Ossian Collection > Reliquiae Celticae > Volume 2

140 THE BOOK OF CLANRANALD.
wars and of the events thereafter is clearly the work of Niall Mac
Vurich, who lived till a great age, his youthful recollections being,
as he himself says, of the reign of Charles I., while his latest
efforts were elegies on the death of the brave Allan of Clanranald,
who fell at Sheriffmuir in 1715. The Montrose history seems to
have been written before the year 1700, and the avowed object of
its author is to vindicate the part which the Gael played in the
brilliant escapades of Montrose's campaigns. The hero in Mac
Vurich's page is Alaster Macdonald, not Montrose, and,
undoubtedly, Alaster did contribute, to an extent much undei--
estimated, to Montrose's success.
The Red Book, as, already said, figures largely in the Ossianic
controversy. James Macpherson, accompanied by his clansman
Ewan Macpherson, visited Clanranald in 1760, and, at Clan-
ranald's direction, received the Red Book from Neil Mac Vurich,
nephew of the last great bard, and himself described as not a
" man of any note," though capable of reading and writing Gaelic
in the Irish character. But here our authorities begin to dis-
agree. Rev. Mr Gallic in 1799 had given a graphic description of
Macpherson on his return from the Isles to Badenoch wrestling
with the difficult Gaelic of beautifully written and embellished
MSS. on vellum, received, as he understood, from Clanranald, and
written by Paul Mac Vurich, the 14th century Clanranald bard.
Now, Ewan Macphersoi^ said, in a declaration made a year after
Mr Gallic's statement, that Macpherson got from Clanranald only
the "common-place-book" detailing the history of the Macdonalds
and Montrose (which is now extant, and known as the Red Book),
but that he did not got the Red Book or Leahhar Dearg from him :
Macpherson only got an order for it on a Lieutenant Donald
Macdonald at Edinburgh, who then possessed it. This Leabhar
Dearg contained, so Clanranald told them, some of the poems of
Ossian ; but Ewan Macpherson never saAv it nor did he know
whether James Macpherson ever got it. In the same year (1800)
Lachlan Mac Vurich, son of the Neil that gave Macpherson the
book, declared that his father " had a book which was called the
Red Book, made of paper, which he had from his predecessors, and
W'hich, as his father informed him, contained a good deal of the
histor}^ of the Highland clans, together with part of the works of
Ossian that it was as thick as a Bible, but that it
was longer and broader, though not so thick in the cover." His.
father, he said, gave this Red Book to James Macpherson, and he
further denied having an ancestor named Paul. Gallic, Ewan
Macpherson, and Mac Vurich are in considerable disagreement, as
we see, as to what book or books Macpherson received from Clan-
ranald, and, what is very singular, the oidy MS. which was.