No inter Lochlin. rate and picturesque description, I prefer his authority, that the islands were then uninhabited, to Tacitus' vague account of Agricola's fleet, "quas Orcades vocant, invenit "domuitque," and to the poetical fictions of Claudian, who, in the fourth century, peoples Thulé with Picts, and the Orkneys with Saxons, instead of the Saxon isles. Their first inhabitants were the same Picts who inhabited Scotland. The Norwegians had not acquired the islands in the sixth, nor begun to people them till the eighth century, when the petty princes of Norway were expelled by Harold. But Macpherson, ignorant that they were destitute even then of wood, and utterly desert, unless possessed by the Picts, discriminates the Orkneys by the circle of Loda, and diversifies the scenery with aged trees, the flaming or the fallen oak, and a rock with all its echoing wood. 5. In the episode of Conban-carglas, daughter of course with Torcul-torno king of Lulan, (the names in the Cathloda are at least romantic,) we are required to believe that the highlanders were acquainted with Torneo and Lulea by name, at the bottom of the gulph of Bothnia, in Swedish Lapland, at a time when the Romans had no knowledge of Scandinavia beyond the Wener lake. Currachs of ozier, covered with hides, were the only vessels which the highlanders possessed; and as they were neither pirates nor traders, nor sailors, nor addicted ever to the sea, we may truly affirm that they never passed into Scandinavia in a Unknown single ship. The invasions from Lochlin, a name unknown in the third till the ninth century, are equally fabulous. The Suiones, century. from the earliest Norwegian accounts, were without trees. Solinus is ge nerally accurate, though ridiculed for denying bees to Ireland. But Giraldus Cambrensis, who mentions their introduction, ascribes their scarcity to the high winds and humidity of the climate, and to the noxious yews which were numerous then. Cambr. Topogr. Hiber. 1. i. c. 5. when distinguished by Tacitus as the only northern nation possessed of ships, were still ignorant, in the second century, of the use of sails 9. The Franks, instructed by the singular and recent escape of their countrymen, who circumnavigated Europe from the Euxine to the Rhine, were the only maritime people that infested the coasts of Britain. till the Saxons appeared. Had the Norwegians applied so early to piracy or to the sea, as they must have been attracted by plunder to the southern shores, instead of Ireland, so their predatory expeditions could not have escaped the observation of the Romans, when Carausius was employed to intercept the Franks 10. from the II. 1. These historical detections conduct us to the inva- Detections sions of Scotland and Ireland, in the middle ages, by the middle Norwegians and Danes, to whom the traditionary poems in ages. the highlands refer. Shaw, Hill, and Dr. Young, late bishop of Meath, who searched the highlands successively for originals, discovered no tradition whatsoever of Swaran; but of Magnus Barefoot, who, seizing Cantire and the isles, Magnusį was killed in Ireland in the beginning of the twelfth century, and who, with an anachronism not uncommon in traditions, is represented in some rude ballads as encountering Fingal. The name is retained by Smith, another reverend translator of those ballads into heroic poems; and Swaran, in the first Fragments of Fingal, written before the author had digested his plan, is denominated Garve, a literal translation of Magnus into Earse. But Macpherson perceived the traditionary anachronism; and to render the king of Norway contemporary with Fingal, converted Magnus into the fictitious Swarán. Tacitus Germ. c. 44. 1 See Gibbon, ii. 84. 123. 8vo. who is careful to distinguish the Franks from the Saxons. Ketil. 2. In Carrick-Thura, an heroic poem, Fingal, returning from an expedition into the Roman province, sails next day to visit his friend Cathula, the son of Sarno, king of Inistore. Under the names of Cathula, the son of Sarno, altered and adapted to Celtick poetry, it is not difficult perhaps to discern Ketil, the son of Biarno, celebrated in Icelandic genealogies as lord of the Hebudes, of whom some traditionary report may be preserved in those islands. When the Western Isles were recovered by the Norwegian pirates from Harold Harfagre, of whom Macpherson has made some mention in the maid of Lulan, Ketil, a Norwegian employed to regain them, established himself there as an independent prince. Instead, however, of being a contemporary of Caracalla, or of Carausius the usurper, Cathula, or Ketil, the friend of Fingal, and the Norwegian lord of the Hebudes, lived in the beginning of the tenth century, and was connected, by the marriage of his daughters, not with the king of Morven, but with the petty princes of Dublin and Man".' Thura. Carrick- 3. But what shall we say to Carrick-Thura, the palace of the king of Inistore? In transferring his residence to Orkney, it was necessary to find a local habitation and a name. Thura is the name of a place in Caithness, of which the author had probably heard in Badenoch; and in searching Mackenzie's Maps, he discovered a Carrick in Orkney, which, when conjoined with Thura, seemed to approximate sufficiently towards a local appellation". Thura and Ketil multis præliis, perpetuo victoriarum cursu, feliciter insulas domuit, fæderibus deinde præcipuis occidentalium regionum Principibus, et affinitate per filiarum conjugia sibi conciliatis, earum possessionem sibi confirmavit. Torfaeus Orcades, 14. See Eyrbyggia Saga, p.5; Smith's Sean Dana for Cathuil, p. 160. • Aboriginal Gaelic names of mountains are preserved in Wales; (Lloyd's Archæologia, Pref.) Welch or Cimbrick names in Scotland; and Thurso are undoubtedly names of the same Norwegian or Gothic original; but unfortunately for the authenticity of the poem, Carrick is a recent name, of Celtick etymology, never known in those islands, till it was imposed by Stuart carl of Carrick, on a house which he built there in the last century. 4. The author discovered in Toland, and in Wallace's Circle of Loda. description, or Mackenzie's maps of the Orkneys, a remarkable circle of stones, similar to Stonehenge, which, whether erected by the Picts or the Norwegians, he has appropriated to his poetry, and dedicated to the Spirit of Loda. That they were raised by the Norwegians in the ninth century, and dedicated to Woden, a traditionary name, appears indisputable. But the origin of Loda, which has no affinity to the twelve names of Odin, seems to perplex the commentators on Ossian. Mallet's Introduction to the History of Denmark, which had been recently published, suggested both the idea and the name. The author asserts in a note that the circles of stones in Orkney retain to this day the name of Loda or Loden, and appeals to Mallet, as a proof that the temple built by Haquin at Drontheim wept always under the same name of Loden. The first assertion I know to be false; and Mallet's words, from Olaus Wormius, are precisely these; Haquin Comte de Norvege, (Haco, in 978, appointed tributary earl of Norway by the Danes) en avoit bati un (temple) pres de Drontheim, a Laden (the name of the territory, not of the temple) qui the names of the Western Isles, and of places along the coast of Caithness are still Norwegian. The Picts, whom the Norwegians found in Orkney, (Diploma in Wallace,) have bestowed their name on the Petland frith which divides it from Scotland; but the Pictish names of hills and isles are not to be discriminated from the Norwegian; a proof, at least, that the Picts were not. Celts. Nor is there a Celtick name, the unfortunate Carrick excepted, to be found in Orkney. Tradition. ne cedoit guerre a celui d'Upsal. When afraid to introduce the Scandinavian deity into his poems by name, Macpherson converted Laden, into Loden and Loda, from its supposed resemblance to Odin, whom he names indirectly as the Spirit of Loda, or of the place of worship where the temple stood 13. But when the author cannot adhere to the fact, in an appeal to books to which we have access, the world must be forgiven for rejecting the authenticity of the poems, when he appeals to traditions to which there is no access. III. 1. Among the common class of mankind, it is observed by Mallet that a son remembers his father, knowssomething about his grandfather, but never bestows a thought upon his more remote progenitors. The same argument has always convinced the learned, that poems preserved upwards of fifteen hundred years by oral tradition, was a fiction utterly unworthy of credit. "It is in"deed strange," says Hume in a letter to Gibbon, "that any men of sense could have imagined it possible, that "above twenty thousand verses, along with numberless "historical facts, could have been preserved by oral tradi"tion, during fifty generations, by the rudest, perhaps, of "all the civilized nations, the most necessitous, the most "turbulent, and the most unsettled. Where a supposition " is so contrary to common sense, any positive evidence of it ought never to be regarded. Men run with great avidity to give their evidence in favour of what flatters "their passions, and their national prejudices. You are "therefore over and above indulgent to us in speaking of "the matter with hesitation 14." To estimate the full force of this argument, let us remember that three fourths of the 13 Mallet's Intr. i. 79. from Ol. Wormius. Dan. p. 6. Ossian, ii. 104. |