Matheson Collection > Popular tales of the west Highlands > Volume 4

OSSIAN — IRISH ARGUMENT. 17
century, which " contained two poems by Oisin, who
lived in the third," and it is added —
"We have no reason to doubt their genuineness as being
originally the compositions of Oisin, when we remember the
many liberties of modernizing the language usually taken by the
scribes, through whom they have been handed down to us. One
of these poems by Oisin relates to the battle of Gaura, and has
appeared in one of the volumes of the Ossianic Society."
If the poem meant be that on the " Battle of
Gabhra," the first book of Temora is founded upon the
same incidents ; and a traditional version, of 1860,
is at page 304 of this volume, and that is almost
the same as the traditional version printed at Perth in
1786, and got in Scotland. So the argument is all
for MacPherson and against the authorities, for it
proves that Temora is founded on incidents which were
made the subject of Gaelic poems in the Twelfth
century. A man cannot eat his cake and have his
cake ; he cannot claim property as common, and deny
the right of a joint tenant ; he cannot claim tradition,
and withhold manuscripts ; assert, and in the same
breath deny the identity of Scotch and Irish Celts.
Johnson, who knew neither Earse nor Irish, might err,
but a writer who knows both should not use his
authority, point out, and then adopt his error.
At page 190 it is said — "It is notorious that the
poems of Ossian are not mentioned in any Scotch his-
tory a hundred years old ; " but at 186 is a quotation
from Bishop Carswell's Gaelic Prayer Book, printed in
Scotland in 1567, nearly three hundred years ago : —
" They (the Scotch Celts) for whom the book was printed,
desire and accustom themselves more to compose, maintain, and
cultivate idle, turbulent, lying, worldly stories concerning the
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