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

462 SUPPLEMENTAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE
peace at Edinburgh, on tlie 19th day of January,
1801,* bears testimony of his having deposited with
the deputy secretary of the Highland Society of
Edinburgh, a collection of Gaelic poems, consisting
of one hundred and ninety-four pages, many of which
relate to the achievements of the tribe or race of
Fingal, or of the Fionns, as they are named in the
Gaehc language, and of which poems the declarant
got copies written in the com\txy,J'rom his own oral
recìtatìon.-\ That some of the poems in this collec-
tion he heard recited and learnt by htnxt J'orly ycars
prìor to t/ie date qf his affidavit, and that the poem
published by Macpherson, under the name of Dar-
thula, and which is commonly called in the country,
Clan Uisneachain, or the sons of Usno, he heard re-
cited above fifty years ago by many persons in Gle-
norchay, particularly by Nicol Macnicoll in Arivean,
and this he thinks was about ten years l)efore Mac-
pherson went about collecting the poems of Ossian,
Captain John Macdonald of Breakish, now residing
at Thurso in the county of Caithness, has by affidavit
made before Colonel Benjamin Williamson of Ban-
neskirk, one of his Majesty's justices of the peace
for the county of Caithness, datcd the 25th day of
September, 1805, % solemnly declared that hc was
then aged seventy-eight years, and that whcn about
twelve and fifteen years of age, he could rcpcat from
one hundred to two hundred of those pocms of
* See Appeiidix to Roport of tlie Ilighland Society, p. 270.
+ Allliough Aichibakl Fletciicr could write his naine, he could not
rcad the niauusciipt deposited.
\ Sec Appendix to Sir John Sinclair's Disscrtation, No. I.