141 



*' Cuchullin was the chief of Dunscaich, in the island of Sky." 

 According to the worthy baronet's style of argument, we might 

 reply; certainly he might be a chief of Dunscaich, and at the same 

 time a native of Ireland. But Cuchullin was altogether Hibernian, 

 and allied to his country by ties too many and too strong to be disse- 

 vered by the critical knife of Sir John Sinclair, or Macpherson. His 

 genealogy and family connexions may be seen at length in the second 

 volume of Ogygia, p. 162, and much ot his romantic history in Keat- 

 ing. " He fell by the sword of the sons of Calitin," in the twenty- 

 seventh year of his age, and the second of the Christian era, more 

 than two hundred years before the days of Fin Mac-Cumhal, with 

 . whom Macpherson makes him contemporary ! 



Farther it is alleged, that " Fergus, and not Ossian, was, accord- 

 ing to Irish tradition, the chief bard of the Irish Fingal, though his 

 .works are hardly known in Scotland ; and that the poems attributed 

 to the Irish Ossian, were composed between the eighth and twelfth 

 centuries, whereas the poems of (the Scotch) Ossian, are ascribed 

 by their traditions to some of the most remote periods of which there 

 is any account in the history of Scotland." 



They might as well be ascribed to years beyond the flood. What 

 avails the ascription of them to any period of profound darkness? 

 We want light and proof. It is notorious that they are not men- 

 tioned in any Scotch history a hundred years old. Admitting that 

 Fergus was the chief bard of Fingal, what advantage is gained by the 

 admission ? There were hundreds of bards in Erin, some of whom 

 may have contested the palm with Oisin, as Hesiod is said to have 

 contested it with Homer. But the name of Oisin is unquestionably 

 the most celebrated, as is apparent from his being represented as the 

 narrator of all the exploits of the Fenian heroes, in dialogues with 

 Saint Patrick. Sir John observes that the latter name " is introduced 



