altogetheip destitute of foundation. Even Graham, ofie of the most 

 desp6rate supporters of their authenticity, is constrained to admit, 

 that, " in the lapse of ages, a few terms shoulci become obsolete, and 

 that others of more recent origin should be introduced in their stead." 

 He might have added, that his compatriot, Kennedy, the pedagogue, 

 vvas guilty of great indiscretion, in giving the Earse line, " Rtiidh 

 funimneach arm mar Spiorad Lodda," as the original of Macpher- 

 son's line, " he rushed in the sound of his arms, as the spirit of 

 Lodda."* But he was ignorant that Macpherson had given Cruth 

 Loduin," as the more genuine original, and thus unwarily betrayed 

 the lying inventions of his school. 



Some of the verses that have been published as those of Ossian, 

 by Scotch editors, are, in the judgment of Doctor O'Conor, widely 

 different both in idiom and orthography, from those of our genuine 

 Irish bards. The idiom of Homer, he observes, does not differ more 

 widely from that of the modern Greeks, than the Irish language, as 

 exhibited in certain verses of Molingus and Adamnanus preserved in 

 the Annals of Tigernach, differs from those Scotch compositions, 

 which are in style more corrupt than our common vernacular Irish, 

 and both in sound and appearance are equally offensive to the ears 

 and the eyes of the learned. -f The Doctor here alludes particularly to 

 a collection of Erse poems, in possession of the Highland Society ,;]; 

 containing more than 11,000 verses. In these poems the orthogra- 

 phy seems to be adapted to the vulgar pronunciation, and the letters 

 k, w, X, y, Zf which are never used in genuine Irish compositions, 

 ^yery where meet the eye. 



As instances of the recent coinage of words in the modern Gaelic 

 Ossian, he quotes the following : Hotidir, author ; nyceith, night ; 



* Laing's Preface. '^ " ' ®' f Ep. NuK. cxxi. J See the Report, p. 92. 



