Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

POEM.
99
Oozy daughter of ftreams, that now art
reared on high, fpeak to the feeble, O ftone !
after Selma's race have failed ! Prone, from
the ftormy night, the traveller (hall lay him,
by thy iide : thy whittling mofs fhall found in
his dreams ; the years that were pad fhall re-
turn. Battles life before him, blue-fhielde'd
kings defcend to war : the darkened moon
looks from heaven on the troubled field. He
fhall burft, with morning, from dreams, and
fee the tombs of warriors round. He fhall afk
about the ftone, and the aged fhall reply,
" This grey ilone was raifed by Offian, a chief
of other years !"
From * Gol-amon came a bard, from Car>
ul, the friend of ftrangers. He bade us to
the featt of kings, to the dwelling of bright
Colna-dona. We went to the hall of harps.
* The manners of the Britons and Caledonians were
fo fimilar in the days of Offian, that there can be no
doubt, that they were originally the fame people, and de-
scended from thofe Gauls who fir ft poflcfTed themfelves
of South Britain, and gradually migrated to the North.
This hypothec's is more rational than the idle fables of
ill-formed fenaehies, who bring the Caledonians from
diftant countries. The bare opinion of Tacitus (which,
by-the-bye, was only founded on a (imilarity of the per-
fonal figure of the Caledonians to the Germans of his
own time), though it has daggered fome learned men, is
not fufficient to make us believe, that the ancient inhabi-
tants of North Britain were a German colony. A dif-
cuffion of a point like this might be curious, but could
never be fatisfaclory. Periods i'o diftant are fo involved
in obfcurity, that nothing certain can be now advanced
concerning them. The light which the Roman writers
hold forth is too feeble to guide us to the truth, through
the darknefs which has furrounded it.
H 2 There