Ossianic poetry

“ And than Ossian himself, the last of his race, answering the plaints of the wilderness, the plover's shriek, the hiss of the homeless stream, the bee in the heather bloom, the rustle of the birch above his head, the roar of the cataract behind, in a voice of kindred freedom and kindred melancholy, conversing less with the little men around him than with the giant spirits of his fathers, we have few finer figures in the whole compass of poetry. ”

“ The "dry light" of truth and certainty for which everybody is toiling and labouring in art, religion, philosophy, and literature, is concealed by more than the darkness of printers' types in mere verbal criticism—the most popular, but perhaps the most pernicious habit of the day. The form of the poetry in Ossian, apart from all its spirit and substance, has long been analysed, investigated, discussed, destroyed, and built up again; yielding all the fruit it seems likely ever to yield, more doubt and more discussion ”

“ My own guess would be that these weather-beaten stones, like those others on the hill beside Lough Gill, antedate Ossian by at least two thousand years. But that is an unimportant detail; and it may be, indeed, that when the great singer died, his comrades could think of no more fitting place to lay him than within the guardian circle of this monument of an older race, looking down across the valley and out toward the sea.
Fact and fancy have been so mingled in the Ossianic legend that it is impossible to disentangle them, nor is it profitable to try. ”

“ The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any greater distinctness or variety of imagery. And if, indeed, Fingal lived and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. ”

“ OSSIAN AND THE CLYDE, FINGAL IN IRELAND, OSCAR IN ICELAND, OR OSSIAN HISTORICAL AND AUTHENTIC, by P. Hately Waddell, LL.D., Minister of the Gospel, Editor and Biographer of Robert Burns, Translator of the Psalms into Scottish, &c. Glasgow: James Maclehose, Publisher to the University, 1875.
We cannot, after careful study of this book, assign to it any but the first place in Ossianic literature. In style of composition it is pure, dignified and eloquent; in substance and matter it surpasses beyond reach of comparison any book hitherto written on the same subject. ”

“ The publications of the Ossianic Society have done much to make the history of the heroic period familiar to modern readers. More than one of our Irish poets, [21] too, have, with the quick ear of genius, caught up the faint echo of Ossian’s song, and once more attuned the harp of Erin to the thrilling melodies of her heroic youth. Once more the Fenian heroes begin to tread the hills of fame, and the spirit of Ossian’s vanished muse, like the quickening breath of spring, is felt over all the land. ”

“ When the world is dark with tempests; when thunder rolls, and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds; careless of the voice of the morning. Exult thee, O sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely. ”

“ Edelstan. ...
Ryno. ... Gesegneter, wenn ich mich dir ein Bote des Friedens genaht hätte, würdig erfunden, den getrennten Stamm einer Eiche wieder aufzurichten, dass er noch einmal umherschaue, wie er vormals stand, sein tausendastiges Haupt weit umher verbreitend von Selma’s Halle bis zur Halle Runa’s, von Inisthona’s wogigem Strande bis über Morven’s fernher rauschende Thale!” [171]
How characteristically a bit of Ossianic history is told here and how faithfully the language of the poems of Ossian is copied! ”

“ Yet, to show how fearlessly we adopt our theory, we shall here state a circumstance appearing to establish a genuine Ossianic tradition of no common interest, which we wonder never to have seen introduced in the controversy. ”

“ In the Ossianic Cycle, broadly speaking, this is not so. The nobler vein of literature seems to have been exhausted, and we have now beauty for the sake of beauty, romance for the sake of romance, horror or mystery for the sake of the excitement they arouse. The Ossianic tales are, at their best ”

“ There may long be those who doubt the existence of Ossian; but none will deny that in these pages are to be found passages unsurpassed in majesty and hardly equalled in tenderness. What could there be more full of pathos than Ossian's frequent address to Malvina, the betrothed of his dead son Oscar, and the companion of his own old age? And what in literature is nobler than the bard's apostrophe to the splendours of heaven, or his lament at the tombs of heroes?—"Weep, thou father of Morar! weep; but thy son heareth thee not. Deep is the sleep of the dead; low their pillow of dust. ”

“ We should by the means of such a person have a great many monuments of genius brought to light, that are now mouldering away with age, and a great many passages in history illustrated and confirmed that are now dark and dubious. Whole poems of great length and merit might be retrieved, not inferior, perhaps, to Ossian’s productions, if indeed those extraordinary poems are of so ancient date, as his translator avers them to be. ”

“ But must all true poetry necessarily create imitation, and a school of imitators? One sees no reason why it must. Besides, the life which the poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly passed away; and the poetry itself, good, bad, or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imitate it at all you must almost transcribe it. That, for a good many years, was often done, but naturally inspired any other feeling than delight or admiration. But the simple question is, Do the poems of Ossian delight greatly and widely? We think they do. ”

“ Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in the minds of his readers. As Homer is the first vigour and lustihed, Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection and regret of the past. There is one impression which he conveys more entirely than all other poets, namely, the sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of good name, of country—he is even without God in the world. ”

“ The poems of Ossian were assigned to a ‘natural genius,’ whom men of unquestioned literary sagacity placed next to and even above Homer. Now they are almost forgotten, and their interest lies mainly in the influence they exerted upon some of the greatest minds of the 18th century.
It was in the year 1760 [15] that James Macpherson, a Scotch youth of twenty–four, [16] published in Edinburgh some Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Gallic or Erse Language. ”

“ The grandeur of the similes is another feature which characterizes great poetry. Ossian seems to speak a gigantic and universal language. The images and pictures occupy even much space in the landscape, as if they could be seen only from the sides of mountains, and plains with a wide horizon, or across arms of the sea. The machinery is so massive that it cannot be less than natural. ”

“ I have been enjoying since you left me, the most exquisite entertainment, in the perusal of the noble works of Ossian, the greatest poet, in my opinion, that ever composed, and who exceeds Homer, Virgil, and Milton. He transports us by the grandeur of his sublime, or by some sudden start of tenderness he melts us into distress: Who can read, without the warmest emotions, the pathetic complaints of the venerable old bard, when he laments his blindness, and the death of his friends? ”

“ Mr. Alexander Macdonald, in a volume on the subject published at Liverpool in 1805, sufficiently met Laing's sweeping assertions and unhesitating inferences. And the "dissertations" of Dr. Blair, Dr. Graham, Sir John Sinclair, and many others, offered abundant argument supporting the authenticity of the Ossianic poems.
The alternative objection urged both by Johnson and Hume against the bona-fide character of Macpherson's translations, was that the human memory is incapable of retaining compositions of such length. ”

“ Clearly he learnt something from England, but what he learnt was mainly encouragement to express more directly sentiments which he had learnt from nobody outside of himself. We might rather say that he assimilated just what was cosmopolitan in the English movement, and rejected whatever was really national. A curious illustration of the same process might be found in the singular popularity of Ossian. The Ossianic enthusiasm is one of the most remarkable of literary phenomena. Goethe admired Ossian ”

“ And these grand characteristics of true poetry, as laid down by Weisse, Ossian certainly possessed. The form in which the poems came out approached closely to what was then regarded as constituting the language of nature. His sentiments were surely ennobling. His descriptions, while their monotony would soon tire a reader of to–day, interested and charmed by reason of their novelty, and while sufficient play was left for the imagination, no one could complain of failure to touch the heart ”

“ The figurative parts of Ossian are like Isaiah and the Psalms,—the same use is made of gaunt Nature. He uses but few and simple images; but they are drawn from such objects as are familiar to men in all ages. To the poet who can use them greatly in his song, and make them convey his thoughts, the elements and stars seem to be nearer and more friendly. And other men involuntarily relinquish to him somewhat of their claim on Nature. The sun and the sea and the mists are his more than ours. ”

“ Further along in the monolog, Ugolino says: “Doch der grosse Morgen wird ja kommen! schrecklich, dunkelroth und schwül von Gewittern wird er ja kommen! In seinem schwarzen Strahle will ich erlöschen! In seiner gebärenden Wolke soll, wie Feuer vom Himmel, mein Geist über Pisa stehn!” [160] This picture is as Ossianic as it can be. The ghosts of Ossian sit upon their clouds; they ride on beams of fire, and are compared to meteors of fire or to a terrible light. ”

“ We still meet with an occasional translation and imitation, to be sure, but they are of little weight when compared with the hold the Ossianic craze once had on the German people. Ossian came generally to have more interest for the philologist than for the man of letters. More than one critic no longer concealed his doubts of the authenticity, until finally Mrs. Robinson’s (Talvj’s) work upon the non–genuineness of the poems was published (1840) , which treatise marks the turning–point in German Ossian criticism. ”

“ In Karl Mastalier’s (1731–95) “Ode auf den Freyherrn von Laudon,” we have Ossian’s ‘trembling harp’ several times. [332] “Das Nationaltheater” shows traces of Ossian’s influence in the bardic paraphernalia and the imagery. The moon is termed the ‘daughter of the silent night.’ [333] On the whole, Mastalier’s poems were but little influenced by Ossian, and there is nothing that distinguishes his poetry particularly from the usual run of bardic productions. ”

“ The elegiac poet seeks nature, but nature as an idea, and in a degree of perfection that it has never reached in reality, although he weeps over this perfection as something that has existed and is now lost. When Ossian speaks to us of the days that are no more, and of the heroes that have disappeared, his imagination has long since transformed these pictures represented to him by his memory into a pure ideal, and changed these heroes into gods. ”

“ Such is the picture we have of Ossian and his life in some of the Irish ballads. There is no resemblance between this poetry and that which Macpherson has given us. Oisin an Tirna-h-Oige is the production of a writer who lived not many centuries ago. It is certainly much more modern than even the Oisian of the older ballads, in which dialogues between the saint and the poet occur. ”

“ These, however, do not add materially to the poems preserved by Macpherson, and it is therefore probable that his collection presents with fair completeness the best of Ossian's works.
The value of the Ossianic remains for the purposes of history depends very much upon the possibility of fixing the date of their composition. The translator and editors of the poems, therefore, have sought to make this clear.
The manners described in the poems themselves point to a very early state of society. The heroes of Ossian lived by the chase, and had not yet learned the art of tilling the soil. ”

“ In other respects the student is left in the lurch just where he requires the expert editor's guidance. Thus, p. 522, Mr. O'Grady quotes as follows respecting Ossian: "Blae Dherg from the rushing Banba, the formidable Ossian's mother. In a doe's shape she used to come and join the outlawed band; and thus it was that Ossian was begotten upon Blae Dherg disguised as a doe, LL. 164, marg. sup." It is evident that the value of this passage for the criticism of the Ossianic romance generally depends largely upon its date. ”

“ The race of daring Trenmor are not the dark in soul. Thou shalt not wander, by streams unknown, blue-eyed Oina-morul! Within this bosom is a voice; it comes not to other ears: it bids Ossian hear the hapless, in their hour of woe. Retire, soft singer by night! Ton-thormod shall not mourn on his rock!"
With morning I loosed the king. I gave the long-haired maid. Mal-orchol heard my words, in the midst of his echoing halls. "King of Fuärfed wild, why should Ton-thormod mourn? He is of the race of heroes, and a flame in war. Your fathers have been foes, but now their dim ghosts rejoice in death. ”