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appear evident to any Gaelic scholar who will take the pains to 

 examine the '* Duan Alhanach," the oldest composition in the Scot- 

 tish Gaelic now in existence ; or even the metrical translation into 

 the Scotch Gaelic of the first fifty of the Psalms of David, or the 

 small catechism in Gaelic, both printed by Anderson in Glasgow, in 

 the year 1659. In none of those works is the improper substitution 

 of a or am for an, or nan or nam for na to be found. This mode of 

 Avriting is a modern Scotch corruption; and being found in the " ori- 

 ginals " of Ossian, it, alone, furnishes an irrefragable proof that those 

 ancient originals, are modern Scotch forgeries. These lines, however, 

 furnish other proofs of their modern fabrication, besides what the 

 corruption of the article supplies. The plural article na, according 

 to the old and established rules of Gaelic gram.mar, requires what is 

 called ellipsis on the initial of the noun following it. But this is not 

 to be found in the " originals " of Ossian published by the Society. 

 In the third, eighth, and seventeenth lines we find, nan cos, nan ceinn 

 ard, and nan ciar bheann. These, if the lines were not modern, 

 would be written na ccos, na cecum nard, and na cciar mbeann, or the 

 last, as a compound word, na cciarhheann. 



Again, the proposition a or ann, in, is never written an with a sin- 

 gle n, in any Gaelic book ancient or modern, except in the modern 

 and corrupt compositions of the Abanian Scots. The sixth line of 

 the extract, " Laoch a thuit leis an garbh-chomhrag," is, therefore, 

 ungrammatical, according to ancient usage. If the line were ancient, 

 it would be written " Laoch a thuit leis a ngarbh chomhrag," lite- 

 rally, " A chief that fell by him in rough conflict." The line in the 

 poem was doubtless intended to represent in Gaelic, Macpherson's 

 original English words, "^4 hero slain by the Chief in war," which 

 the Rev. Thomas Ross, in his feigned new translation of the first 

 Book of Fingal, pretends to amend by reading the line " A hero he 



