IN controversy about Ossian, the man on the affirmative side has an
immeasurable advantage over all others; and, with an average practical
acquaintance with the subject, may exhaust any antagonist. The contents,
the connection, and the details; the origin, the tradition, the
translation; the poetry, the sentiment, the style; the history, the
characters, the _dramatis personæ_; the aspects of nature represented,
the customs and manners of the people; the conflicting nationalities
introduced, the eventful issues, the romantic incidents; the probable
scenes, the subsequent changes; the philosophy and the facts, and
multiplied revelations of humanity--all these, and many more such themes
inseparably connected with Ossian, if a man rightly understands and
believes in them, would enable him to maintain his position in actual
controversy, with integrity and ease, for a twelvemonth. The man, on the
other hand, who does not believe in the authenticity of Ossian must
forego all these advantages in succession, and will reduce himself to
straits in an hour. He dare not expatiate or admire, or love, or
eulogise, or trust, or credit, or contemplate, or sympathise with
anything; or admit a fact, or listen to a word, or look at an argument,
on the peril of immediate discomfiture. He must simply shut the book.
His only stronghold is denial; his sole logic is assertion; his best
rhetoric is abuse; his _ultima ratio_ is to create distrust, and to
involve both himself and everybody else in confusion. Genius, for
example, he declares without hesitation to be trickery; poetry to be
bombast; pathos, monotonous moaning; the tenderest human love to be
sham; the most interesting natural incidents, contemptible inventions;
the plainest statistical information, a deliberate act of theft; the
sublimest conceptions of human character, a fudge; the details of human
history for three hundred years, a melodramatic, incredible fiction; and
what cannot now be found anywhere else recorded, a dream; accidental
coincidence he speaks of as detected dishonesty; imaginary resemblance,
as guilty adaptation; a style suitable to the subject, as plagiarism;
occasional inspiration he calls a lie; translation, a forgery; and the
whole, if not a "magnificent mystification," then, in Procurator-Fiscal
phrase, a "wilful falsehood, fraud, and imposition." But all this,
without proof--and nothing like proof is ever advanced--may be said in
an hour, and the argument would remain as it is. Such, in point of fact,
has been the sum total of assault, reiterated by every new antagonist
with increasing boldness for a century, till reasonable readers have
become callous to it, and only ignorant or prejudiced listeners are
impressed. To be "hopelessly convinced" by it, is perhaps the latest
phase of incredulity; to be edified or enlightened by it is impossible.
But, besides the advantage of being able to speak with freedom of an
author like Ossian, from any natural point of view, an almost infinitely
higher advantage still is to be obtained by actually verifying his text;
by realising his descriptions, ascertaining his alleged facts, and
localising the scenes of his narrative. Whatever is truly grand in
Ossian may thus be identified with nature, if it has a counterpart
there; and what seems only an imaginary outline at first may be filled
up and fixed for ever as among her own still extant properties. A new
sense, coherent and intelligible, may thus be imparted to the most
familiar figures; and not an allusion to earth or sky, to rock or river,
will be lost after such a process. Nay, a certain philosophic
significance, amounting to scientific revelation, may be honestly
associated with some of his loftiest figures; and what the translator
himself apologises for as extravagant, may be thus converted into
dreamful intuitions of hidden fact and poetic forecasting of future
discoveries. Mr Arnold, in his _Celtic Literature_, seems to glance at
such a capacity in Celtic man--"His sensibility gives him a peculiarly
near and intimate feeling of nature, and the life of nature; here, too,
he seems in a special way attracted by the secret before him, the secret
of natural beauty and natural magic, and to be close to it, to
half-divine it," p. 108. But Mr Arnold does not seem to include in this
capacity the intuitions of natural science, at least not for Ossian; yet
nothing can be more certain than that Ossian and his fellow-countrymen
enjoyed them.
That verification to such an extent, however, both of facts and
localities, and ideas--philosophic or imaginative, in the text of
Ossian, was possible, has scarcely hitherto been believed by any one; it
has certainly never been attempted. A sort of vagueness in many of his
descriptions ill-understood, and a similarity in poetic figures that
might be indiscriminately applied; and an occasional apparent conflict
or confusion of details seem to have deterred almost all readers from
the study we now recommend. But all these difficulties, of verification
and interpretation alike, are only on the surface; and not even there,
if it has been looked at attentively. Let any intelligent reader, with
the poems which refer to Scotland in his hand, survey the Clyde, the
Kelvin, and the Carron, and trace the still remaining footsteps of
nature and of civilization through distant centuries on their banks, and
he will see that Ossian has been there. Let him look steadily even at
the cloud-drifts from the Atlantic, as they troop or roll along in a
thousand fantastic forms, converging all to a certain inland range, and
he will understand that the author of these poems must have seen and
studied them so. Let him proceed then to Arran, and he will discover
there, if he looks and listens, not only scenes and traditions, and
monuments of sepulture, still associated with the names of Oscar and
Malvina, Fingal and Ossian--in literal confirmation of what has been
stated in the text concerning them; but the only reliable account, by
survey and tradition also, of the Fingalian expeditions from Morven to
Ireland. Let him then, by direct communication, which is occasionally
possible from Arran; or by any circuit he pleases, disembark in the Bay
of Larne "with its bosom of echoing woods," as Fingal himself must have
done; and there, with _Fingal_ and _Temora_ in hand, let him survey the
entire region between Larne and Belfast. Let him march with his eyes
open by the pass of Glenoe, and try to ascend it on the old track--by
the "narrow way at the stream of the battle of thousands," round the
double-headed rock there by moonlight, or in the misty dawn; and before
attempting this, let him look carefully around among the limestone
cliffs for any other reasonable opening; and if he does not begin to
suspect, at least, that it was here Cuchullin stood, and Calmar fell,
against the invading Norse, he must be "hopelessly convinced" to the
contrary, indeed. Onwards let him prosecute his journey, looking
backwards occasionally to the sea, where the ships of Fingal should be
appearing--onwards among marshy Lenas, open Straths, half cultivated
Heaths--with an occasional monolith among the enclosures, testifying to
what has once been done there; onwards, with his eye now to the ridges
on the left--on one of which, below Carneal or thereabouts, the
head-quarters of Fingal must have been before the campaigns
began--onwards until he touches the source of the Six-Mile-Water above
Ballynure; and there, looking steadily westward down the strath where
the river winds, let him recall the very words of the text in his
hand--"Nor settled from the storm is Erin's sea of war; they glitter
beneath the moon, and, low-humming, still roll on the field. Alone are
the steps of Cathmor, before them on the heath; he hangs forward with
all his arms on Morven's flying host.... They who were terrible were
removed: Lubar winds again in their host":--and then ask himself
deliberately if the whole scene, with the relative changes of position
in the contending armies, the retreat of the one that had been
advancing, the pursuit of the other that had been retreating, the
recrossing of the stream by both over some of its hundred links, and the
temporary pause of battle in that valley, with hosts on either side of
the river which now flowed through the ranks of one of them, whilst the
other was in retreat up the ridge--could have been more truly described
by poet or geographer than it has been in these few words of Ossian?
Onward let him proceed, if he pleases, by Ballynure and Ballyclare to
Lough Neagh; or let him return again across the valley to the north, in
a line at right angles to the road between Larne and Connor. But before
he moves from the spot let him glance round for a moment to the south,
in the direction of Carrickfergus--"where a valley spreads green behind
the hill [literally spreads] with its three blue streams. The sun is
there in silence; [that touch is wonderful--no war, as yet, is there]
and the dun mountain roes come down." Let him search there at leisure,
if he pleases, and he will find the stream of the Noisy Vale, where poor
Sulmalla saw the vision of Cathmor's ghost, and "the lake of roes,"
where Lady Morna died, still Loch Mourne, a little farther east on the
mountain. But if this should be inconvenient, then by a step or two
forward to the top of the ridge on the right he will come in view of the
northern branch of the Six-Mile-Water; and now let him steadily consider
what he sees. From east to west before him, lies the Drumadarragh range;
between himself and which lies the valley of the Deer Park, intersected
by the river, whereabouts, in all probability, the assassination of
Oscar took place. Beyond the ridge and through the pass just visible,
rises the Glenwherry Water; near the head of which, as has been fully
explained, both in "Ossian and the Clyde" and elsewhere, should be found
a cave in some rocky cliff, with oaks, or the remains of oaks, before
it; whilst the river, in its sheltered course or _Cluna_, glides below.
"Crommal, with woody rocks and misty top, the field of winds, pours
forth to the light blue Lubar's streamy roar. Behind it rolls
clear-winding Lavath, in the still vale of deer. A cave is dark in a
rock; above it strong-winged eagles dwell; broad-headed oaks before it,
sound in Cluna's wind. Within, in his locks of youth, is Ferad-Artho,
blue-eyed king, the son of broad-shielded Cairbar, from Ullin of the
roes. He listens to the voice of Condan, as grey he bends in feeble
light. He listens, for his foes dwell in the echoing halls of Temora. He
comes at times abroad, in the skirts of mist, to pierce the bounding
roes. When the sun looks on the field, nor by the rock nor stream is he!
He shuns the race of Bolga, who dwell in his father's hall." Let him
march then to Ferad-Artho's hiding place, across the intervening
valley--taking leisurely note, as he goes, of every monolith or cairn on
his track; and either up the face of the hill, or through the pass on
his right, where the high road now runs, and so on to the hamlet of
Maghgerabane; above which, on the Skerry--a gloomy, low-browed, basaltic
precipice before him--like a dark porch or portico, in the very face of
the rock, halfway up, he will descry the cave in question. He should now
cross the Glenwherry at the village, in its grassy gorge, and draw
nearer to the portico on the hillside beyond it, keeping a steady
look-out for the roots of oaks, for they are still to be discovered
there, as he ascends the cliff. Three of them in a row, about twenty
feet below the cave, but directly in front of it, although now
overwhelmed with ruins, still send up shoots; and two more, a little
farther up to the west of it, are equally conspicuous. He will find the
cave itself half-ruined already, by the continual fall of basaltic
masses from the mountain; and in attempting to scale the rock at the
door of the cave, he should be as circumspect as possible, lest a worst
thing than the breaking of a bone befals him. He need not, however, be
afraid of "strong-winged eagles," for they are gone; nor need he look
for "bounding roes" in the valley, for they are probably exterminated;
but he may still look westward on one of the sweetest and stillest vales
in the bounds of the Island; and when he remembers that he is now within
a few miles of Connor, which is the Temora of Ossian, he will have no
difficulty in understanding how Ferad-Artho was brought for shelter and
for safety to the cave just above him; or how easily the boy-king could
be discovered there by his friends in Fingal's camp to the south, who
knew exactly where to find him. Such explorations are but the one-half
of what may still be made from the text of Ossian, in this very region;
but these will occupy at least three days of a week in summer, and are
long enough for present detail in the columns of the _Celtic_. There are
other regions however, far beyond Ireland, not so accessible to ordinary
tourists, which may be examined nevertheless, with equal certainty by
geological survey and geographical report; and to these, on some future
occasion, we may take an opportunity of directing the reader's
attention.
In the meantime, by way of bringing our present argument to a point,
would the reader believe that Macpherson, by whose text alone hitherto
we have been guided, was himself more ignorant of these very scenes than
a school boy; that he never, in fact, saw them, and did not know where,
in Scotland or in Ireland, they were to be found? Yet such is the case.
Of the Clyde, of which he could not help knowing something, he knew
nevertheless very little--yet not much less than some of our modern
geologists; but of localities on the Clyde, or between the Forth and the
Clyde, as described in Ossian, he knew nothing. The Kelvin, in like
manner, as an Ossianic river, was utterly unknown to him; he does not
even attempt to translate its name. All that pertains to Arran, and
still so distinctly traceable there by the help of his own text in
_Berrathon_--for which Gaelic no longer exists--he transfers in his
ignorance to the wilds of Morven. As for Ireland, all that he knows, or
seems to know, is that Ullin is Ulster; but the very scenes which are
most conspicuous in Ulster he transfers to Leinster--from Antrim, for
example, to Meath; and the rest to some undistinguishable point between
Londonderry and Armagh. He brings Sulmalla and her forefathers from
Wales instead of Wigtonshire, into Wicklow instead of Ardglass; and he
lands both Swaran and Cuchullin and Fingal in Lough Foyle apparently,
instead of in the Bay of Larne or Belfast? In such circumstances, of
what use is it for critics any longer to go on squabbling over Gaelic
editions, collecting and collating mediæval Gaelic ballads, and
asserting with hopeless fatuity that he was the author of these poems,
or that he stole them from the Irish? The Irish themselves are as
ignorant of the subject as he is; and yet in spite of all this ignorance
on his part and theirs, the text of his translation has received on
every page of it the unequivocal countersign of Nature, which can
neither be forged nor forfeited. Taking all which into account, does it
not now begin to be plain to unprejudiced readers that the whole of this
Ossianic controversy has been hitherto on wrong ground; and that if the
truth of it is to be arrived at, at all, it must be removed to other
ground--from questionable MSS. and mediæval ballads, to the region of
facts and the domain of reality? We do not assert that the sort of facts
now adduced by us, and elsewhere systematised and elaborated, are the
only facts, or the only kind of facts to be considered in such a
controversy; but we do assert that their importance is supreme, and that
they have never hitherto been admitted in the controversy. It is to
facts however, and to facts like these, that the attention of Ossianic
students ought now to be directed; and at every step, if we are not
greatly deceived, they will multiply and reiterate their testimony in so
decided a fashion, that it will be impossible for any critic, or for any
collector in the world, to disregard or dispose of them. All farther
serious controversy on the subject, in short, is destined to be of this
character--common-sense and practical; and the sooner we prepare
ourselves, as honest enquirers, to engage in it after this fashion and
in this spirit, the better.