1881.] on the Literature of the Scottish HlyJilands. 551 



the fiual ch, in which Gaelic, like German, abounds, is a harsh sound. 

 It is quite the reverse. The German milch is the soft form of tho 

 harsh and sharp English viilk. It is nothing singular that men 

 attempt to fasten a fault on an object perceived, when tho real flaw 

 lies in the defective organ of tho percipient. 



So much for the language. The literature in its main stream 

 consists of popular ballads and songs — those kX^u dvSpwv with which 

 Achilles is represented as solacing his solitary grudge when Agamem- 

 non sends the embassy to request him to rejoin the Greek army. Of 

 these songs and ballads a collection was made by a certain Dean 

 Macgi'igor, of Lismore, in Argyll, about the time of the Keformation ; 

 for a long time preserved in the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, 

 and some years ago published and translated under the able editor- 

 ship of Skene and MacLauchlan. Another most extensive and 

 valuable collection has recently been made by John Campbell of Islay, 

 taken down from the mouths of the people and preserving many of the 

 old Fenian traditions in a form which, without his work, must very 

 soon have disappeared. I myself have heard some of these ballads 

 recited by an old man in Tobermory, the descendant no doubt of a 

 race of ballad-singers and story-tellers, who formed a regular pro- 

 fession in the Highlands, but which now, like other good things in 

 that quarter, is rapidly dying out. As in ancient Greece, the 

 original musical form in which the popular traditions were embodied 

 soon gave rise to a prose version of cognate matter in a kindred 

 tone ; so beside the ballads and songs of which we have spoken, 

 there existed in the Highlands a rich collection of prose stories 

 or tales, which were told by accomplished story-tellers to lighten 

 the heaviness of the winter evenings at the smoky fireside. To 

 the patriotic diligence of Mr. Campbell in this case also we are in- 

 debted for the preservation of a body of prose Highland tales of 

 primary importance in the history of early Aryan and European 

 civilisation. The contents of these stories, though often fanciful and 

 childish, like our fairy tales, are seldom without a subtle moral sig- 

 nificance ; and their style is masterly, with a certain natural quaint- 

 ness and grace, for which we shall find no parallel except in some of 

 the most attractive pages of Herodotus. Some of these ample ballad 

 materials, about the middle of the last century, as all the world knows, 

 fell into the hands of a literary gentleman named MacPherson, be- 

 longing to the district of Badenoch, between Braemar and Kingussie ; 

 and manipulated by his hands and a few friends well skilled in 

 Celtic lore, they were sent forth to the world under the name of the 

 poems of OssiAN. That these famous poems — whose originality was 

 recognised with fervour by Goethe, Her:ler, and others of the most 

 notable names in European literature — are a genuine Celtic produc- 

 tion, both in respect of the materials from which they were composed, 

 and the manipulators who put the materials together, there can be no 

 doubt. The only doubt is how much or how little these gentlemen 

 did to put the materials which they unquestionably possessed into 



