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

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of Clonlonan, county Weátmeath. Finn bad one of his for-
tresses here, which was destroyed, and Oisin and Cailte are
represented as encountering the people who committed the
destruction. As this work was composed about the middle
of the sixth century we are enabled, by its means, to trace
Oisin so far back as to approach within two or three centuries
of the very era in which he flourished. This work is also
intended for one of the publications of the Ossianic Society.
There is another class of Ossianic poems which is very
numerous, and copies of them are still to be found in the
hands of many Irish scholars throughout Ireland. Hun-
dreds of these are to be seen in the Libraries of Trinity
College, Dublin ; the Royal Irish Academy ; Oxford,
British Museum, and in different places on the Continent.
The language of these poems, for the most part, is com-
paratively modern, and if ever they were composed by Oisin
they must have been greatly changed and manufactured,
with additions and interpolations, so as to make the poet
and St. Patrick cotemporaries. These are now in course of
being published by the Ossianic Society. Of these modern
poems I have myself translated thirty-three, amounting to
nearly 8,000 verses or lines.
It does not follow that although we have not the original
of these modern poems of Oisin that they never existed in
any other form. On the contrary we have very strong
reasons to believe that they did, for the language of the
copies of them, written in the loth century, has all the
appearance of genuine antiquity. The language is correct,
and the versification is strictly according to the rules of
Irish prosody. In a work composed in the seventh century
called The Primmer of the Barda—i.e., a Prosody — there
are compositions quoted in the examples given of which no
trace now remains. The numerous MSS. that contained
those poems are at present unknown.