1891-92. | CELTIC PROSODY. 215 
the measures of Ossian’s poems are essentially the same as those which 
are found in the works of the Irish Bards ; that these measures arise from 
principles which are developed in the grammars of the Irish as deduced 
from the practice of their national poets; that the application of these 
principles demands such a variety of punctilious grammatical observation 
as to render it evident that they were the invention of a people who 
studied the grammar of their own language ; whereas the Highlanders, the 
only people who use the same language with the Irish, never reduced 
their native dialect to any grammatical rules before the year 1778. It 
follows that the measures employed in Ossian’s poems are undoubtedly 
the invention of the Irish.” The conclusion at which Davies thus arrives, 
in spite of his critical acuteness and learning, is untenable. Apart from 
the fact, that we are in possession of evidence as well internal as external 
to prove that Ossian and his poems belong to the Scottish Gaels, his 
poems do not fulfil the regulations of Irish metre to which reference has 
already been made. It was indeed to be expected that there would be, 
and that there is, very much in common between the versification of 
the Irish and Scottish Gaels, because the same language was spoken by 
them. The Gaelic poems of the Ossianic era are not written in quatrains, 
and cannot be made to assume that division without doing violence to 
the narrative and interrupting its natural consecutiveness. Smith’s Sean 
Dana, the Gaelic originals of the poems which were translated by 
MacPherson, and MacCallum’s collection of the poems of Ossian, may 
fairly be regarded as strictly Ossianic in their age and character and 
versification. The rigid laws of ancient Irish poetry cannot apply to 
those collections, though alliteration and correspondence and other 
features of Irish poetry are frequently to be found in them. 
The authority of Price is of great value in connection with the nation- 
_ality of Ossian. He thus writes, (vol. I., p. 168): “ The Scottish Ossian is 
a totally distinct creation from the Irish Ossian, though the Celtic original 
is the common parent of both. When MacPherson published his poems 
of Ossian, the Irish immediately cried out these poems are our property, 
they are Irish, and we are in possession of the original manuscripts and 
will convince the world of the fact by publishing them. They did 
accordingly publish portions of their Ossian together with English 
translations; but their Ossian was no more like the Ossian of MacPher- 
son, than the Nibelungen is like the Iliad or Paradise Lost like the Shah 
Nameh. It is true the names were identical, and many of the incidents, 
but the spirit was totally and irreconcilably distinct. The Irish Ossian 
excited no feelings but such as the world had long been familiar with, 
but the same work as interpreted by MacPherson called forth sentiments 
which till then had never been felt.” 
