181 



" father of Ossian," who, on the same page that contains this asseiv 

 tion, assures us, with equal confidence, that "of the affairs of Scot- 

 land, it is certain, nothing can be depended upon prior to the reign 

 of Fergus, the son of Ere, who lived in the fifth century !" - ^vyyui: 



Speaking of the Romans abdicating Britain, about the year 406, 

 Mr. Macpherson says, (n. ed. p. 30,) '* It is at this period we must 

 place the origin of the arts of civil life among the Scots. — Instead of 

 roving through unfrequented wilds, in search of subsistence by means 

 of hunting, men applied to agriculture and raising of corn." What 

 then had become of the superior civilization of the kingdom of Mor- 

 ven, which flourished under the reign of the mighty monarch Fingal, 

 when the country, so far from being covered with " unfrequented 

 wilds" was, according to Ossian, so populous that the king could kad 

 forth his thousands, and overthrow "the kings of the world." U or. 



Mr. Macpherson (n. ed. p. 53,) tells us that he was induced to 

 disregard the Hibernian extraction of the Scottish nation, by observ- 

 ing "That the dialect of the Celtic, spoken in the north of Scotland, 

 is more pure, more agreeable to its mother language, and more 

 abounding with primitives, than that now spoken, or even that which 

 has been written for some centuries back, amongst the most unmixed 

 part of the Irish nation. A Scotchman tolerably conversant in his 

 own language, understands an Irish composition, from that deriva- 

 tive analogy which it has to the Gaelic of the North Britain. An 

 Irishman, on the other hand, without the aid of study, can never 

 understand a composition in the Gaelic tongue. This affords a proof, 

 that the Scotch Gaelic is the most original, and consequently the 

 language of a more ancient and unmixed people. The Irish, how- 

 ever backward they may be to allow any thing to the prejudice of 

 tlieir antiquity, seem inadvertently to acknowledge it, by the very 

 appellation they give to the dialect they speak. They call their own 



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