Page:Poems of Ossian.djvu/50

xlviii printed several poems bearing close resemblance of style to Macpherson's translations, and the substance of which the writer professed to have discovered in Ireland. These and other specimens of poetry adduced from Ireland formed in many cases counterparts to compositions included by Macpherson. It should be mentioned here, besides, that the Ossianic Society of Dublin has printed in six volumes (1854–61) a mass of similar poetry which has been preserved by the Irish senachies.

Literal counterparts, like some of these, produced in the original Gaelic, and from hostile motives, should now form strong testimony of the authentic nature of Macpherson's translations. Nevertheless, Laing, eager to seize any instrument for the discrediting of Ossian, used this as an argument to prove that the poetic narratives found by Macpherson in the Highlands were neither Scottish nor antique, but were Irish poems of the fifteenth century.

To the modern reader it may seem of little moment whether Ossian were a bard of Ireland or of Scotland. The peoples of both countries were Celtic, and from the earliest times must have possessed close racial and political ties. The antiquity of the poems, however, seemed affected by the question, and Macpherson therefore felt himself called upon to adduce proofs of their