separately or in collections, the most comprehensive being the volumes of the Ossianic Society, now in course of publication. The antiquity of some of these Fenian stories has been contested. The poems and tales in the first and second volumes are published from a collection made at Portlaw, in Waterford, in 1780, by Laurence Foran, a schoolmaster. Those of the third volume, including the "Flight of Grainne and Diarmaidh," are from the same source, and a manuscript of Martin Griffin of Kilrush, in Clare, re-written, in 1842-3, from copies made in 1749. The fourth volume is made up from the same sources, and MSS. collected by Rev. Thomas Hill, of Cooreclure, in 1812. Mr. O'Curry, as anxious for the literary glory of his country as man could be, acknowledged that there were only eleven genuine Ossianic poems in manuscripts earlier than the fifteenth century. So, from these circumstances, it might appear that the mutual objurgations of the Scotch and Irish antiquaries, consequent on the faux pas of James MacPherson, had much of a pot-andkettle character about them.

The Scottish literati not being able to number many ancient manuscripts in their branch of the Gaelic, and James MacPherson having taken the liberty to perpetrate a shameless forgery, some hot and ill-tempered scholars on our side of the water, forgetting the ties of blood and of kindred language, have nearly gone the length of saying that there were no ancient manuscript remains, or nearly none, to be found among the people speaking the Erse dialect of the Celtic, and, consequently, that the author of Fingal was altogether destitute of original materials from which to mould his two epics and his shorter prose poems. And now their literary antagonists beyond the Sea of Moyle make the retort uncourteous. Referring to the dates of the manuscripts used by the Ossianic Society (given above), they say :

"No information whatever is given as to the sources from whence these respectable collectors obtained their poems. They are

all posterior to the publication of 'Ossian's Poems,' by Macpherson, and so far as we are yet informed by the Irish editors, the Ossianic poems published by them, stand in no better position in regard to their antiquity or authenticity than those of Macpherson."+

Yet

Irish as we are, we can hardly pity the president and council of the Ossianic Society for any annoyance they may have experienced from this tu quoque buffet. They had at their disposal the T'ain Bo Cuailgne, the queen of Celtic stories, existing in a manuscript written before 1106 (The Leabhar na Uidhre). They also had the Agallamh na Seanorach (Dialogues of the Sages), in the book of Lismore-fourteenth century. they neglected these subjects which would leave no door open for cavil to enter at, and selected others, probably as ancient, but only to be found in MSS. of yesterday. They say, and probably with reason, that these popular tales and poems already published, have been always in the people's minds, and on their tongues, and that the manuscripts to which they were in succession intrusted, being in continual requisition at the winter's hearth, at the smith's forge, or on summer evenings under the large tree overshadowing the bawnoge, while read aloud to the crowd by schoolmaster or rustic Seanachy-could not, from constant turning over and thumbing, last as long as if carefully laid by on a library shelf. The consequence was, that they were worn out in succession, and frequent copies were made, mistakes creeping in, and ancient forms of spelling gradually modernized.

A still stronger argument for the remote antiquity of these inartificial legends, is afforded by the publication of the book quoted in the last note. James M'Gregor, whose ancestral home was Tullichmullin (Bald, broad mound), in the neighbourhood of Glenlyon, was Dean of Lismore (great earthen fort), an island in Loch Linnhé, in Argyle, from 1514 to 1551. He employed part of his leisure time in copying into a quarto volume of 311 pages, in the Roman current hand of

ence, and sang his extravagant songs, his successors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, or earlier, would be careful to mention the waterfall near our western coast by the name it bore in their day. Mr. Skene himself has furnished an additional reason why the cascade of Red Hugh could not be the one in Lochaber, as it is fifteen miles from the sea, and in the poem its vicinity to the ocean is plainly implied.

The death of Diarmaidh the Brown, by the boar of Ben Gulbin, in Sligo, related in the third volume of the Ossianic Transactions, is given in the Dean's book as sung by Allan Mac Rorie, a Highland bard; the hill on which the green-cropped pig destroyed him bearing the same name, but lying in Perthshire. Mr. Skene concludes from this, and the circumstance of several hills, and glens, and streams in the Highlands being pointed out as the scenes of Fenian adventure, that "Scotland possessed Fenian legends and Ossianic poetry, derived from an independent source, and a Fenian topography equally genuine" with that of Ireland. We are sure that if our esteemed Seanachie considers the matter attentively, he will see the improbability of two neighbouring peoples, who used the same language and were originally of the same stock, inventing, independently of each other, legends of the same character, filled with heroes of the same names, and dispositions, and relationship to each other, and these same heroes furnished with two sets of scenery, bearing identical names in both countries. It would be a strictly analogous case if the Dublins, and Londons, and Richmonds, and Bostons of the New World, were named by the founders without memory of, or reference to, the lovingly remembered localities of the same names in England and Ireland. No; there was but one set of mythical heroes, which the Scots of Eirinn and Alba equally reverenced and cherished; and we, the little descendants of the brave old races, cannot afford to have them weakened and divided. In the half-English county of Wexford, near Mount Leinster, there is a hill called Cullach Diarmaid (Diarmaid's boar), yet no Wexfordian claims the hero with the beauty spot as a fellow-countryman, or pretends that he met his death on that

VOL. LXIII.-NO. CCCLXXIII.

ridge. If the great Mac Callum Mohr, of Argyle, and Mac Dermot, Prince of Coolavin, in Sligo, contend for the honour of being the descendant of the Brown Diarmaid, they may do so with our entire consent.

The same Allan Mac Rorie follows with an account of the battle of Gavra, in Meath, and the death of Osgur, son of Oisin, in the same fight. He and the author of a poem on the same subject, in Vol. I. of Ossianic Transactions (see UNIVERSITY for November last), appear to have copied some older poem, as the images and expressions in many parts of the composition are identical.

One of the most interesting of the poems (some parts evidently defective), attributed to Caoilté Mac Ronan, relates his own adventures in an attempt to rescue his chief, Fionn, from the hands of Cormac, King of Ireland. To effect this, he was obliged to bring to Teamhor a couple of all the different animals in Ireland, e.g., "Two otters from the Boyne;

Two wild ducks from Lough Sheelin;
Two crows from Slieve Guillin;
Two gulls from the strand of Lough Lee;
Two cormorants from Dublin;
Two grey mice from Limerick."

But to see full justice done to this curious subject, embracing the Fauna of ancient Ireland, let the inquisitive refer to a paper in this Magazine for March, 1854, with notes by Dr. Wilde, and translation by the lamented Eugene Curry.

It is not easy to form a clear idea of the difficulties encountered by the Rev. Mr. M'Lauchlan, in his part of the joint work. The Dean, as we have explained, wrote down the pieces in a style as strange to the eyes of a Gaelic scholar, as a volume of the Fonetic Nuz to a reader of Macaulay's England; and to make the matter worse he was not even consistent in his strange orthography.

Then the leaves were in many places much injured, the ink nearly obliterated, and the handwriting most difficult to decipher. He has given on the left-hand page an exact copy of the Dean's labours, in its wild spelling and no punctuation; on the right-hand page the subject in correct and pointed Gaelic orthography; and in another part of the volume a nearly literal translation; but we would have

7

preferred finding no attempt at all at rhythm in this department.

There was no attempt whatever on the part of the brave old Dean, who we hope (for reasons given in the introduction), was not in priest's orders, to remove the action of any legend from its natural place in the old country, or to disfigure the names of the localities. Almhain, Fionn's palace in Kildare, Ben Hedur (Howth), Dundalgin (Dundalk), figure in perfect freedom, and the translator and the editor act in the same honourable and scrupulous spirit.

However, Mr. Skene has not held the scales in which the literary merits of the two kindred families are weighed, as steadily as a good Christian scholar ought. He says that it is part of Irish history that, after the battle of Gavra, fought in the end of the third century, and in which Osgur and most of the Feinné were slain, Oisin and Caoilté survived to the middle of the fifth, and held conferences with St. Patrick. Now of all the Ossianic heroes, one only, Fionn Mac Cumhail, is mentioned by any Irish historian of credit; and, as respects him, the notice is restricted to his era, his rank, and the date of his death, 285. Oisin, Osgur, Caoilté, Diarmaid, and Goll, are in all likelihood, creatures of the imagination of Christian poets and romancers. In order to provide machinery for the commencement of their legends, they represented Oisin as having been carried to the Celtic Elysium under the Atlantic, immediately after the fatal fight of Gavra, and kept there till the arrival of St. Patrick in 432. And all this trouble was incurred, that the saint and he might be set a-talking, with the result of his losing his temper at finding the old heroes undervalued by the peaceful man of the Books and Psalter. Then the prudent saint, in order to restore him to goodhumour, would request him to relate some exploits of the Fenians in such or such a locality. He would comply, and having worked himself into a state of fanatical ecstasy, and come to the end of his story, would all at

once become conscious of his present desolation, and end the conference with a wild burst of lamentation.

Tighernach, a monk of the twelfth century, who has left us a chronicle as trustworthy and as dry as an almanac, informs us that all accounts of Irish matters previous to the reign of Cimbaoth, in the seventh century (B.C.), were unworthy of credit. We certainly prefer his guidance in the examination of true and false chronicles of days comparatively near his time to that of Mr. Skene, when he observes that, "prior to the year 483, the Irish have, strictly speaking, no chronological history.

Let us return to our manuscript. Mr. Skene is unable to tell how it was preserved till some time in last century, when it came into the possession of the Highland Society of London. This body presented it to the Highland Society of Scotland, and it is now safe in the Advocate's library.

Consequent on the excitement caused by the publication of MacPherson's Ossian, in 1762 and 1763, collections began to be made of Erse poems and stories. Duncan Kennedy, a schoolmaster, made his gatherings in 1778, 1780, from oral recitation; and Dr. Smith published his Sean Dana (old poems) in 1787. Through Mr. Skene's exertions, several manuscripts in the possession of the Highland Society, and private persons, have been given up to the custody of the Advocates, whose library now guards them to the number of sixtyfive.

We cannot better close this sketch than by referring to the causes of the close affinity between the Irish and Highlanders. Our early chroniclers relate that a party of Picts, under the command of Cathluan, (hence Caledonia), finding Erinn in their way from Greece, thence migrated to Alban-land, taking several Irish (Scotic rather) ladies with them as wives, and entering into strict alliance with their new relations by marriage. This occurred several hundred years before the dawn of undoubted history in Europe, and may be true,