307 



pie before us, and, indeed, in every page of the " Gaelic originals of 

 Ossian," should, alone, be sufficient to prove beyond dispute, that 

 those so-called originals are modern forgeries, manufactured with- 

 in the last thirty years by James Macpherson, or procured to be 

 manufactured by that person, or his executors, to save him or them 

 from the legal proceedings instituted by the Highland Society of 

 London, for the recovery of one thousand pounds, received from that 

 body by Macpherson, on the false pretence of publishing the origi- 

 nals of his. Ossian. But as the Society have relied on the internal 

 proofs of the authenticity of the poems, furnished by the language 

 of their originals, and not on the prosody, we shall devote a few 

 lines to the consideration of the language of this extract, and here- 

 after of other parts of those " originals " 



The first thing that claims our attention in this extract is the 

 definite article an, the, which, when referring to nouns masculine, is 

 always written an, in every case of the singular number ; and when 

 referring to nouns feminine, is so written in all the cases of the sin- 

 gular except the genitive, in which case, and in all the cases of the 

 plural of both genders, it is written 7ia, the. In no ancient manu- 

 script is it ever written a, or am in the singular, or nan or nam in 

 the plural. In some few modern Irish compositions, (the works of 

 persons unacquainted with the rules of Irish grammar,) and in the 

 oral speech of the vulgar Irish, a is sometimes used for an in the sin- 

 gular, but am is never used by them for an ; nor nan or nam for na 

 in the plural. The modern Scotch writers, on the contrary, do use 

 that incorrect manner of writing ; but in no book of the Scottish 

 Gaelic, so much as one hundred and fifty years old, is the article to 

 be seen in any other form than an in the singular, and na in the 

 plural, except in the genitive singular relating to feminine nouns, 

 in which it is always written na. That this is strictly true must 



VOL. xvr. s s 



