In battle-field he fell in fame;
Terrible to many as he came
Like thunder through the woods, or lightning
That hid itself midst ruin frightning!
The enemies trembled, fell, and fled;
From Artho’s hand destruction sped,
Like Melmor’s rocks dashed through the woods
To sink below in sullen floods;
Such seemed the low-laid hero’s form
Ere came death’s arrow in the storm.

Dan an Deirg, one of the finest poems in Smith’s volume, has been recently translated, edited, and annotated by an accomplished English scholar and graduate of Cambridge, Mr C. S. Jerram, who has been at the pains of studying the language. To this interesting little volume is prefixed a very intelligent and fair account of the state of the Ossianic question.

Dr Smith’s “Old Lays,” translated by himself in too free and turgid a fashion, are as interesting as Macpherson’s “Ossian,” and not inferior in any respect to that famed production. In the opening of one of these “lays,” called “Finan and Lorma,” we find a very pretty set of verses in which the young people around him, looking upon the heavens, are represented as addressing the aged Ossian in the following manner:—

While on the plains shines the moon, O bard!
And the shadow of Cona holds;
Like a ghost breathes the wind from the mountain,
With its spirit voice in its folds.
There are two cloudy forms before us,
Where its host the dim night shows;
The sigh of the moor curls their tresses,
As they tread over Alva of roes.
Dusky his dogs came with one,
And he bends his dark-brow of yew;
There’s a stream from the side of the sad-faced maid,
Dyes her robe with a blood-red hue.
Hold thou back, O thou wind! from the mountain,
Let their image a moment stay;
Nor sweep with thy skirts from our eyesight,
Nor scatter their beauty away.
O’er the glen of the rushes, the hill of the hinds
With the vague wandering vapour they go;
O, Bard of the times that have left us!
Aught of their life cans’t thou show?

OSSIAN’S REPLY.

The years that have been they come back as ye speak,
To my soul in their music they glide;
Like the murmur of waves in the far inland calm,
Is their soft and smooth step by my side.

The translation is from “The Gaelic Bards.” Let us now glance at a particular class of popular pieces that have become mixed up with the suspected works of Macpherson and Smith. The original of the specimens which follow was well known before Macpherson’s Gaelic Ossian appeared. The famous “Address to the Sun” is found in English in Macpherson’s Carthon. In the published Gaelic of 1807 its place is marked by asterisks. The Gaelic is inserted to correspond with the English in Clerk’s edition. A new literal translation is here attempted:—

O, thou that glidest in the sky,
Round as the hero’s full hard shield,
Thy frownless lustre, whence on high?
Sun, whence thy ceaseless light revealed?
Thou comest in thy lovely might;
The stars conceal from us their motion;
The moon pale hies from heaven’s height,
And shrouds her in the western ocean.
Thou in thy distance art alone;
Who bold may dare approach thy might;
With age, cairn, cliff, are overthrown;
With age the oak falls from the height.
The ocean shakes with ebb and flow;
The moon is lost in depth of night;
But, Victor, thou alone dost glow
In endless joy of thine own light.
When tempests darken round the earth
With lightning, and with hoarse-voiced thunder,
Fair through the storm thou look’st in mirth
Upon the troubled heavens under.
But vain to me are thy bright rays,
Since I must see no more thy glance
Gold-tressed that turns on eastern gaze
Of heaven’s cloudy countenance,
When thou art trembling in the west,
Through ocean’s dusky doors to rest.
But like myself thou art perchance—
Once robed with weakness, once with strength;
In circling sky our years advance
Together to one end at length;
Rejoice, O Sun, while thou art young;
Be glad, thou Prince! while thou art strong!
Old age is dark and void of mirth,
Like faint moon ere her horn she fills;
While looking from the clouds on earth
Where hoary mist skirts cairny hills.
The biting blast with breath of cold
Beats on the traveller weak and old.

It is said that this address, the original of which was supplied to the Highland Society in the year 1801, was well known in the central Highlands early in the eighteenth century. The Rev. Mr Macdiarmid wrote it down from the dictation of an old man in Glenlyon about 1770. It is said that this old man learned it in his youth from people in the same glen before Macpherson was born.

The “Address to the Setting Sun” is given at the beginning of Macpherson’s Carricthura. It consists of eleven lines, and has been a great favourite among the people. The following is a literal translation:—

Leav’st the blue distance of the skies,
Unsullied Sun, with tress of gold?
Where west thy tent of slumber lies
The portals of the night unfold.
The cautious billows cower nigher
Thy shining temples to behold;
Awe-struck, their heads they lift up higher
To view thee grand in thy repose!
Pale from thy side they back retire!
May in thy cave sleep o’er thee close,
O, Sun! till thou the dawn inspire.

The above lines were written down by Mr Macdiarmid at the same time as the “Address to the Sun.” In the two pieces we find abstract conceptions that we never come across in the old ballads. This gives real ground to the argument of recent writers that the poems are of modern date. Whether ancient or modern, they are poetry of a high order, superior to that of the Irish and Scottish ballads. The new theory seems to some inconsistent with the honour and veracity of more than one clergyman and gentleman of repute, who could have no personal interest in helping to palm on the public the alleged forgeries of Macpherson. There is another “Address to the Sun”—to the rising sun—in Dr Smith’s Old Lays, which appeared many years before the publication of Macpherson’s Gaelic. It is admirably translated by Mr Pattison, and I avail myself of his translation:—

Son of the young morn! that glancest
O’er the hills of the east with thy gold-yellow hair
How gay on the wild thou advancest
Where the streams laugh as onward they fare;
And the trees yet bedewed by the shower,
Elastic their light bright branches raise,
Whilst the melodies sweet they embower
Hail thee at once with their lays.
But where is the dim light duskily gliding,
On her eagle wings from thy face?
Where now is darkness abiding?
In what cave do bright stars end their race—
When fast, on their faded steps bending,
Like a hunter you rush through the sky,
Up those lone lofty mountains ascending,
While down yon far summits they fly?
Pleasant thy path is, Great Lustre, wide-gleaming,
Dispelling the storm with thy rays;
And graceful thy gold ringlets streaming,
As wont in the westering blaze.
Thee the blind mist of night ne’er deceiveth,
Nor sends from the right course astray!
The strong tempest, all ocean that grieveth,
Can ne’er make thee bend from thy way.
At the call of the mild morn appearing,
Thy festal face wakens up bright;
Thy shade from all dark places clearing,
But the bard’s eye that ne’er sees thy light.

In an Irish poem from which quotations have been made the bard is represented as blind. In two of these pieces we have touching allusion to the same melancholy infliction. “Vain to me are thy bright rays” occurs in the Address to the Sun, and “the bard’s eye that ne’er sees thy light” in the Address to the Rising Sun. The soul of the old poet seemed to take delight in contrasting his own sightless condition with the brilliant sun in his course through the heavens. This tone of melancholy pleasure—of deep and lonely nurtured feeling—so characteristic of the Ossianic poems, is also characteristic of the Celtic race, especially of the Scottish Gael, whose spirit seems to have been enswathed in the majestic gloom of his own native glens and mountains. The curtains of mist hanging over the silent and weird-looking lochs, the ghost-like clouds that glided across the glens or inwrapped the crests of the hills, the moan of the sounding seashore mingling with the roar of a hundred streams forcing their ways to join the boundless ocean, are sights and sounds which naturally exerted a powerful influence on the souls of those who lived daily in their midst. When the tempests darkened round the earth, and lightnings flashed, and the hoarse-voiced thunder shook the hills, how pleasant it must have been for the depressed spirit of man to gaze on the face of the sun, looking “fair through the storm” “upon the troubled heavens under” of a Hebridean sky!

These are specimens of a great deal of poetry which Highlanders of the present day unhesitatingly ascribe to Ossian. Indeed, the Ossian of these pieces appears to be a poet of quite a different calibre from that of the old ballads. One thing is clear that whoever was the author or authors of these much discussed productions, he or they were poets of the highest order, and must have been Gaels born and bred in the Highlands.

decorative end-of-chapter icon