trinity CoUege, Dub-
lin. For it is in vain to argue, laying Icolmkill out
of our consideration, that while writing and learning
was cultivated in Ireland in the vernacular tongue
of that country, that thc Scottish Highlanders in
* Some of the MS. poems ascribcil to Ossian, and in the possession
of ihe Highland Society, arc noliced iii Sir John Sinclair's Disserta-
tion, p. 36. aiid ia Note E. to Ccsarotti"s Disserlation.
t Mr. Aslle has, in Plate 22, given us ocuUir demonstration, that the
Gaelic and Iri^h characters arc the same ; and it is weil known, tliat the
Gaelic, or Erse language, and the Iberno-Gaelic, are now nearly the
same, and that they are both confesscdly dialects of the Ccltic.