The late venerable Charles O'Conor, of Belanagar, Doctor O'Hal- 

 loran, and others, have accused Mr. Macpherson of having stolen his 

 Ossian from Ireland. This charge, though not true to the full extent, 

 is not without foundation. That writer acknowledges (w. ed. p. 37,) 

 that he had in his possession all the Irish poems that go under the 

 name of Ossian : he says, " I have just now in my hands all that re- 

 main of those compositions." That he has riiade use of them to his 

 own advantage shall be made to appear hereafter, when we come to 

 treat of particular poems. He, however, attempts to turn the com- 

 positions of the Irish Ossian into ridicule, by giving, as extracts from 

 them, some lines in his own barbarous jargon of modern Earse ; and 

 perverting the Irish words to his own purpose. In four or five places 

 he attempts, from those Irish poems, to make Fionn Mac-Comhal 

 (Fingal) a Scotchman. This he thought might be done without de- 

 tection. Fionn's patrimony in Leinster was Almhuin, (Aloo-in,) now 

 Allen, in the present county of Kildare, and from which the famous 

 Bog of Allen takes its name. In Irish language bh and 7nh are, in 

 some cases commutable, and by some careless scribes Albhuin has 

 been written, in some of the Irish poems, instead of Almhuin, both 

 being of the same pronunciation. The examples he gives with their 

 translations are as follows : " Fion o Albin, siol nan laoich," — " Fion 

 from Albion, race of heroes." " Albin an sa d'roina m'arach." — ; 

 " Albion, where I was born and bred." " Sanu* Alban na n'abarthar 

 Triath," — i" No chief should have afterwards been numbered in 

 Albion." " O Albin na n'ioma stuagh," — " From Albion of many 

 waves." "Siol Albin a n'ioma caoile,"— " The race of Albion of 

 many friths." These examples "the father of Ossian" fearlessly 

 brought forward to prove the Scotch nativity of his son ; but they 

 prove nothing but the forgery of the writer. No such ungrammatical 

 gibberish as they exhibit, is to be found in Irish poems. It would be 



