1889-90.] OSSIANIC POETRY. 223 



described with a force and vigour never excelled in literature. Their 

 victories are always won by personal strength and prowess ; never by great 

 generalship. Strangers are always protected ; even their bitterest 

 enemies, if found without friends in their territories, are unharmed. The 

 prevailing sentiment was : — 



" My foeman's life I never sought 

 If he desired to leave in peace." 



This scrupulous hospitality is the sentiment that Sir Walter Scott 

 ascribes to Roderick Dhu, when he describes him as protecting Fitzjames 

 till he reaches Coilantogle Ford, and then challenging him to mortal 

 combat. This was the sentiment of the starving peasants of Scotland, 

 who for nine months protected the unfortunate Prince Charles with 

 thirty thousand pounds " blood money " on his head. 



These ancient songs lead us into a new and wonderful world : a world 

 without Christianity, without formal religious belief; where all modern 

 ideas vanish ; a world without cities, or civilization in the modern sense 

 of the word. Iron, steel, and implements of war are found in the country. 

 The poems in many cases are full of genius, and are entirely free from 

 the slightest tinge of immorality. The deaths of the heroes are deline- 

 ated with the most exquisite tenderness ; their love is pure, disinterested 

 affection, without the faintest taint of coarseness ; and they always afford 

 protection to women, even at the risk of their own lives. 



* 



Gibbon, referring to a battle between the Emperor Severus and the 

 Caledonians, supposed to be the subject of one of the Ossianic poems, 

 where " the son of the King of the world," Caracal, fled from the arms 

 of the Caledonian hero "along the fields of his pride" has the following : — 



" Something of a doubtful mist still hangs over these Highland tradi- 

 tions ; nor can it be entirely dispelled by the most ingenious researches 

 of modern criticism ; but if we could with safety indulge the pleasing 

 supposition that Fingal lived, and that Ossian sung, the striking con- 

 trast of the situation and manners of the contending nations might amuse a 

 philosophic mind. The parallel would be little to the advantage of the more 

 civilized people, if we compared the unrelenting revenge of Severus with 

 the gen2rous clemency of Fingal ; the timid and brutal cruelty of Cara- 

 cala with the bravery, the tenderness, the elegant genius of Ossian ; the 

 mercenary chiefs, who from motives of fear or interest, served under the 

 imperial standard, with the free-born warriors, who started to arms at 

 the voice of the King of Morvcn : if, in a word, we contemplated the 

 untutored Caledonians, glowing with the warm virtues of nature, and the 

 degenerate Romans, polluted with the mean vices of wealth and slavery." 



