[CONCLUDED.]
IN prosecuting the geological and geographical confirmation of Ossian on
which we have lately been engaged, the most convincing proofs and the
greatest difficulties alike are to be found in the Frith of Clyde. The
levels of the water in that frith penetrating far inland, by Paisley,
Rutherglen, and Kilsyth, assumed unconsciously as matter of fact in the
text of Ossian, are in such obvious harmony with every word of the poems
which relate to that region, that the poems in question cannot otherwise
be understood; and we therefore cannot help believing not only that the
poems themselves are genuine, but that they represent a geological
phenomenon hitherto unsuspected in the world--are, in fact, a revelation
in science. On the other hand, the levels thus assumed are so very far
beyond anything admitted by geologists within the era assigned, as to
seem not only extravagant but incredible; and if they cannot be
maintained, their assumption as a fact will destroy the credibility of
the poems in which the assumption is made. As regards the authenticity
of these poems, however, the assumption itself is conclusive; for the
translator did not see it, and could therefore never have fabricated the
poems in which it appears. Such poems must have been written by some
eye-witness of the fact, who did not require to exaggerate; and the only
question as regards reliability now to be settled, is whether he did
exaggerate or no? Was the Clyde a sea to Rutherglen, as he seems to
affirm? Was the Kelvin a fiord to Kilsyth, or nearly so, as he implies?
Was the Leven an estuary to Loch Lomond, as we are bound to conclude?
Was the Black Cart a marine canal to Ardrossan in the days of Agricola?
If so, the Clyde must have been from 60 to 80 feet above its present
level at the date supposed--and then, where was the Roman Wall? Traces
of that wall upon the Clyde at a much lower level, it is said, still
exist; and the old fortifications between Dunglass and Kilpatrick
only 50 feet or thereby above the present level, put an end to the
reliability, if not to the authenticity of Ossian. This is the
difficulty now to be disposed of; and of which, in passing, we need only
say, that if Macpherson had seen it he would certainly have avoided it;
and therefore, that whoever was the author of the poems in which it
occurs, Macpherson was not.
But it is with the difficulty itself we are now concerned, and not with
the authorship. I. First then, suppose any statement, direct or
indirect, had occurred in any Greek or Roman writer of the time--Cæsar,
Tacitus, Dion Cassius, or Ptolemy--affirming, or even implying, such a
level in the Clyde at the date in question, notwithstanding the Roman
Wall, would the testimony of such authors have been rejected? If not,
how would our geologists have disposed of it? or how would they have
reconciled it with existing matters of fact? One can imagine the
jealousy with which such texts would have been criticised; the assiduity
with which every crevice on the coast would have been surveyed, not to
contradict but to confirm them; and the fertility of invention with
which theories would have been multiplied to harmonise them. Strange as
it may appear, however, facts and statements amounting very nearly to
this do occur, and have hitherto been overlooked, or purposely omitted
in silence. The Roman Wall, for example, stops short with a town at
Balmulzie on one side of the Kelvin, and begins again with another town
at Simmerton, nearly a mile distant, on the opposite side of the Kelvin;
but why should such a gap be there, if the Kelvin, which flows between,
had not been something like a fiord at the moment? Again, it is
distinctly affirmed by Herodian that the marshes of Clydesdale south of
the Wall were constantly--end of the third, or beginning of the fourth
century--emitting vapours which obscured the sky. But how could this be
the case, if volcanic heat had not already been operating underneath,
and the waters of the frith were then beginning to subside from their
original higher levels?
On the other hand, not only do statements to the effect alleged occur
frequently in Ossian, but whole poems are founded on the assumption of
their truth, and cannot be understood without them. Why then are not
these taken into account by our geologists as contemporaneous testimony,
in the same way as similar statements, if they had occurred in Cæsar or
in Tacitus, would have been? Because Ossian hitherto has been looked
upon by men of science as a fable; as a witness utterly unfit to be
produced in court, and no more to be cared for or quoted in an
ordnance survey, or in a professor's chair, than the Arabian Nights'
Entertainments are in a pulpit. By which very oversight or contempt, the
most important revelations have been lost, and the most elaborate
theories will soon be rendered useless. Ossian, in fact, is as much an
authority as either Cæsar, or Tacitus, or Ptolemy; and in estimating the
physical conditions of the world to which he refers, and which he
describes, can no longer be either ignored or doubted. If his text seems
to be at variance with existing facts, it must be more carefully
studied; and if new theories are required to harmonise details they must
be accepted or invented. We have had theories enough already, which have
perished with the using; something more in harmony with facts, or that
will better explain the facts, must now be forthcoming.
II. But the Roman Wall itself, which is supposed to be the greatest
barrier in the way of our accepting Ossian, has actually a literature of
its own, little understood, in his favour. The three forts farthest
west, and on which so much reliance has been placed as indicating the
levels of the Clyde when they were built and occupied, are those at
Chapel Hill, near Old Kilpatrick, at Duntocher, and at Castlehill a
little farther to the east; all under the ridge of the Kilpatrick Hills,
and all--one of them very closely--overlooking the Clyde. But in
excavating the remains of Roman architecture in these forts, stones have
been found with symbolical sculptures upon them which are still in
existence, or which have been accurately copied for public use. On one
of the stones at Chapel Hill, farthest west, we have the figure of a
wild boar in flight; on one at Duntocher we have another wild boar, on
two more there we have sea-dogs or seals and winged horses; on two more
at Castlehill we have another boar, and another seal, and an osprey or
sea-eagle on the back of the seal; but beyond this to the eastward,
although a boar still occurs, not another seal appears. How then is all
this descriptive or symbolical sculpture, so plain and so significant,
to be accounted for, if the Frith of Clyde had not then been a sea
flowing up into the recesses of the land, as high almost as Duntocher
and Castlehill? The wild boar is traceable throughout, for he inhabited
the woods on the Kilpatrick range, as far eastward, perhaps, as
Simmerton; and we find him eating acorns, even beyond that. On the other
hand, no seal is represented at Chapel Hill, for the water there was too
deep, and the banks too precipitous. It appears first at Duntocher, and
again at Castlehill, because the sea flowed up into quiet bays and
inlets there, where such amphibia could bask--of which, more hereafter;
but it totally disappears beyond that, because the salt water ceased in
the distance. The winged-horse, or pegasus, is more difficult to account
for, and has greatly perplexed the learned antiquarians who have
commented on him; but if the Roman Legionaries who built and occupied
these western stations ever heard the Caledonian harp, or listened to a
Celtic bard, or received an embassy, as we are expressly told they did,
from men like Ossian as ambassadors--the difficulty requires no farther
explanation. The Romans were neither blind nor senseless, and knew well
enough how to represent the poetical genius of the country which they
were attempting in vain to conquer, as well as the wild boars of its
woods, and the sea-dogs in its estuaries; and have thus left behind
them, in rude but significant sculpture, as true a picture as could be
imagined of the men on the soil, and the beasts in the field, and the
fish so-called in the sea, and the bird in the air--between Simmerton
and Duntocher, in absolute conformity with the text of Ossian. Nor is
there any possible reply to this by our antiquarian friends. The Roman
Wall itself, to which they constantly appeal, supplies the evidence, and
they are bound, without a murmur, to accept it.
III. But the levels of the Wall, it may be said, as now ascertainable by
actual survey--what other sort of evidence do _they_ afford? This
question implies--(1) A range of observation from the Kelvin at
Simmerton westward to Duntocher in the first place, and then to Chapel
Hill between Old Kilpatrick and Dunglass. The intermediate forts on that
line are separated by equal distances, nearly as follows:--From
Simmerton to New Kilpatrick, 1¾ miles; from New Kilpatrick to Castlehill,
1¾ miles; from Castlehill to Duntocher, 1¾ miles; the lowest point
in which range at Duntocher is from 155 to 200 feet above the level
of the Clyde, leaving sufficient room, therefore, for the Wall above
the highest level assumed in the text of Ossian. From Duntocher to
Chapel Hill there is a distance of 2½ miles, with no trace whatever
of the Wall between. Chapel Hill is considerably lower than Duntocher,
undoubtedly; but why is there so great a gap there, and no trace of a
wall in the interval? Either, because there never was a wall so close to
the tide; or because the tide itself washed the wall away, having been
built too close to its confines; or for some other more probable reason
yet to be assigned. The fort at Chapel Hill itself, indeed, is the most
indistinct of them all; and if a regular fort of any importance ever
existed there, it must have suffered either partial inundation, or some
other serious shock, unquestionably.
(2) It implies also a corresponding survey of the ground intermediate
between the Wall and the river. Now the intervening ground along the
banks of the Clyde, from Chapel Hill to the Pointhouse at Glasgow, is a
low-lying flat with a gradual rise inland, at the present moment, of not
more than 25 or 30 feet. But according to Professor Geikie's latest
survey, the Clyde must have been about 25 feet higher in the time of the
Romans than it now is--and Professor Geikie, we presume, is an authority
on such subjects, who may be quoted along with Hugh Miller and Smith of
Jordanhill:--therefore the whole of that strath, and the strath on the
opposite side, from Renfrew to Paisley, on this assumption, must have
been submerged at the same time; and there could be no dwelling-place
for human beings--neither local habitation nor a name--within the entire
compass of that now fertile and populous region. But two or three Gaelic
names survive on the northern verge of it, which not only indicate the
presence of the sea there, but fix the very limits of its tide. Dalmuir,
for example, which means the Valley of the Sea; and Garscadden, which
means the Bay of Pilchards or of foul herring, must, in fact, have
carried the waters up their respective streams to within less than a
mile of the Roman Wall at Duntocher and Castlehill. It was in such
retreats, then, that both salmon and herring (as the name of one of them
imports) would take refuge in the spawning season; it was into such
retreats also, they would be pursued by the seals; it was on the shore
of such inlets the seals themselves would bask, when the Romans saw
them; and it is at the two forts respectively at the head of these
inlets--Duntocher and Castlehill--that they have been actually
represented in Sculpture. Could anything be more conclusive as to the
proximity of the tide, and very character of the shore, within a bowshot
or two of the Wall in that neighbourhood, where there is now a distance
of more than two miles between it and the river? and yet even more
conclusive, in connection with this, is the fact that on the southern
verge of the strath, right opposite to these, are other Gaelic names
equally significant--such as Kennis, the Head of the island; Ferinis,
the Hero's island; and Fingal-ton, which speaks for itself--at the same
or a similar level with Dalmuir and Garscadden, that is from 100 to 200
feet above the present level of the Clyde, which seems to demonstrate
beyond doubt that the whole intervening space of seven miles in breadth,
with the exception of such small islands as those named above, was then
an arm of the sea to the depth of 50 feet at least, if not more.
(3) Our survey is thus narrowed to a single point--the existence and
alleged position of the fort at Chapel Hill, between Old Kilpatrick and
Dunglass, on the banks of the river; and here it should be observed as
between the two extremities of the Wall, east and west, that where it
touches the Frith of Forth at Carriden the height of its foundation
ranges from about 150 to 200 feet above the level of the sea, and where
it approaches the Clyde at Duntocher it is nearly the same--which was
probably its terminus. There is scarcely a vestige of it now traceable
beyond that, and that it was ever carried farther in reality is a matter
of acknowledged uncertainty. But scattered fragments of masonry, as we
have seen, and the dimmest indications of a fort deep down in the earth
have been discovered or imagined at Chapel Hill to the westward, which
seems to be about 50 feet above the level of the Clyde--leaving still a
very large margin beyond Professor Geikie's estimate; and a great deal
of conjecture about what might, or might not have been there, has been
indulged in by antiquarians. For the present, however, until proof to
the contrary has been shown, let us accept as a fact that some military
station had really been established there in connection with the
Wall--then, how have its fragments been so widely scattered? how has it
been so completely entombed that it can only be guessed at under the
soil? and how has the connection between it and the Wall, more than two
miles distant, been obliterated? No other fort on the line, that we know
of, is now in the same condition; and therefore, we repeat, either the
Romans were foolishly contending with the tide, by building too close to
its confines, and the tide drove them back and overthrew their works; or
the fort itself was originally on a higher level, and the shock of an
earthquake, or a landslip from the mountains, or both together, carried
the whole mass of masonry and earthwork at this particular point down to
their present level, where they would be washed by the tide and silted
up in their own ruins. This is a view of the matter, indeed, which no
antiquarian, so far as we are aware, has hitherto adopted; but any one
who chooses to look with an unprejudiced eye, for a moment, at the
enormous gap in the hills immediately behind, reaching down to the shore
and including this very region, must be satisfied that the case was so;
and recent discoveries--one of a quay-wall or foundation of a bridge at
Old Kilpatrick, about 4 feet deep in a field; and another of a causeway,
more than 20 feet submerged and silted up under sea-sand, on the same
side of the river, near Glasgow, will most probably confirm it.
One other question, however, yet remains, touching this mysterious fort,
which we may be allowed to say only "Ossian and the Clyde" can enable us
to answer--Why was such a fort ever thought of there at all? It was
either to receive provisions and reinforcements from the sea; and if so,
then it must have been on the very verge of the frith, and the water
must have been sufficiently deep there. Or it was to watch the estuary
of the Leven, and to prevent the native Caledonians either landing from
the sea, or coming down from the hills to turn the flank of the Wall at
Duntocher, and so surprising the Romans in the rear; and this, beyond
doubt, was its most important purpose as a military station on the line.
But we have elsewhere explained (in the work above alluded to) that
there was a regular route for the Caledonians from Dunglass to Campsie,
which still bears the name of Fingal; and Fyn-loch, the very first
rendezvous on that line, is on the top of the hill immediately above the
fort in question. The Romans, who must have been fully aware of this,
made their own provision accordingly. In sight of that fort, therefore,
Fingal and his people might embark or disembark on their expeditions
through Dumbartonshire at pleasure; but it would require to be at a
reasonable distance westward, on the sides of Dumbuck or in the quiet
creek at Milton, if they wished to escape the catapults and crossbows of
the conquerors of the world. Now the earthquake, which extended up the
whole basin of the Clyde, seems to have changed all that. The fort was
sunk or shattered, as we suppose, and the frith began to fall; and
antiquarians who do not believe in Ossian, or who do not keep such
obvious facts in view, have been puzzled ever since, and will be puzzled
ever more, attempting to account for it.
IV. In adducing this evidence--partly antiquarian and partly
geological--we have restricted our survey exclusively to the Roman Wall,
for it is on this important barrier between the Forth and Clyde that
those who object to the geography of Ossian are accustomed to fall back.
But the sort of testimony it affords might be easily supplemented by a
survey of the Clyde itself, which can be shown, and has been shown, by
incontestable measurement on the coast of Ayrshire, to be sinking at the
rate of ¾ of an inch annually for the last forty or fifty years at
least; and if such subsidence has been going on for fifteen hundred
years at the same rate, the level of the frith in the days of the Romans
must have been even higher than we now allege. A critic in the
_Scotsman_, who, himself, first demanded such a survey, and to whom the
survey when reported in the same paper--August 30th, 1875--was
troublesome, appeals boldly in an editorial note to the authority of
Hugh Miller, and again demands that the survey be transferred from
Girvan to Glasgow, because "the height to which the tide rises is a very
fluctuating quantity"--in Ayrshire, we presume. As for Hugh Miller, we
can find nothing whatever in his pages to the purpose; and if such a
distinguished authority is to be relied on in the present controversy,
we must insist on his very words being quoted. As for the fluctuation of
the tide, if it fluctuates in one place more than another, what is the
use of appealing to it at all? and as between the Ayrshire coast, and
the Renfrewshire or Lanarkshire coast, on the same side of the frith,
unless "the moon and one darn'd thing or another" have special
disturbing influence in Ayrshire, what difference can there be in the
regularity of flow between Girvan and Glasgow? This learned adversary in
the _Scotsman_ must surely have been at his wit's end when he took
refuge in such an absurdity, and we may safely leave him where he is, to
revise his own calculations and recover his composure.
All this might be insisted on anew; but the object of the present
argument is simply to show to the readers of the _Celtic Magazine_ that
the Ossianic controversy must of necessity be removed to another and a
higher sphere than ever. There are certain points, indeed, on which
philological inquiries may still be of the utmost importance as regards
the Gaelic original, and these we cheerfully consign for discussion to
those whom they most concern; but these will never decide the question
of authenticity in its proper form, or establish Ossian in his proper
place as a witness-bearer of the past. The sense of Macpherson's
translation, as it stands, must be honestly ascertained; its testimony
verified, or otherwise, by direct appeal to the subject matter of its
text; and its value in the literature of the world determined, on the
same principles, and by the very same process as that of any other
public record would be in the history of the world. Such investigation
has now become indispensable. In Ossian's name alike, and in that of
science, as well as of common sense, we demand it, and will never be
satisfied until it has been accorded.