J. F. Campbell Collection > Transactions of the Ossianic Society > Volume 5

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specimen, that " if his poem of Temora was ancient, it was
a proof of the unlettered ignorance of the ancient Gaelic
Scots."
Doctor Shaw, one of the best Gaelic scholars of Scotland,
was convinced by Vallancey's statement, in the opinion he
had previously formed of the specimen given by Macpher-
son, that it was his own translation from his own original
English.
Doctor Shaw afterwards made a journey to the Highlands
and islands to search for the originals of Macpherson's
poems before adopting them as authorities for his intended
works ; he went into every house and cabin ; entered into
long discourses with the peasantry, but he could find them
neither written nor in the mouths of the people. In 1781,
Shaw published the results of his searches in a work entitled
" An Enquiry into the authenticity of the Poems ascribed
to Ossian." In this work he has declared that Macpherson
had no original MSS. in the Gaelic of the poems of Ossian,
but that he might have some in Irish ; for it is well
known, he says, that the Earse dialect of the Gaelic
was never wr itten no r printed until Mr. Mac Farlane,
minister of Killinvir, in Argyleshire, published in 1754
a translation of " Baxter's Call to the Unconverted." In
this search he could find no MSS. except one on parch-
ment, written in the Irish language and character, and con-
taining some Irish pedigrees. " I found myself," he says,
" not a Little mortified, when all they could repeat was noth-
ing but a few fabulous and marvellous verses or storiej
concerning Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his Fiana or followers .
Fionn," he says, "is not known in the Highlands by the name
of Fingal. He is universally supposed to be an Irishman.
When I asked of the Highlanders who Fionn was, they
answered, an Irishman, if a man, for they sometimes thouglit
him a giant ; and that he lived in Ireland, and somctimoá