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

OSSIAN — TRADITIONS, WRITINGS, ETC. 85
And having told us what there really was, the
minister leaves it with contempt, and gives his reasons
for translating the English Ossian into English verse ;
and gives us " Fingal " in a measure which has no sort
of resemblance to that of any Gaelic composition which
I know ; still it is a very readable poem.
In the arguments we get some traces of Gaelic. The
old superstition of corpse lights is given as derived from
Ossian's ghosts. It seems that a ghost came mounted
on a meteor, and surrounded twice or thrice the place
destined for the person to die ; and then went along the
road through which the funeral was to pass, shrieking
at intervals, though with a feeble voice, till it came to
the place of burial and disappeared. The superstition
survives ; the telling of tales and singing of ballads goes
on ; but the poem is so far forgotten, that I suppose I
am the only member of the family of the man to whom
it was dedicated, who knows the book; even I never saw
it till November 1861, though I have always heard that
an Islay minister had collected the poems of Ossian in
Islay.
The minister gives two specimens of his collection,
but translations only, and they are not like the current
traditional poems. I may as well say here, once for
all, that I have been brought up in the belief that
" The Poems of Ossian " were something familiarly
known to the people of the Highlands at some former
period, and that I have been told the fact by a great
many trust-worthy witnesses. But I am now con-
sidering the "poems of 1807," and I can only regret
that I have not got Wodrow's opportunity of forming
an opinion.
Dr. Johnson arrived on the 14th of August at
Boyd's Inn at the head of the Canongate, and shortly