Ossian Collection > Small tribute to the memory of Ossian

Laing scruples not to assert, that there never was a druid
in Scotland, which appears to me to be as extravagant as,
that there never was a comet in the heavens, or a whale
in the ocean. The very word druid itself is of Celtic Ov
rigin, and the knowledge of the order is traditionally
universal. The traveller every where meets with the
ruins of druidical temples, or circles of large stones placed
in a perpendicular direction, as he passes through the
Highlands.
Whether Mr Hume knew any thing respecting the
great antiquity of Gaelic manuscripts, it is certain he
thought it utterly impossible, (and Mr Laing obligingly
joins issue with him,) that so many verses could have
been preserved by oral tradition during fifty generations,
am.ong a rude and uncivilized people. We have seen that
this was not necessary, at least for so long a period ; but
admitting, for the sake of argument, that it had been
the case, where was the impossibility of it ? We have
heard of a woman in Strathspey who, without being
taught to read any, could repeat the whole book of Psalms
in the Gaelic language, by hearing it frequently read to
her by others. It would therefore be astonishing indeed,
if bards, the business of whose lives it was to retain poems,
and derive assistance from the modulation of numbers,
should be outdone in this respect by an old woman. In
the history of different countries it is no uncommon thing
to meet with numerous well authenticated instances of
the most extraordinary and retentive memories. We
are assured that Joseph Scaliger got the whole of the
Iliad and Odyssey by heart in three weeks, although they
contain upwards of 63,000 verses. Justus Lipsius had
the works of Tacitus by heart, and declared before one
pf the Princes of Germany, that he would' suffer to be
stabbed to the heart, or have his throat cut, if he mis-,
sed a single word in reciting the whole from beginning
to end.
Mr Laing, upon the authority of Dion Cassius and