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No. XVII.

The Poet of the Western Isles

When blind, and old!

BUCKE.

THAT the evidence for the authenticity of the Poems of OSSIAN has been, for the last sixteen years, much upon the increase, will be denied by no one who has read the Report of the Highland Society on these poems, and the Dissertations on their authenticity by Sir John Sinclair and Dr. Graham, published in the years 1805, 1806, and 1807; and who has since attentively watched their influence over the public mind.*

The account which Sir John Sinclair has given of the Manuscript of Ossian, formerly belonging to Mr. Farquharson, of the Scotch College at Douay, is with me, and, I think, must be with every unprejudiced person, decisive proof of the authenticity of these long-questioned poems. See his Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, from page 11. to p. 58.

It is owing to this augmenting reliance on the data adduced in support of the antiquity of the works of Ossian, coupled with the strong proofs which have been brought forward, of the uninterrupted preservation of the Celtic poetry, by oral tradition, that the attention of many has been lately more than ever turned towards the resemblances, literary and personal, which exist between the Celtic and the Grecian Homer. The subject is both curious and interesting; but it is here introduced chiefly as it attaches to the latter class of these resemblances, and more particularly to that part of them which relates to the blindness of the Highland bard.

That an Order of Bards existed among the Celtic nations from the most remote antiquity, there is an abundance of testimony, and of the most unexceptionable kind, to prove, and which has been collected with singular industry by the celebrated Pelloutier ; * and that, as must almost necessarily have followed, they also existed among those tribes of Celts who inhabited the Northern and Western parts of Scotland, evi

* Hist. des Celtes, 2 vols. 4to. edition, 1771. Vol. i. pp. 12.

100. 115. 184. 188.

dence equally strong and satisfactory has been furnished to us by the best and earliest historians of that part of our island. Thus Buchanan declares, that in his time the name and functions of the bards still remained wherever the old British tongue was spoken, and that, particularly in the Western Islands, the inhabitants "sing poems, not inelegant, containing commonly the eulogies of valiant men; and their bards usually treat of no other subject ;" and Johnston, in the preface to his History of Scotland, speaking of the ancient poetry of his country, says, "although it is well known that the Scots had always more strength and industry to perform great deeds, than care to have them published to the world; yet, in ancient times, they had, and held in great esteem, their own Homers and Maros, whom they named bards. These recited the achievements of their brave warriors in heroic measures, adapted to the musical notes of the harp; with these they roused the minds of those present to the glory

* "Accinunt autem carmen non inconcinnè factum, quod ferè laudes fortium virorum contineat; nec aliud ferè argumentum eorum Bardi tractant."

of virtue, and transmitted patterns of fortitude to posterity. This order of men do still exist among the Welsh and ancient Scots, (the Highlanders), and they still retain that name (of bards) in their native language."

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It appears, indeed, from the researches of the most able antiquaries, that an order of Bards has existed in the Highlands of Scotland from a very remote era; that these bards, on the extinction of the Druids in Scotland about the third century, succeeded to many of their rights and privileges, and that they continued as a distinct class of men, and in uninterrupted succession, until A. D. 1726, when Nial Macvurich, the last of the bards, and whose an

"Quamvis intelligunt omnes plus semper virium et industriæ Scotis fuisse ad res agendas, quam commentationis ad prædicandas, habuerunt tamen antiquitus, et coluerunt suos Homeros et Marones, quos Bardos nominabant. Hi fortium virorum facta versibus heroicis et lyræ modulis aptata concinebant; quibus et præsentium animos acuebant ad virtutis gloriam, et fortitudinis exempla ad posteros transmittebant. Cujusmodi apud Cambros et priscos Scotos nec dum desiêre ; et nomen illud patrio sermone adhuc retinent."

Vide Sinclair's Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, pp. 18, 19, and 20. where the translations given in the text are to be found.

cestors had, for several generations, exercised that office in the Clanranald family, died.

It is the express and uniform voice of tradition also, that this revolution, which devolved many of the functions of the Druids on the previously subordinate class of bards, was brought about through the agency of the race of Fingal *, a circumstance which sufficiently accounts for the silence of Ossian as to the Druidic rites.

That Fingal fought and Ossian sung can no longer, in short, from the weight of testimony which has been accumulated on their behalf, be disputed as facts; and that the latter was among the Celtic tribes, and to a very striking degree of similitude, what Homer is known to have been among the Grecian, is a further circumstance over which there now rests little doubt, and which gives to the poetry of the Scottish bard a peculiar degree of interest and effect.

The numerous coincidencies, indeed, which exist between them are truly remarkable. They appear to have addressed their poetry to a very similar state of society; to have been held in

* Vide Graham's Essay on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, p. 395, and Dr. Smith's Seandana, p. 223 and 245.

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