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

OSSIAN — PUBLISHED EVIDENCE. 103
to doubt that the tales and songs sang by the boatmen
and herds in the Highlands are the poems of Ossian."
But the question is, were these the Gaelic poems of
1807 ? and of that Mr. Home could not judge. Having
read one " translation " he heard another like it ; but
he should have had the written Gaelic, and seme one to
compare it with the Gaelic which he had heard ; and
so far as I can find out, no one ever thought of trying
that simple experiment on the street porters of Edin-
burgh, who are men of the class described, and could
solve the problem. Bat four of the gentlemen who
started, MacPherson gave valid reasons for their belief
in the genuineness of the Gaelic materials collected by
him, and in the general correctness of the translations ;
while they admit that which no reasonable man can now
doubt, that he worked up these materials, and that the
long poems never existed in the form which they now
bear, before MacPherson's time. They held that Gaelic
for nearly the whole of the translations had existed as
detached fragments well known, and constantly repeated
in the Highlands ; but they did not maintain that
" Fingal " and " Temora " ever had been repeated from
beginning to end.
The report of the whole committee was in accordance
with this evidence — 1st, That there had existed an
abundance of impressive, striking, eloquent, tender and
sublime Gaelic poetry.
2d, That the translations often contained the sub-
stance, and sometimes almost the literal expression of
passages in poems, and fragments of poems, which the
committee had been able to procure ; but they had not
been able to obtain one poem the same in title and tenor
with the poems as published. They believed that they
had begun too late ; that MacPherson had far better