30 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. I. 



close as to have led Ebrard, the eminent German critic and antiquarian, 

 to a firm belief in their authenticity as poems of that period. The con- 

 cluding portion of the paper dealt with the subject matter of the poems, 

 and with the light thrown on the question by early Irish manuscripts. 

 As to the identity of the race called in the poems the " Peine," the writer 

 ventured an original explanation of the meaning of the name, combatting 

 the view of Mr. W. F. Skene, the Historiographer Royal of Scotland, 

 who basing his opinion partly on a passage in an early manuscript, which 

 speaks of " the Feine of Erin, Albyn, Britain, and Lachlan (Scandinavia)," 

 holds that the Feine were a distinct race, widely extended over Britain 

 and a part of the Continent. Mr. Spence argued on the contrary, that 

 Mr. Skene might have mistaken the word " fine," meaning merely a 

 " nation " or " tribe," for the proper name of a particular race, and thus 

 that a widespread nation of the Feine may have had none but a conjec- 

 tural existence. In short, that the " Feine " were simply the " Gaels " or 

 Highlanders, who spoke of themselves as the "Fine" — the nation par 

 excellejice. The paper closed with the quotation of an eloquent passage 

 from a poem in the Highland Society's report on the Ossianic con- 

 troversy. 



Mr. Chamberlain referred to a paper in the Century last year, that took 

 up the same line of argument in relation to the connection between the 

 Finne and the Gael. He mentioned the case of a gentleman who pub- 

 lished an account of an Indian language that presented a case similar to 

 that of the Ossianic poetry. It was taxed by Dr. Brinton as a forgery. 

 The owner of the MSS. offered to show them to the public, but when 

 they were looked for he said he had lost them. 



Mr. Alexander Eraser expressed the pleasure he had felt in listening 

 to Mr. Spence's paper. He thought that it was one of the most satisfac- 

 tory contributions to the subject that had been presented for a long time. 

 He thought that he had done what had not been done before, in placing 

 the different poems together and showing that Macpherson wrote but a 

 small portion of them. It could not be doubted that a large body of 

 Ossianic poetry existed over and above that of Macpherson's, equal 

 and some of it superior to his. The only question was whether Macpher- 

 son had taken part of the poems from one part of the country and part 

 from another and connected them with some verses of his own. In 

 poems recited by old inhabitants there were hundreds of lines similar to 

 those of Macpherson's Ossian. 



Mr. Evan McColl said there was no reason to doubt that these poems 

 were handed down from very remote centuries. Numbers of Highlanders 



