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

32 HEROES OF OSSIAN — AUTHORITIES.
races. Another Gaelic poem of undoubted antiquity-
is attributed to Fergus, and tells how Oisin his brother
was enticed into a fairy cave, and discovered himself to
Finn by letting chips cut from his spear-shaft float
down a stream ; as Diarmaid betrayed his retreat to
Fionn in the tradition (page 43, vol. iii.) Another is
a love story, which Caeltè is supposed to have recited
to St. Patrick.
Professor O'Curry nowhere says that the " poems of
Ossian," as published in 1760 and 1807, or anything
like them from which they could have been translated,
exist in ancient Irish manuscript, and gives no support
to the argument of his countryman ; but he also says,
" Of MacPherson's translations, in no single instance
has a genuine Scottish original been found, and that
none will ever be found I am very certain." If he
means that the Gaelic of 1807 never can be found in
an ancient manuscript, he is certainly right, for the
language must have obeyed the common law of change
incident to all languages ; but he has pointed out some
of the incidents on which the first book of Temora is
founded, in one of the two ancient poems which were
attributed to Oisin in the tenth century ; and it is beyond
question that endless stories and poems about Fionn and
his people have been for centuries, and still are tradi-
tionally preserved in Scotland, as well as in Ireland.
According to Irish authorities, then, Gaelic poems are
preserved in ancient manuscript, and some relate to the
Ossianic heroes, but they were Irishmen, who lived, and
loved, and fought in the third century, and not Scotch-
men ; but according to other Irish authorities, these men
flourished much later. Scotch and British Fenians
are mentioned, and Scotch Oscars appear in Irish
poems, even Danish Oscars are named in Irish books ;