derived from the Irish words Ceile De, signifying, literally, the 

 spouse of God, or a person totally renouncing the service of the world, 

 and devoting himself entirely to the service of the Almighty. This 

 ignorance is inexcusable in a man who presumes to set himself up as a 

 guide to others, and who, however superficially acquainted with the 

 ancient Gaelic language, might have found the Latin names of Colidei 

 and Cultores Dei, given to the Culdees by Giraldus Cambrensis; 

 Archbisop Usher ; Roderick O'Flaherty ; Lloyd, Bishop of Worces- 

 ter ; or his own countryman, Buchanan, in his History of Scotland. 

 Those who wish to know what the Culdees were, will do well to con- 

 sult Bishop Lloyd's " History of the Government of the Churches of 

 Great Britain and Ireland," and Doctor Lanigan's "Ecclesiastical His- 

 tory of Ireland," vol. iii. pp. 245-248, and vol. iv. pp. 290-31?. 



We have been thus prolix on this point, to call the attention of 

 the reader to the internal proof which this passage supplies of the 

 modern fabrication of those poems which have been imposed upon 

 the world as the poems of Ossian. The Culdees were certainly never 

 heard of until the beginning of the ninth century, therefore the men- 

 tion of them in the Scotch Ossian affords an incontrovertible proof 

 that the poems which pass under his name, as ancient Gaelic poems, 

 could not have been written by him, who, according to Macpherson 

 himself, lived in the third century. There is another thing which 

 Mr. Macpherson mentions, (n. ed. p. 14.) that demands some obser- 

 vation. He says, " The strongest objection to the antiquity of the 

 poems now given to the public, under the name of Ossian, is the im- 

 probability of their being handed down by tradition through so 

 many centuries."" This is certainly a strong objection, though not the 

 strongest ; but how does he attempt to obviate it ? By telling us 

 that the bards, not Ossian, composed ridiculous fables which flattered 

 the vanity of their chiefs ; and he adds, " It is to tlus vanity that we 



