J. F. Campbell Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

l88 WEST HIGHLAND TALES.
with the same letter as the substantive. In short, Tale 5
seems to be a much longer, better, and older version of the
tale of Maghach Colgar. The transcriber makes a kind of
apology for the want of truth in these tales at the end of his ab-
stract. He was probably impressed with the idea that Ossian
and his heroes sang and fought in Scotland, and that Uirsgeul
meant a 7iew tale or novel, unworthy of notice. My opini(m
is that the prose tales and the poems, and this especially,
are alike old compositions, founded on old traditions common to
all Celts, and perhaps to all Indo-European races, but altered and
ornamented, and twisted into compositions by bards and reciters
of all ages, and every branch of the race ; altered to suit the
time and place — adorned with any ornament that the bard or
reciter had at his disposal ; and now a mere remnant of the past.
It is a great pity that these MSS. in the Advocates' Library
are still unpublished. They could not fail to throw light on the
period when they were written.
It is remarkable that the so-called Greeks in this story seem
to want the head of Fionn for dinner.