331 



celebrated Irish 'miHtia,ire facts that cannot be controverted. They 

 are attested by the earHest writers of Irish history, and are not dis- 

 puted by any, either ancient or modern. But, that either he or his 

 father Fionn, or his son Oscar, were contemporaries with CuchuDin, 

 as asserted by Macpherson, or with Saint Patrick, as is made to 

 appear in the Irish poems that pass under the name of Ossian, is in 

 direct opposition to all the Irish Chronicles. The hero Cuchullin 

 was bom twenty-five years before Christ, and died in the second 

 year after Christ, as is shewn in the Annals of Tigernach, a Avriter of 

 the eleventh century. He, therefore, could not have been a con- 

 temporary of either Fionn, Ossian, or Oscar; the first of whom could 

 not have been born before the latter end of the second century, as, 

 according to the Annals of the Four Masters, he was killed A. D. 

 283, in which Macpherson himself coincides. See what we have 

 already said on this subject aboye, p. J.97. . f,.. . 



It is clear then that Cuchullin was not, as Macpherson makes him, a 

 contemporary of Ossian's, and, therefore, that those poejns which make 

 them contemporaries could not be written by Ossian, who would not 

 have been guilty of so glaring an anachronism. Other evidences from 

 the same authorities also prove that those Irish poems that pass under 

 the name of Oisin, or Ossian, could not have been composed by that an- 

 cient bard. In most of those Irish poems Saint Patrick is mentioned, and 

 there is something of dialogue between him and the supposed author. 

 Ossian must have been pretty well advanced in years when his son Oscar 

 was killed in the battle of Gaura, fought, according to the Annals of 

 the Four Masters, A. D. 2$4, and must, therefore, have been born as 

 far back as the year 230. Saint Patrick came on his mission to Ireland 



ignorant of this passage ; yet he had not the candour to acknowledge it, as in fairness he ought 

 JIG have done. - - „ 



VOL. XVI. XX 



