Dr. Blai the committee, composed of chosen persons, and assisted by the best Celtic scholars, adopted, as it will be seen, a very similar manner of acting. It conceived the purpose of its nomination to be, to employ the influence of the society, and the extensive communication which it possesses with every part of the Highlands, in collecting what materials or information it was still practicable to collect, regarding the authenticity and nature of the poems ascribed to Osgian, and particularly of that celebrated collection pub. lished by Mr. James Macpherson. For the purpose above mentioned, the committee, soon after its appointment, circulated the following set of queries, through such parts of the Highlands and Islands, and among such persons resident there, as seemed most likely to afford the information required. QUERIES. 1. Have you ever heard repeated, or sung, any of the poems ascribed to Ossian, translated and published by Mr. Macpherson? By whom have you heard them so repeated, and at what time or times? Did you ever commit any of them to writing? or can you remember them so well as now to set them down? In either of these cases, be so good to send the Gaelic origina to the committee. 2. The same answer is requested concerning any other ancient poems of the same kind, and relating to the same traditionary persons or stories with those in Mr. Macpherson's collection. 3. Are any of the persons from whom you heard any such poems now alive? or are there, in your part of the country, any persons who remember and can repeat or recite such poems? If there are, be so good as to examine them as to the manner of their getting or learning such compositions; and set down, as accu rately as possible, such as they can now repeat or re cite; and transmit such their account, and such com positions as they repeat, to the committee. 4. If there are, in your neighborhood, any persona from whom Mr. Macpherson received any poems, inquire particularly what the poems were which he so received, the manner in which he received them, and how he wrote them down; show those persons, if you have an opportunity, his translation of such poems, and desire them to say, if the translation is exact and literal; or, if it differs, in what it differs from the poems, as they repeated them to Mr. Macpherson, and can now recollect them. 5. Be so good to procure every information you conveniently can, with regard to the traditionary belief, in the country in which you live, concerning the history of Fingal and his followers, and that of Ossian and his poems; parucularly those stories and poems published by Mr. Macpherson, and the heroes mentioned in them. Transmit any such account, and any proverbial or traditionary expression in the original Gaelic, relating to the subject, to the committee. to 6 In all the above inquiries, or any that may occur in elucidation of this subject, he is requested by the committee to make the inquiry, and to take down the answers, with as much impartiality and precision as possible, in the same manner as if it were a legal question, and the proof to be investigated with a legal strictness. See the "Report." It is presumed as undisputed, that a traditionary his tory of a great hero or chief, called Fion, Fion na Gael, or, as it is modernized, Fingal, exists, and has immemorially existed, in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and that certain poems or ballads containing he exploits of him and his associate heroes, were the favorite lore of the natives of those districts. The general belief of the existence of such heroic person. ages, and the great poet Ossian, the son of Fingal, by whom their exploits were sung, is as universal in the Highlands, as the belief of any ancient fact whatsoever. it is recorded in proverbs, which pass through all rank and conditions of men, Ossian dall, blind Ossian,* is a person as well known as strong Sampson, or wise Solomon. The very boys in their sports cry out for fair play, Cothram na feine, the equal combat of the Fingalians. Ossian, an deigh nam fiann, Ossian, the last of his race, is proverbial, to signify a man who has had the misfortune to survive his kindred; and servants returning from a fair or wedding, were in use to describe the beauty of young women they had seen there, by the words, Tha i cho boidheach reh Agandecca, nighean ant sneachda, She is as beautiful as Agandecca. the daughter of the Snow.t All this will be readily conceded, and Mr. Macpher son's being at one period an "indifferent proficient in the Gaelic language," may seem an argument of some weight against his having himself composed these Os. sianic Poems. Of his inaccuracy in the Gaelic, a ludicrous instance is related in the declaration of Mr Evan Macpherson, at Knock, in Sleat, Sept. 11, 1800. Ile declares that he, "Colonel Macleod, of Talisker, and the late Mr. Maclean of Coll, embarked with Mr. Macpherson for Uist on the same pursuit: that they landed at Lochmaddy, and proceeded across the Muir to Benbecula, the seat of the younger Clanronald : that on their way thither they fell in with a man whom they afterwards ascertained to have been Mac Codrum, Γύφλος γ' Όμηρος.-Lascaris Const. + Report, p. 15. ” he poet that Mr. Macpherson asked him the question. A bheil dad agad air an Fheinn? by which he meant to inquire, whether or not he knew any of the poems of Ossian relative to the Fingalians: but that the term in which the question was asked, strictly imported whether or not the Fingalians owed him any thing; and that Mac Codrum, being a man of humor, took advantage of the incorrectness or inelegance of the Gaelic in which the question was put, and answered, that really if they had owed him any thing, the bonds and obligations were lost, and he believed any attemp! to recover them at that time of day would be unavail. ing. Which sally of Mac Codrum's wit seemed to have hurt Mr. Macpherson, who cut short the conver sation, and proceeded on towards Benbecula. And the declarant being asked whether or not the late Mr. James Macpherson was capable of composing such poems as those of Ossian, declares most explicitly and positively that he is certain Mr. Macpherson was as unequal to such compositions as the declarant himself, who could no more make them than take wings and fly." P. 96. We would here observe, that the sufficiency of a man's knowledge of such a language as the Gaelic, for all the purposes of composition, is not to be questioned, because he does not speak* it accurately or elegantly, much less is it to be quibbled into suspicion by the pleasantry of a double entendre. But we hold it pru. dent, and it shall be our endeavor in this place, to give *We doubt not that Mr. Professor Porson cold, if he pleased, forge a short poem in Greek, and ascribing it, for instance, to Theocritus, maintain its authenticity with considerable force and probability; and yet were it possible for him to speak to the simplest shepherd of ancient Greece, he would quickly afford as good reason, as Mr. Macpherson, to be suspected of being an "indiffer ent proficient" in the language no decided opinion on the main subject of dispute. For us the contention shall still remain sub judice. To the queries circulated through such parts of the Highlands as the committee imagined most likely to afford information in reply to them, they received many answers, most of which were conceived in nearly similar terms; that the persons themselves had never doubted of the existence of such poems as Mr. Macpherson had translated; that they had heard many of them repeated in their youth: that listening to thern was the favorite amusement of Highlanders, in the hours of leisure and idleness; but that since the rebellion in 1745, the manners of the people had undergone a change so unfavorable to the recitation of these poems, that it was now an amusement scarcely known, and that very few persons remained alive who were able to recite them. That many of the poems which they had formerly heard were similar in subject and story, as well as in the names of the heroes mentioned in them, to those translated by Mr. Macpherson: that his translation seemed, to such as had read it, a very able one; but that it did not by any means come up to the force or energy of the original to such as had read it; for his book was by no means universally possessed, or read among the Highlanders, even accustomed to reading, who conceived that his translation could add but little to their amusement, and not at all to their conviction, in a matter which they had never doubted. A few of the committee's correspondents sent them such ancient poems as they possessed in writing, from having formerly taken them down from the oral reci tation of the old Highlanders who were in use to re cite them, or as they now took them down from some person, whom a very advanced period of life, or a par ticular connection with some reciter of the old school |