Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: originals collected by Mr Macpherson were given to the public by his executors. It is plain from the above how much Mr Macpherson was indebted to oral recitation for the collection of Ossianic poetry made by him. Having shown the mode in which Mr Macpherson made his collection, let us now advert to confirmation derived from other sources as to the authenticity of what he has given to the public. That Mr Macpherson was the largest collector of Gaelic poetry is not to be wondered at, for he travelled over a great portion of the Highlands, and bestowed considerable labour and research in recovering the remains of ancient Gaelic poetry, not only personally, but also through his friends; whereas other collectors generally confined themselves to the neighbourhood of their own localities, and were content to note only what came incidentally to their notice. One of the earliest of these independent collections was that of the Dean of Lismore, recently brought to notice. It was written between 1512 and 1529, and is found to contain several of the poems translated by Macpherson; but these poems having been obtained from oral recitation, they vary somewhat in expression from the versions obtained by Macpherson, though the incidents are the same. Among these we may mention ' The Death of Oscar,' at the battle of Gaura, of which there are two editions, one at page 35 and the other at page 49 of Dr M'Lauchlan's translation, similar to ' The Death of Oscar' as given by Macpherson at the chapter{Section 4 same battle in the beginning of ' Temora.' We quote from page 49 : " It would be hard to tell, 'Twould be a heavy task, To number all that fell Slain by the arms of Oscar. No swifter is a cataract, Or hawk in sweeping stoop, Or rapids rushing fast...