of Edinburgh, Session 1875-76. 
151 
4. On a Stable and Flexible Arcb. By Professor 
Fleeming Jenkin. 
Monday , May 1876. 
Professor KELLAND, Vice-President, in the Chair. 
The Council have awarded the Keith Prize for the biennial 
period 1873-75, to Professor Crum Brown, for his Re- 
searches on the Sense of Rotation, and on the Anatomical 
Relations of the Semi-circular Canals of the Internal Ear. 
The following Communication was read : — 
Is the Gaelic Ossian a Translation from the English X 
By Professor Blackie. 
The recent revival by a distinguished Celtic scholar of the theory 
of Laing that Macpherson’s Gaelic Ossian is a translation from the 
English, affords an opportunity of examining that question in a 
more strictly philological fashion than it has hitherto had the 
fortune to enjoy. Parts of the question were no doubt touched by 
Mackenzie in the Report of the Highland Society, published in 
1805 by Graham in his dissertation on the authenticity of Ossian, 
by Dr Clerk of Kilmalie, the distinguished author of the new 
version of Ossian in the late splendid edition published at the 
expense of the Marquis of Bute ; but systematically grappled with 
the question has never been. Having recently gone through the 
whole of the originals, I have made careful notes of whatever 
might tend to settle this question, and have come to the conclusion, 
in the face of the statement of Mr Campbell — whose authority, no 
doubt, is one of the highest on the subject, that the Gaelic is 
unquestionably the original. The tests by which a translator’s 
hand seems clearly discoverable are the following five: — (1) In 
the English version, awkward, forced, and unidiomatic expressions 
frequently occur, which can be clearly traced to the influence of a 
Gaelic original. (2) In all poems of any antiquity handed down 
VOL. IX. 
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