HARLES BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE,
BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS TO HER MAJESTY.

M.DCCC.LVI.

EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY,
PAUL'S WORK.

TO

JOHN BROWN, ESQ., OF MARLIE.

My dear Sir,

I dedicate to you this second volume of "THE MODERN SCOTTISH MINSTREL,"
as a sincere token of my estimation of your long continued and most
disinterested friendship, and of the anxiety you have so frequently
evinced respecting the promotion of my professional views and literary
aspirations.

I have the honour to be,
My dear Sir,
your most obliged,
and very faithful servant,
CHARLES ROGERS.

Argyle House, Stirling,
_December 1855._

INTRODUCTION

TO

The Modern Gaelic Minstrelsy.[1]

The suspicion which arose in regard to the authenticity of Ossian,
subsequent to his appearance in the pages of Macpherson, has unjustly
excited a misgiving respecting the entire poetry of the Gael. With
reference to the elder poetry of the Highlands, it has now been
established[2] that at the period of the Reformation, the natives were
engrossed with the lays and legends of Bards and Seanachies,[3] of which
Ossian, Caoillt, and Cuchullin were the heroes. These romantic strains
continued to be preserved and recited with singular veneration. They
were familiar to hundreds in different districts who regarded them as
relics of their ancestors, and would as soon have mingled the bones of
their fathers with the dust of strangers, as ventured on the alteration
of a single passage. Many of the reciters of this elder poetry were
writers of verses,[4] yet there is no instance of any attempt to alter
or supersede the originals. Nor could any attempt have succeeded. There
are specimens which exist, independent of those collected by Macpherson,
which present a peculiarity of form, and a Homeric consistency of
imagery, distinct from every other species of Gaelic poetry.

Of an uncertain era, but of a date posterior to the age of Ossian, there
is a class of compositions called _Ur-sgeula_,[5] or _new-tales_, which
may be termed the productions of the sub-Ossianic period. They are
largely blended with stories of dragons and other fabulous monsters; the
best of these compositions being romantic memorials of the
Hiberno-Celtic, or Celtic Scandinavian wars. The first translation from
the Gaelic was a legend of the _Ur-sgeula_. The translator was Ierome
Stone,[6] schoolmaster of Dunkeld,