1889-90.] OSSIANIC POETRY. 221 



of Islay, began to collect Gaelic tales and poems in the Highlands. The 

 work was done in the name of Campbell, a gentleman of good family and 

 of the highest character and culture, and a good Gaelic scholar. His 

 co-worker, Hector McLean, is a man of great ability, a profound critic, 

 and one of the best Celtic scholar-s in Britain. He had a large share in 

 collecting and translating the tales. A considerable number of men were 

 employed in different parts of Scotland collecting manuscripts and writing 

 poems and tales from oral recitation. The names of the collector and re- 

 citer, with notes of time and place are given in every instance. 



These men sought particularly for poems like Macpherson's, but 

 although they found many dealing with the same incidents, they could 

 find none of similar language and form. Strange as it may appear, some 

 of these tales were found to be the same in substance as those collected 

 in Germany, India, and even in Northern Africa. Four volumes were 

 published in 1862, giving the Gaelic versions with English translations. 

 A folio volume, closely printed, of 224 pages of Ossianic ballads was 

 published in 1872, under the name of " Leobhar-na-Feine." The poems 

 printed from manuscript are published just as Campbell found them. His 

 opinion as to the controversy seems to be that Macpherson fused some 

 old Gaelic ballads into epics, or that some other great poet, with a pro- 

 found knowledge of the Highland people and of old ballads, composed 

 these poems between the time of the Dean of Lismore, 15 12, and the 

 time of Macpherson ; and that Macpherson found the manuscript, mo- 

 dernized and published it. In his latest criticisms he seems to lean to 

 the opinion that this work of fusion was done by Macpherson himself 



His reasons for not going beyond the time of the Dean of Lismore seem 

 to be based on negative considerations. There might have been manu- 

 scripts in existence of which the Dean never heard. There was but little 

 known of the Dean's own manuscript till it was brought into notice by 

 the Ossianic controversy. The Rev. A. Clerk, the latest editor of Ossian, 

 states there are in the Advocates' Library alone upwards of sixty Gaelic 

 MSS. from three to five hundred years old, not to speak of the " Book of 

 Deer," which is of still greater antiquity. How many literary men, even 

 in Scotland, know much about these manuscripts ? Hector McLean 

 thinks that Macpherson composed his English Ossian first, and subse- 

 quently translated it into Gaelic ; but the weight of authority is against 

 him. He bases his opinion on his discovery of English idioms in Mac- 

 pherson's Gaelic. Now, it is, of course, possible, that as to the original por- 

 tions — the "links" or "joints" — the English may have been first composed, 

 and a Gaelic translation afterwards made, but the great body of the 



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