Ossian Collection > Romance of the Highlands

82 THE ROMANCE OF THE HIGHLANDS.
hesitation and without stopping, except to give the
argument or prelude to a new chapter or subject. One
of the most remarkable of these reciters in my time was
Duncan Maclntyre, a native of Glenlyon, in Perthshire,
who died in September, 1816, in his 93rd year. His
memory was most tenacious ; and the poems, songs and
tales, of which he retained a perfect remembrance to the
last, would fill a volume. Several of the poems are in
possession of the Highland Society of London, who
settled a small pension on Maclntyre a few years before
his death, as being one of the last who retained any
resemblance to the ancient race of bards. When any
surprise was expressed at his strength of memory and his
great store of ancient poetry, he said that in his early
years he knew numbers whose superior store of poetry
would have made his own appear as nothing."
The Highland Societv sent a gentleman through
Perthshire to collect remains of Gaelic poetry, and when
at Garth a young woman from the neighbourhood recited
upwards of 3000 lines to him, and could have given him
as many more. When she stopped to give him time to
write it down, she resumed at the word immediately
following. On its being read over to her she had to make
only trifling corrections.
It should be stated that MacPherson was not a
capable Gaelic scholar, and this was against his having
composed a translation of the poems. On one occasion,
in Benbecula, when with others in pursuit of finding
Ossianic literature, he asked a stranger if he knew^ any of
the poems of Ossian relating to the Fingalians, but his
question was better interpreted whether the Fingalians
owed him anything. Now, the man turned out to be
Codrum, the poet, who, noting the inaccuracy of the
traveller's Gaelic, replied, "If they owed him anything
the bonds were lost and any attempt to recover them at