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Conan House, Dingwall, September, 1875.
MY DEAR PROFESSOR BLACKIE,--In the last number of _The Gael_ I find a
translation by you from a German essay, and a quotation from a German
writer who calls Macpherson's Ossian "the most magnificent mystification
of modern times." The mists which surround this question need the light
of knowledge to shine from the sitter on that rising Gaelic chair which
you have done so much to uplift. In the meantime let me tell you three
facts. On the 9th December 1872, I found out that Jerome Stone's Gaelic
collection had been purchased by Mr Laing of the Signet Library, and
that he had lent the manuscript to Mr Clerk of Kilmallie. On the 25th
November 1872, I found a list of contents and three of the songs in the
Advocates' Library, but too late to print them. The learned German
relied on Stone's missing manuscript as proof of the antiquity of
Macpherson's Ossian, because it was of older date. It contains versions
of ten heroic ballads, of which I had printed many versions in "Leabhar
na Feinne." There is not one line of the Gaelic printed in 1807 in
those songs which I found. I presume that Mr Clerk would have quoted
Stone's collection made in 1755 if he had found anything there to
support his view, which is that Ossian's poems are authentic. Stone's
translation is a florid English composition, founded upon the simple old
Gaelic ballad which still survives traditionally. I got the old music
from Mrs Mactavish at Knock, in Mull, last month. She learned it from a
servant in Lorn, who sung to her when she was a girl.
2d, The essayist relied upon a lost manuscript which was named "A Bolg
Solair" (the great treasure.) That designation seems to be a version of
a name commonly given by collectors of Scotch and Irish popular lore to
their manuscripts. The name seems rather to mean "rubbish bag." The idea
was probably taken from the wallet of the wandering minstrel of the last
century who sang for his supper. A very great number of paper manuscripts
of this kind are in Dublin and in the British Museum. I own two; but not
one of these, so far as I have been able to discover, contains a line of
the Gaelic Ossian printed in 1807, which one learned German believed to be
old and the other a mystification.
3d, The essayist relies upon the "Red Book." In 1873 Admiral Macdonald
sent me the book, which he had recovered. Mr Standish O'Grady helped me
to read it, and translated a great part of it in June and July 1874 in
my house. It is a paper manuscript which does not contain one line of
Macpherson's Ossian. It does contain Gaelic poems by known authors, of
which copies are in other manuscripts preserved in Ireland. I do not
question the merits of Ossian's poems. Readers can judge. They are
Scotch compositions, for the English is Macpherson's, and the Gaelic is
Scotch vernacular. A glance at old Gaelic, of which many samples are
printed in late numbers of the Parisian _Revue Celtique_, ought to
convince any reader of Ossian that modern Scotch vernacular Gaelic
cannot possibly represent the language of St Patrick's time. I have
hunted popular lore for many years, and I have published five volumes. I
have gathered twenty-one thick foolscap volumes of manuscript. I have
had able collectors at work in Scotland; I had the willing aid of
Stokes, Hennessy, Standish O'Grady, Crowe, and other excellent Irish
scholars in ransacking piles of Gaelic manuscripts in Dublin, London,
Edinburgh, and elsewhere. I could never find an uneducated Highlander
who could repeat any notable part of the Gaelic poems which were
circulated gratis soon after 1807. Nobody ever has found one line of
these poems in any known writing older than James Macpherson. I agree
with many speakers of Scotch Gaelic who have studied this question. We
hold that the Gaelic Ossian of 1807 is, on the face of it, a manifest
translation from English; and that the English was founded upon an
imperfect acquaintance with genuine old Scotch Gaelic ballads. These are
still commonly sung. They are founded upon the mythical history which
still is traditionally known all over Scotland and Ireland. It was old
when Keating wrote; it was old when the Book of Leinster was written
about 1130. It really is a strange thing that so little should be known
in Great Britain about this curious branch of British literature. I
suppose that no other country in Europe can produce uneducated peasants,
fishers, and paupers, who sing heroic ballads as old as 1130 and 1520,
which have been orally preserved. Some fragments about Cuchullin, which
I have gathered can be traced in the Book of Leinster. Many ballads
which I have heard sung in the Scotch Isles were written by the Dean of
Lismore in 1520. By travelling to Tobermory, you may still hear Wm.
Robertson, a weaver there, tell the story of Cuchullin, and sing the
song of "Diarmaid," the "Burning of the Fenian Women," and many other
heroic ballads. I heard him sing them in 1872, when he said that he was
eighty-seven.--I am, yours very truly,