190 



I 



the life of hunters * * * * Throughout Ossian's poems we plainly 

 lind ourselves in the first of these periods of society, during which 

 hunting was the chief employment of men, and the principal method 

 of procuring their subsistence * * * * of agriculture we find no 

 traces. No cities appear to have been built in the territories of Fin- 

 gal. No arts are mentioned except that of navigation and working 

 in iron * * * * At their feasts, the heroes prepared their own 

 repast ; they sat round the light of the burning oak, the wind " lifted 

 their locks, and whistled through their open halls." 



Such is the picture which Doctor Blair has drawn of the state of 

 society in Scotland, in the days of Ossian, from the original picture 

 drawn by Ossian himself. 



From this picture it would appear that Ossian's contemporaries 

 had no other expedient to supply them with light in their nightly 

 revels, or, upon other occasions where light might be necessary, but 

 "the light of the burning oak;" and the luxury of doors and win- 

 dows to their habitations must be utterly unknown to them ; for we 

 are told that " the wind lifted their locks, and whistled through their 

 open halls." This want of windows the Doctor wishes to impress 

 upon our minds, by referring us to a "poem of a later date, which Mr. 

 Macpherson has preserved in his notes," wherein he says, we meet 

 with windows clapping, herds of cows and goats seeking shelter, &c., 

 which betray a later period of society. + 



It is true that doors and windows are an improvement in houses, 

 and probably were not used in the first stage of society, in which 

 stage, according to the Doctor, Ossian lived. What then are we to 



t The poem referred to here is not to be found in the small London edition of 1807, but 

 it is to be found in the old edition of Dublin 1762, p. 281, and in a note to the poem of 

 Croma, in the " Poems of Ossian in the original Gaelic," vol. i. p. 273. The note is in the 

 words of Mr. Macpherson, which the Society has adopted. 



