James Macpherson

“ He stood on the hill like an oak; his voice was like the streams of the hill. Why reigneth alone, he cries, the son of the mighty Corval? Fingal is not strong to save: he is no support for the people. I am strong as a storm in the ocean; as a whirlwind on the hill. Yield, son of Corval; Fingal, yield to me. Oscur stood forth to meet him; my son would meet the foe. But Fingal came in his strength, and smiled at the vaunter's boast. They threw their arms round each other; they struggled on the plain. The earth is ploughed with their heels. ”

“ He falls like an oak on the plain; like a rock from the shaggy hill. What shall she do, hapless maid!—He bleeds; her Connal dies. All the night long she cries, and all the day, O Connal, my love, and my friend! With grief the sad mourner died. Earth here incloseth the loveliest pair on the hill. The grass grows between the stones of their tomb; I sit in the mournful shade. The wind sighs through the grass; and their memory rushes on my mind. Undisturbed you now sleep together; in the tomb of the mountain you rest alone. VI Son of the noble Fingal, Oscian, Prince of men! ”

“ One day, returned from the sport of the mountains, from pursuing the sons of the hill, we covered this heath with our youth. Fingal the mighty was here, and Oscur, my son, great in war. Fair on our sight from the sea, at once, a virgin came. Her breast was like the snow of one night. Her cheek like the bud of the rose. Mild was her blue rolling eye: but sorrow was big in her heart. Fingal renowned in war! she cries, sons of the king, preserve me! Speak secure, replies the king, daughter of beauty, speak: our ear is open to all: our swords redress the injured. ”

“ Can I, replies the King, can I deny the lovely daughter of the hill? take thy brother, O Minvane, thou fairer than the snow of the north! Such, Fingal! were thy words; but thy words I hear no more. Sightless I sit by thy tomb. I hear the wind in the wood; but no more I hear my friends. The cry of the hunter is over. The voice of war is ceased. IX Thou askest, fair daughter of the isles! whose memory is preserved in these tombs? The memory of Ronnan the bold, and Connan the chief of men; and of her, the fairest of maids, Rivine the lovely and the good. The wing of time is laden with care. ”

“ But her soul cleaveth unto thee; and nothing can heal Dermid. Here, pierce this bosom, Oscur; relieve me, my friend, with thy sword. My sword, son of Morny, shall never be stained with the blood of Dermid. Who then is worthy to slay me, O Oscur son of Oscian? Let not my life pass away unknown. Let none but Oscur slay me. Send me with honour to the grave, and let my death be renowned. Dermid, make use of thy sword; son of Moray, wield thy steel. ”

“ Dark waves roll over the heath. The lake is troubled below. The deer descend from the hill. No hunter at a distance is seen; no whistling cow-herd is nigh. It is mid-day: but all is silent. Sad are my thoughts as I sit alone. Didst thou but appear, O my love, a wanderer on the heath! thy hair floating on the wind behind thee; thy bosom heaving on the sight; thine eyes full of tears for thy friends, whom the mist of the hill had concealed! Thee I would comfort, my love, and bring thee to thy father's house. But is it she that there appears, like a beam of light on the heath? ”

“ My life flieth away like a dream: why should I stay behind? Here shall I rest with my friends by the stream of the founding rock. When night comes on the hill: when the wind is up on the heath; my ghost shall stand in the wind, and mourn the death of my friends. The hunter shall hear from his booth. ”

“ When we have to remind ourselves that a work of art was revolutionary in its day, we can be sure that we are dealing with something closer to cultural artifact than to art, and it must be granted that this is true of Macpherson's work; nevertheless, the fact that Ossian aroused the interest of major men of letters for fifty years is suggestive of his importance as an innovator. ”

“ Lamderg, he cried, most dreadful of men! fight, or yield to Ullin. Lamderg, replied Gealchoffa, Lamderg is not here: he fights the hairy Ulfadha; mighty man, he is not here. But Lamderg never yields; he will fight the son of Carbre. Lovely art thou, O daughter of Tuathal-Teachvar! said Ullin. ”

“ Part of the appeal of the Fragments was obviously based on the presumption that they were, as Blair hastened to assure the reader, "genuine remains of ancient Scottish poetry," and therefore provided a remarkable insight into a remote, primitive culture; here were maidens and warriors who lived in antiquity on the harsh, wind-swept wastes of the Highlands, but they were capable of highly refined and sensitive expressions of grief—they were the noblest savages of them all. ”

“ There is some justice in Macpherson's wry assertion that "those who have doubted my veracity have paid a compliment to my genius."11 By examining briefly the distinctive form of the "Fragments," their diction, their setting, their tone, and their structure, we may sense something of the qualities of the poems that made them attractive to such men as Gray, Byron, and Hazlitt. ”

“ Recently someone asked me how I like Ossian!"16
That Macpherson chose to call his poems "fragments" is indicative of another quality that made them unusual in their day. The poems have a spontaneity that is suggested by the fact that the poets seem to be creating their songs as the direct reflection of an emotional experience. In contrast to the image of the poet as the orderer, the craftsman, the poets of the Fragments have a kind of artlessness (to us a very studied one, to be sure) that gave them an aura of sincerity and honesty. ”

“ Concerning this hero innumerable traditions remain, to this day, in the Highlands of Scotland. The story of Oscian, his son, is so generally known, that to describe one in whom the race of a great family ends, it has passed into a proverb; "Oscian the last of the heroes."
There can be no doubt that these poems are to be ascribed to the Bards; a race of men well known to have continued throughout many ages in Ireland and the north of Scotland. Every chief or great man had in his family a Bard or poet, whose office it was to record in verse, the illustrious actions of that family. ”

“ Nothing was held by the ancient Highlanders more essential to their glory, than to die by the hand of some person worthy or renowned. This was the occasion of Oscur's contriving to be slain by his mistress, now that he was weary of life. In those early times suicide was utterly unknown among that people, and no traces of it are found in the old poetry. Whence the translator suspects the account that follows of the daughter of Dargo killing herself, to be the interpolation of some later Bard. ”

“ Ghosts are habitually present in the poems, and Macpherson is able to present them convincingly because they are described by a poet who treats them as though they were part of his and his audience's habitual experience. The supernatural world is so familiar, in fact, that it can be used to describe the natural; thus Minvane in "Fragment VII" is called as fair "as the spirits of the hill when at silent noon they glide along the heath." ”

“ "From a singular coincidence of circumstances, it was in this house, where I now write, that I first read the poems in my early youth, with an ardent credulity that remained unshaken for many years of my life; and with a pleasure to which even the triumphant satisfaction of detecting the imposture is comparatively nothing. The enthusiasm with which I read and studied the poems, enabled me afterwards, when my suspicions were once awakened, to trace and expose the deception with greater success. ”

“ It was John Home, famous on both sides of the Tweed as the author of Douglas, who first encouraged Macpherson to undertake his translations. While taking the waters at Moffat in the fall of 1759, he was pleased to meet a young Highland tutor, who was not only familiar with ancient Gaelic poetry but who had in his possession several such poems. Home, like nearly all of the Edinburgh literati, knew no Gaelic and asked Macpherson to translate one of them. ”

“ Robertson, fresh from the considerable success of his two volume History of Scotland (1759) ; Robert Fergusson, recently appointed professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh; Lord Elibank, a learned aristocrat, who had been patron to Home and Robertson; and Hugh Blair, famous for the sermons that he delivered as rector of the High Church of St. Giles. Home was gratified that these men were "no less pleased" with Macpherson's work than he had been. ”