Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

INTRODUCTORY NOTE xiii
countries were inhabited by Gaels, who told and
localised it wherever they went. But Ireland's claim is
so far superior, in that these tales were told in Ireland
earlier than in Scotland ; that whatever admixture of
fact in them is Irish fact, and that the chief shapers
of the cycle have been Irish, not Scotch Gaels.
Apart from its interest to the student of tradition
per se, the Fenian saga is the most authentic
product we have of Gaelic folk-fancy working over
an immense period of time. But it has probably
nothing to tell us respecting the oldest history,
whether of deed or thought, of the GaeHc race ; and,
although it preserves to us an immense number of
mythic ideas and situations, it is, as a rule, in a
form influenced by comparatively modern models of
conception and expression. Mr Nutt's argument,
therefore, is that the whole groundwork of Ossianic
tales is mythical.
Although the late Mr Campbell of Islay devoted
considerable space to the consideration of the authen-
ticity of the Macphersonian Ossianic fragments, in his
superb collection of heroic Gaelic ballads. The Leabhar
na Feinne, his views v/ere more fully matured, and his
opportunities for judgment increased, in later years : so
the reader would do best to confine himself to Mr
Campbell's essay on the Ossianic controversy which, as
already stated, is comprised in the fourth volume of
" Popular Tales of the West Highlands."
Since the publication of his famous volume, two later
essays have appeared, which, though they give no new
facts, are at once excellent and trustworthy summaries,
and are easily procurable. The one is the chapter on
Macpherson's "Ossian" in Mr Nigel Macneill's "Literature
of the Highlands" (the student should peruse the first ten
chapters of this book) ; the other is an address entitled
"Who were the Feinn," given by Mr Alexander Mac-
bain at Inverness, and reprinted in the second volume