THE OSSIANIC LANDSCAPE 117 



Never before or since have the endless changes of 

 sky and atmosphere been more powerfully portrayed. 

 In the tempestuous climate of the west of Scotland 

 these changes succeed each other with a rapidity and 

 energy such as the dweller on the southern lowlands 

 can hardly realise. They are faithfully, if somewhat 

 monotonously, reflected in Ossian. All through the 

 poems the air seems ever astir around us. Sometimes 

 it is only a gently-breathing zephyr which 



' Chases round and round 

 The hoary beard of thistle old, 

 Dark-moving over grassy mounds.' 1 



We mark the graves of dead heroes by 



' Their long grass waving in the wind,' 



and we move onwards ' in the robe of the misty glen ' 



P as t * Branches and brown tufts of grass 



Which tremble and whistle in the breeze.' 



But when the full Atlantic gale sweeps over the land, 

 and the rain-clouds rush in swift procession across the 



x The quotations here given are from Dr. Clerk's translation of 

 Macpherson's Gaelic version of the Poems. The question has 

 been much disputed whether his English or Gaelic is the original. 

 There can be no doubt that, on the whole, the Gaelic shows greater 

 vividness and accuracy in the description of landscape than the 

 more vague and bombastic English of Macpherson. Dr. Clerk, 

 who has given a literal rendering of the Gaelic line for line, re- 

 marks : ' I believe that a careful analysis would resolve very much 

 of Ossian's most weird imagery into idealised representations of the 

 ever-varying and truly wonderful aspects of cloud and mist, of sea 

 and mountain, which may be seen by every observant eye in the 

 Highlands, and it is no fancy to say that the perusal of these poems, 

 as we have them, may be well illustrated by travelling a range of the 

 Highland mountains.' — Poems of Ossian, Dissertation, vol. i. p. lxv. 



