244 



some " hundreds of lines of the rhymes repeated to him by the com- 

 mon people, he had no doubt that the tales and songs sung by the 

 boatmen and herdsmen in the Highlands are the poems of Ossian."^ 

 It appears that it was easy to make Mr. Home believe what, for the 

 honour of Scotland, he wished to be true ; but it is a great pity tljat 

 some of his Highland acquaintances did not inform him that there 

 was no such thing as rhyme in ancient Gaelic poetry. 



The next authority produced by the Committee, for the authen- 

 ticity of the poems, is that of the Rev. M. Gallic, who, in 1799 and 

 1801, wrote three or four letters in answer to the queries of the Com- 

 mittee. In one of these he says, that Mr. Macpherson, " on his re- 

 turn from the Highlands, produced him several volumes, small octavo, 

 or rather large duodecimo, in the Gaelic language and characters, 

 being the poems of Ossian, and other ancient bards • * * * Many 

 of these volumes were at the close, said to have been collected by 

 Paul Macmhurich Bard Clanraonuil, and about the beginning of the 

 fourteenth century." 



Admitting the substance of the above quotation to be strictly 

 true, we submit that it proves nothing as to the authenticity or anti- 

 quity of those poems published by Macpherson, under the name of 

 Ossian. They were in the Gaelic characters, and said to be collected, 

 observe, not written, by a Scotch bard, in the fourteenth century ; 

 but this does not prove that they were the production of the High- 

 land muse. It is most probable that they were copies of those poems 

 known to have been in circulation for several centuries in Ireland, 

 and ascribed to the Irish Ossian. Mr. Gallie says, he could, at that 

 time, "read the Gaelic characters, though with difficulty." If he 

 could read those characters he might have known the contents of the 

 manuscripts, and be able to say positively, whether the poems pub- 

 lished by Macpherson were translations from them or not; but he 



