284 



therefore, for the present at least, leave that task to those who have 

 more time and inclination for such amusements. 



To the Dissertation of Sir John is annexed a large Appendix, 

 which, for any thing it contains proving the authenticity of Ossian, 

 might be passed over by us without notice. We shall, however, 

 make a few cursory observations on that production. 



The first number, p. 205, contains the Depositions of Captain John 

 Mac Donald. The entire substance of this gentleman's affidavit con- 

 tains all that he remembered and all that he forgot relating to Ossian's 

 poems, and also the meaning of some words in the Gaelic language. 

 He swears, what perhaps Sir John thought important to the inquiry, 

 that he was seventy-eight years of age on the 12th of March, 1805; 

 that he heard poems ascribed to Ossian ; that when he was twelve or 

 fifteen years old, he could repeat from one to two hundred of those 

 poems ; that he learned them from an old man of about eighty 

 years of age ; that at present he remembers only two of any length, 

 each relating to a lady ; also a description of the horses that carried 

 the body of Cuchullin to the grave ; that he was aquainted with Mr. 

 James Macpherson, sung many of the poems to him, and that Mac- 

 pherson wrote them down ; that Fingal, Ossian, &c., were at all 

 times, and without any doubt, reckoned and believed to be of Scotch 

 and not of Irish extraction ; that Cuchullin was a Scotch chief, and 

 had a house at Dunskaich, in the Isle of Sky ; and that there is, out- 

 side the castle, a stone sunk in the ground, to which Cuchullin's 

 dog was tied, except when he was hunting, and that the wall of the 

 castle is still above twenty feet high ; that the description of the 

 horses and chariot alludes to Cuchullin's own funeral, who was killed 

 in Ireland ; that the poems of Cath Loduin, Caomh-mhala, and 

 Carraig Thura, now printing in the original are familiar to him; that 

 he believes he did repeat them often in Gaelic prior to the twelfth or 



