222 



Highland Society confess the similitude of the stories. Gillies' 

 edition calls the name of the person pursuing the body, " Doighre 

 Borb." 



aV The third example. — " Ossian's courtship of Evirallin." This 

 episode is stolen from an old poem called " Suiridh Oisin air Eam- 

 hair aluinn" (See-ry Oisheen er Eavir awlin,) a copy of the ori- 

 ginal of which has been published in Gillies' Collection of Gae- 

 lic Poems, p. 11, and another by Doctor Young, late Bishop of 

 Clonfert, in the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish 

 Academy. Mr. Macpherson tells us, " This book," (the fourth of 

 Fingal,) " as many of Ossian's other compositions, is addressed to 

 the beautiful Malvina, the' daughter of Foscar." It opens with 

 Ossian's account of his courtship of Evirallin, in these words, 

 " Daughter of the hand of snow," but, in the original, Ossian is not 

 quite so courteous. He tells the female he there addresses, " Is cu 

 fear an duine iiach ionmhuinn." " The man not agreeable is a dog- 

 gish man ;" and he adds, " I tell you, impudent hussey ! I was once, 

 on other occasions, a good fellow, though I am in this day an old 

 man." The " traditional account" that is handed down with this 

 poem relates, that Ossian, after he had become blind with age, being 

 pressed by the cravings of hunger, applied for relief to a young 

 woman, who had often supplied him with food ; she, in a jocose kind 

 of way, made him some proposal which was unpleasing to him, and 

 he rebuked her with some sharpness ; this induced her to call him an 

 old dog, and that drew from the poet the poem which gives an 

 account of his courtship with Evirallin. The story as told by Ossian, 

 and that in the old poem, agree in the circumstance that Evirallin 

 was courted by Cormac. The old poem says that Cormac was 

 Cormac Mac Art, i. e. Cormac, son of Art, whom Mr. Macpherson 

 and his son Ossian represent as a little boy, when Oscar, the son 



