

Ferguson — Alleged Forgery respecting Mount- Calkin. 319 



specified by the poem : Mount Callan being only from eigbt to ten miles distant, 

 north-west, from the place of our departure. ... I perceived a square rock . . . 

 on the Leitermoylan (that is the south-east) side of the mountain ... a large 

 druid altar . . . Applying to a cottager . . . whether he knew of any other 

 stone on the mountain which bore any resemblance to a monument, he told me 

 he observed one, ... at the side of a small lake, about a mile north-east of the 

 altar . . . the wished-for monument." (Transactions R.I. A., vol. i., Antiq., p. 5.) 



This passage gives occasion to Dr. Lechvich to cast some ridicule on 

 the Ossianic pretensions of the stanzas ; and he speciously enough 

 surmises them to be the production of some Ossian, who resided in the 

 town of Ennis, hut it did not enter into his mind to conceive of any- 

 thing so inconsistent with the motives of a literary forger, as that 

 O'Planagan, whom they so evidently embarrassed, had himself had 

 any hand in their preparation. And indeed the reference to Ennis 

 by both is grounded on equal carelessness ; for Slieve Callan lies due 

 west, and the site of the monument slightly south of west from that 

 town. 



It is no part of my object, in endeavouring to rescue the reputation 

 of this dead scholar, such as he was, from what I conceive to be the 

 unjust imputations cruelly heaped on it, to represent him otherwise 

 than as of comparatively slender attainments in literature, and still 

 wanting in that superiority to motives of vain-glory that characterises 

 the true man of learning. But it is a different matter, when we ask, is 

 a man a forger, and of infamous memory ? And I entertain a very con- 

 fident hope that the imputed fraud will, by this time, have appeared an 

 almost incredible supposition, seeing that the document should in that 

 case be regarded as fabricated with an express view to cast doubts on 

 the story it was designed to support. 



What has been so far said will have prepared the Academy for 

 receiving with an interested attention the further facts I am about to 

 add. During the month of May, in the present year, I have been 

 brought into communication with an Irish scholar, resident at Kilrush, 

 in the county of Clare, Mr. Michael Hanrahan, now, as he informs 

 me, in the 74th year of his age, a contemporary of O'Curry, and one 

 who has a lively recollection of other Irish scribes and scholars of the 

 early part of this century. Observing on these verses, Mr. Hanrahan, 

 in a letter to me of the 19th May, stated: "I have never seen a copy 

 of Tuarasglhail Chatha Gabhra wanting these lines," and, in compliance 

 with my request that he would state what was the oldest copy he had 

 seen, and, if older than 1780, where it could be inspected, he wrote me 

 the following very interesting particulars, under date of 26th May, 

 1875:— 



" I beg to state that I never saw a copy of the Battle of Gavra wanting the 

 stanzas that you refer to, and I took a copy of it from an old book written by John 

 Kennedy in 1720, and which was the property of the Maloney family of Thoneavo- 

 heir, near Knock, but have not seen the book since it was sold for £1 10s. over 

 twenty years ago. I saw this poem in Maurice O'Connor's Collection in this town, 



and also with Michael Mangan, of Camgaholt, who died here There 



is but little MS. in this locality, as we have but few Irish scholars now, and the 

 language is fast passing away. Mr. Burton's account of his clearing the Callan 

 Ogham goes to show that it had been there long before that time." 



