his coadjutors. We have already noticed General Vallancey's detec- 

 tion of imposition in the iew lines of the pretended original which 

 Macpherson had the indiscreet temerity to publish. OTlanagan, 

 secretary to the Gaelic Society of Dublin, speaks of it as "the 

 detected forgery of a modern corrupt dialect."* That excellent Irish 

 scholar, Mr. O'Reilly, author of the ^^Chronological Account ofnearbj 

 four hundred Irish Writers" speaking of Cormac, monarch of Ire- 

 land, A. D. 250, some of whose compositions are said to be still pre- 

 served, justly observes, (p. xxiii,) " if the genuine Poems of Oisin were 

 extant, their language would be the same as that of Cormac's works, 

 which are nearly unintelligible to the generality of Irish readers, and 

 completely so to the vulgar. The language of those poems, which the 

 Highland Society have given to the world, as the originals of Oisin, 

 is the living language of the Highlanders of the present day, and if 

 'properly spelled and read by an Irish scholar, would be intelligible to 

 the most illiterate peasant in Ireland." The learned Doctor O'Conor, 

 than who, no one was ever more competent to give an opinion on this 

 subject, for no one was ever more profoundly versed in Irish litera- 

 ture, expresses himself in a similar manner. " Lingua enifn Hiber- 

 nica, qua Incolce Hihernice et Albania nunc vulgo utuntur, in pluri- 

 bus diversa est ab antiqua ; et cum id in Codicibus scriptis pateat, 

 quis, nisi partium studiis abreptus, non percipit, diversitatem longe 

 majorem necessario oriri debere in lingua non scripta." He notices 

 the changes which have taken place in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin 

 languages ; and observes that the Greek liturgies of Basil and Chry- 

 sostoni, though publicly read even now in the Greek churches, are 

 unintelligible by the common people. That the Latin tongue has 

 experienced as great a change, is evident from the verses of the Salii, 



* Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, pp. 25,26. 



o2 



