Page:Poems of Ossian.djvu/31

Rh But these references were all of such third and fourth hand authority as would only be received by the gossip-mongers of literary back parlours. No one nowadays sets much store on what A feels certain B told him was once hinted to him by C.

Happily, evidence of a different sort has become available to prove that poems concerning Fingal and his heroes have existed from remote antiquity in the Scottish Highlands, and that many of these poems are identical with Macpherson's translations.

The Albanach Duan is a versified chronicle of the date of Malcolm III. in 1056, and regarding its antiquity there is no dispute. It is true that it does not mention Fingal or his heroes. But this no mere disproves the existence of the poems of Ossian than the absence of Colonel Newcome's name from the Army List disproves the existence of Thackeray's novel. What the Albanach Duan does prove is that metrical compositions existed in Gaelic before 1056; for it bears traces of having been formed from older records. From the earliest dawn, however, of regular literature in Scotland references are common enough to the Ossianic heroes. Barbour, the historian of Robert the Bruce, in 1375, mentions Fingal and Gaul, the son of Morni:—