which copies are in other manuscripts preserved in Ireland. I do not
question the merits of Ossian's poems. Readers can judge. They are
Scotch compositions, for the English is Macpherson's, and the Gaelic is
Scotch vernacular. A glance at old Gaelic, of which many samples are
printed in late numbers of the Parisian _Revue Celtique_, ought to
convince any reader of Ossian that modern Scotch vernacular Gaelic
cannot possibly represent the language of St Patrick's time. I have
hunted popular lore for many years, and I have published five volumes. I
have gathered twenty-one thick foolscap volumes of manuscript. I have
had able collectors at work in Scotland; I had the willing aid of
Stokes, Hennessy, Standish O'Grady, Crowe, and other excellent Irish
scholars in ransacking piles of Gaelic manuscripts in Dublin, London,
Edinburgh, and elsewhere. I could never find an uneducated Highlander
who could repeat any notable part of the Gaelic poems which were
circulated gratis soon after 1807. Nobody ever has found one line of
these poems in any known writing older than James Macpherson. I agree
with many speakers of Scotch Gaelic who have studied this question. We
hold that the Gaelic Ossian of 1807 is, on the face of it, a manifest
translation from English; and that the English was founded upon an
imperfect acquaintance with genuine old Scotch Gaelic ballads. These are
still commonly sung. They are founded upon the mythical history which
still is traditionally known all over Scotland and Ireland. It was old
when Keating wrote; it was old when the Book of Leinster was written
about 1130. It really is a strange thing that so little should be known
in Great Britain about this curious branch of British literature. I
suppose that no other country in Europe can produce uneducated peasants,
fishers, and paupers, who sing heroic ballads as old as 1130 and 1520,
which have been orally preserved. Some fragments about Cuchullin, which
I have gathered can be traced in the Book of Leinster. Many ballads
which I have heard sung in the Scotch Isles were written by the Dean of
Lismore in 1520. By travelling to Tobermory, you may still hear Wm.
Robertson, a weaver there, tell the story of Cuchullin, and sing the
song of "Diarmaid," the "Burning of the Fenian Women," and many other
heroic ballads. I heard him sing them in 1872, when he said that he was
eighty-seven.--I am, yours very truly,