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proper terms he could use were those he has used, " among his own 

 people f" meaning, " the people of his own times and country." But, 

 to put the matter out of dispute respecting Colgan's opinion as to the 

 country of Finn and his followers, let us see what he says on that 

 subject. In another part of the work already referred to, he tells us 

 that there was, in his own time, in the Irish Library of Louvain, 

 " a manuscript written on parchment, in which Saint Patrick and 

 Coilte," (the Caolt of Macpherson's Ossian,) " a celebrated cham- 

 pion of old among the Irish, are introduced discoursing on Irish 

 affairs. The work is a forgery, and of a subsequent age, as appears 

 sufficiently evident from the style itself. Besides, that Coilte 

 lived in the time of Cormac, monarch of Ireland, A. D. 250. Ano- 

 ther work somewhat of the same kind is to be found in many parts of 

 Ireland, in which Saint Patrick and Ossian, son of Finn, commander 

 of the forces in the reign of Cormac, are introduced speaking on the 

 state of Ireland. But as this Ossian was a contemporary with Coilte, 

 the same sentence may be pronounced on both those falsely devised 

 productions." — Triad. Lovanii 1647, p. 215. In the foregoing ex- 

 tract Colgan speaks of Ossian, not as a convert of Saint Patrick, but 

 as the son of Finn who lived in the time of Cormac, A. D. 250, 

 near 200 years before Saint Patrick's time, and on that account he 

 condemns as forgeries the works that make them contemporaries. 

 The quotation, however, is sufficient evidence to prove that Colgan 

 considered Finn, Ossian, and Coilte as Irishmen, and, consequently, 

 that Sir John Sinclair is wrong in asserting that that celebrated wri- 

 ter meant to say that Finn, or Fingal, as he is called, was a Scotch- 

 man. 



Of the other writers that Sir John tells us spoke of Finn as a 

 Scotchman, it is to be observed that they are all Scottish authors, the 

 earliest of whom did not write until about the close of the fifteenth 



