Fragment of a Northern Tale. Where Harold, with golden hair, spread o'er Lochlin his high commands; where, with justice, he ruled the tribes, who sunk, subdued, beneath his sword; abrupt rises Gormal** in snow! The tempests roll dark on his sides, but calm, above, his vast forehead appears. White-issuing from the skirt of his storms, the troubled torrents pour down his sides. Joining, as they roar along, they bear the Torno, in foam, to the main. Gray on the bank, and far from men, half-covered, by ancient pines, from the wind, a lonely pile exalts its head, long shaken by the storms of the north. To this fled Sigurd, fierce in fight, from Harold the leader of armies, when fate had brightened his spear with renown: when he conquered in that rude field, where Lulan's warriors fell in blood, or rose in terror on the waves of the main. Darkly sat the gray-haired chief; yet sorrow dwelt not in his soul. But when the warrior thought on the past, his proud heart heaved again his side: forth flew his sword from its place; he wounded Harold in all the winds. One daughter, and only one, but bright in form and mild of soul, the last beam of the setting line, remained to Sigurd of all his race. His son, in Lulan's battle slain, beheld not his father's flight from his foes. Nor finished seemed the ancient line! The splendid beauty of bright-eyed Fithon, covered still the fallen king with renown. Her arm was white like Gormal's snow; her bosom whiter than the foam of the main, when roll the waves beneath the wrath of the winds. Like two stars were her radiant eyes, like two stars that rise on the deep, when dark tumult embroils the night. Pleasant are their beams aloft, as stately they ascend the skies. Nor Odin forgot, in aught, the maid. Her form scarce equalled her lofty mind. Awe moved around her stately steps. Heroes loved but shrunk away in their fears. Yet midst the pride of all her charms, her heart was soft and her soul was kind. She saw the mournful with tearful eyes. Transient darkness arose in her breast. Her joy was in the chase. Each morning, when doubtful light wandered dimly on Lulan's waves, she roused the resounding woods to Gormal's head of snow. Nor moved the maid alone, &c. The Gaëlic name of Scandinavia, or Scandinia. The mountains of Sevo. The same versified. Where fair-hair'd Harold o'er Scandinia reign'd, Sevo, in snow, his rugged forehead rears, And held with justice what his valour gain'd, And, o'er the warfare of his storms, appears Abrupt and vast. White wandering down his side A thousand torrents, gleaming as they glide, Unite below, and, pouring through the plain, Hurry the troubled Torno to the main. Gray, on the bank, remote from human kind, A homely mansion rose, of antique form, By aged pines half shelter'd from the wind, For ages batter'd by the polar storm. To this fierce Sigurd fled, from Norway's lord, When fortune settled on the warrior's sword, In that rude field, where Suecia's chiefs were slain, Or forced to wander o'er the Bothnic main. Dark was his life, yet undisturb'd with woes, But when the memory of defeat arose His proud heart struck his side; he grasp'd the spear, And wounded Harold in the vacant air. One daughter only, but of form divine, The last fair beam of the departing line, Remain'd of Sigurd's race. His warlike son Nor desolate the house! Fionia's charms Fell in the shock, which overturn'd the throne. Sustain'd the glory, which they lost in arms. White was her arm, as Sevo's lofty snow, Her bosom fairer than the waves below When heaving to the winds. Her radiant eyes Like two bright stars, exulting as they rise, And gladd'ning heav'n with their majestic light. O'er the dark tumult of a stormy night,, In nought is Odin to the maid unkind. Her form scarce equals her exalted mind; Awe leads her sacred steps where'er they move, And mankind worship where they dare not love. But mix'd with softness was the virgin's pride, Her bright tears started at another's woes, Her heart had feeling, which her eyes denied; While transient darkness on her soul arose. The chase she loved: when morn with doubtful beam On Sevo's sounding sides, she bent the bow, And roused his forests to his head of snow. One of the chief improvements in this edition, is the care taken in arranging the poems in the order of time, so as to form a kind of regular history of the age to which they relate. The writer has now resigned them for ever to their fate. That they have been well received by the public, appears from an extensive sale; that they shall continue to be well received, he may venture to prophesy without the gift of that inspiration, to which poets lay claim. Through the medium of version upon version, they retain, in foreign languages, their native character of simplicity and energy. Genuine poetry, like gold, loses little, when properly transfused; but when a composition cannot bear the test of a literal version, it is a counterfeit which ought not to pass current. The operation must, however, be performed with skilful hands. A translator, who cannot equal his original, is incapable of expressing its beauties. London, Aug. 15, 1773. A DISSERTATION CONCERNING THE ERA OF OSSIAN. INQUIRIES into the antiquities of nations || afford more pleasure than any real advantage to mankind. The ingenious may form systems of history on probabilities and a few facts; but, at a great distance of time, their accounts must be vague and uncertain. The infancy of states and kingdoms is as destitute of great events, as of the means of transmitting them to posterity. The arts of polished life, by which alone facts can be preserved with certainty, are the production of a well-formed community. It is then historians begin to write, and public transactions to be worthy remembrance. The actions of former times are left in obscurity, or magnified by uncertain traditions. Hence it is that we find so much of the marvellous in the origin of every nation; posterity being always ready to believe any thing, however fabulous, that reflects honour on their ancestors. remains of them; and the traces of it being found in places so widely distant from each other, serves only to show the extent of their ancient power, but throws very little light on their history. Of all the Celtic nations, that which possessed old Gaul is the most renowned; not perhaps on account of worth superior to the rest, but for their wars with a people who had historians to transmit the fame of their enemies, as well as their own, to posterity. Britain was first peopled by them, according to the testimony of the best authors; its situation in respect to Gaul makes the opinion probable; but what puts it beyond all dispute, is, that the same customs and language prevailed among the inhabitants of both in the days of Julius Cæsar. The colony from Gaul possessed themselves, at first, of that part of Britain which was next to their own country; and, spreading northward, by degrees, as they increased in numbers, peopled the whole island. Some adventurers, passing over from those parts of Britain that are within sight of Ireland, were the founders of the Irish nation: which is a more probable story than the idle fables of Milesian and Gallician colonies. Diodorus Siculus mentions it as a thing well known in his time, that the inhabitants of Ireland were originally Britons; and his testimony is unquestionable, when we consider that, for many ages, the language and customs of both nations were the same. The Greeks and Romans were remarkable for this weakness. They swallowed the most absurd fables concerning the high antiquity of their respective nations. Good historians, however, rose very early amongst them, and transmitted, with lustre, their great actions to posterity. It is to them that they owe that unrivalled fame they now enjoy, while the great actions of other nations are involved in fables, or lost in obscurity. The Celtic nations afford a striking instance of this kind. They, though once the masters of Europe from the mouth of the river Oby, in Russia, to Cape Finisterre, the western point of Gallicia in Spain, Tacitus was of opinion that the ancient are very little mentioned in history. They Caledonians were of German extract; but trusted their fame to tradition and the songs even the ancient Germans themselves were of their bards, which, by the vicissitude of Gauls. The present Germans, properly so human affairs, are long since lost. Their called, were not the same with the ancient ancient language is the only monument that | Celta. The manners and customs of the two nations were similar, but their lan- || guage different. The Germans are the genuine descendants of the ancient Scandinavians, who crossed, at an early period, the Baltic. The Celta, anciently, sent many colonies into Germany, all of whom retained their own laws, language, and customs, till they were dissipated, in the Roman empire; and it is of them, if any colonies came from Germany into Scotland, that the ancient Caledonians were descended. But whether the ancient Caledonians were a colony of the Celtic Germans, or the same with the Gauls that first possessed themselves of Britain, is a matter of no moment at this distance of time. Whatever their origin was, we find them very numerous in the time of Julius Agricola, which is a presumption that they were long before settled in the country. The form of their government was a mixture of aristocracy and monarchy, as it was in all the countries where the Druids bore the chief sway. This order of men seems to have been formed on the same principles with the Dactyli, Idæ, and Curetes of the ancients. Their pretended intercourse with Heaven, their magic and divination, were the same. The knowledge of the Druids in natural causes, and the properties of certain things, the fruits of the experiments of ages, gained them a mighty reputation among the people. The esteem of the populace soon increased into a veneration for the order; which these cunning and ambitious priests took care to improve to such a degree, that they, in a manner, engrossed the management of civil as well as religious matters. It is generally allowed, that they did not abuse this extraordinary power; the preserving the character of sanctity was so essential to their || influence, that they never broke out into violence or oppression. The chiefs were allowed to execute the laws, but the legislative power was entirely in the hands of the Druids. It was by their authority that the tribes were united, in times of the greatest danger, under one head. This temporary king or Vergobretus, was chosen by them, and generally laid down his office at the end of the war. These priests enjoyed long this extraordinary privilege among the Celtic nations who lay beyond the pale of the Roman empire. It was in the beginning of the second century that their power among the Caledonians began to decline. The traditions concerning Trathal and Cormac, ancestors to Fingal, are full of the particulars of the fall of the Druids: a singular fate, it must be owned, of priests, who had once established their superstition. The continual wars of the Caledonians against the Romans hindered the better sort from initiating themselves, as the custom formerly was, into the order of the Druids. The precepts of their religion were confined to a few, and were not much attended to by a people inured to war. The Vergobretus, or chief magistrate, was chosen without the concurrence of the hierarchy, or continued in his office against their will. Continual power strengthened his interest among the tribes, and enabled him to send down, as hereditary to his posterity, the office he had only received himself by election. On occasion of a new war against the 'king of the world,' as tradition emphatically calls the Roman emperor, the Druids, to vindicate the honour of the order, began to resume their ancient privilege of choosing the Vergobretus. Garmal, the son of Tarno, being deputed by them, came to the grandfather of the celebrated Fingal, who was then Vergobretus, and commanded him, in the name of the whole order, to lay down his office. Upon his refusal, a civil war commenced, which soon ended in almost the total extinction of the religious order of the Druids. A few that remained retired to the dark recesses of their groves, and the caves they had formerly used for their meditations. It is then we find them in the circle of stones, and unheeded by the world. A total disregard for the order, and utter abhorrence of the Druidical rites, ensued. Under this cloud of public hate, all that had any knowledge of the religion of the Druids be-came extinct, and the nation fell into the last degree of ignorance of their rites and ceremonies. It is no matter of wonder then, that Fingal and his son Ossian disliked the Druids, who were the declared enemies to their succession in the supreme magistracy. It is a singular case, it must be allowed, that there are no traces of religion in the poems ascribed to Ossian, as the poetical compositions of other nations are so closely connected with their mythology. But gods are not necessary, when the poet has genius. It is hard to account for it to those who are not made acquainted with the manner of the old Scottish bards. That race of men carried their notions of martial honour to an extravagant pitch. Any aid given their heroes in battle, was thought to derogate from their fame; and the bards immediately transferred the glory of the action to him who had given that aid. Had the poet brought down gods, as often as Homer has done, to assist his heroes, his work had not consisted of eulogiums on men, but of hymns to superior beings. Those who write in the Gaelic language seldom mention religion in their profane poetry; and when they professedly write of religion, they never mix, with their compositions, the actions of their heroes. This custom alone, even though the religion of || by all appearance he did, his epoch will be the Druids had not been previously extin- the latter end of the third, and beginning guished, may, in some measure, excuse the of the fourth century. Tradition here steps Author's silence concerning the religion of in with a kind of proof. ancient times. To allege that a nation is void of all religion, would betray ignorance of the history of mankind. The traditions of their fathers, and their own observations on the works of nature, together with that superstition which is inherent in the human frame, have, in all ages, raised in the minds of men some idea of a superior being. Hence it is, that in the darkest times, and amongst the most barbarous nations, the very populace themselves had some faint notion, at least, of a divinity. The Indians, who worship no God, believe that he exists. It would be doing injustice to the Author of these Poems, to think, that he had not opened his conceptions to that primitive and greatest of all truths. But let his religion be what it will, it is certain that he has not alluded to Christianity, or any of its rites, in his poems; which ought to fix his opinions, at least, to an æra prior to that religion. Conjectures, on this subject, must supply the place of proof. The persecution begun by Diocletian, in the year 303, is the most probable time in which the first dawning of Christianity in the north of Britain can be fixed. The humane and mild character of Constantius Chlorus, who commanded then in Britain, induced the persecuted Christians to take refuge under him. Some of them, through a zeal to propagate their tenets, or through fear, went beyond the pale of the Roman empire, and settled among the Caledonians; who were ready to hearken to their doctrines, if the religion of the Druids was exploded long before. The exploits of Fingal against Caracul, the son of the king of the world,' are among the first brave actions of his youth. A complete poem, which relates to this subject, is printed in this collection. In the year 210 the emperor Severus, after returning from his expedition against the Caledonians, at York, fell into the tedious illness of which he afterwards died. The Caledonians and Maiatæ, resuming courage from his indisposition, took arms in order to recover the possessions they had lost. The enraged emperor commanded his army to march into their country, and to destroy it with fire and sword. His orders were but ill executed; for his son, Caracalla, was at the head of the army, and his thoughts were entirely taken up with the hopes of his father's death, and with schemes to supplant his brother Geta. He scarcely had entered the enemy's country, when news was brought him that Severus was dead. A sudden peace is patched up with the Caledonians, and, as it appears from Dion Cassius, the country they had lost to Seve|| rus was restored to them. The Caracul of Fingal is no other than Caracalla, who, as the son of Severus, the emperor of Rome, whose dominions were extended almost over the known world, was not without reason called the 'son of the king of the world.' The space of time between 211, the year Severus died, and the beginning of the fourth century, is not so great, but Ossian, the son of Fingal, might have seen the Christians whom the persecution under Diocletian had driven beyond the pale of the Roman empire. These missionaries, either through choice, or to give more weight to the doctrine In one of the many lamentations of the they advanced, took possession of the cells death of Oscar, a battle which he fought and groves of the Druids; and it was from against Caros, king of ships, on the banks this retired life they had the name of Cul- of the winding Carun, is mentioned among dees, which, in the language of the country, his great actions. It is more than probable, signified 'the sequestered persons.' It was that the Caros mentioned here, is the same with one of the Culdees that Ossian, in his with the noted usurper Carausius, who asextreme old age, is said to have disputed sumed the purple in the year 287, and, concerning the Christian religion. This dis- seizing on Britain, defeated the emperor pute, they say, is extant, and is couched in Maximinian Herculius in several naval enverse, according to the custom of the times.gagements, which gives propriety to his The extreme ignorance on the part of Ossian being called the 'king of ships.' The 'windof the Christian tenets, shows, that that re-ing Carun' is that small river retaining still ligion had only lately been introduced, as it is not easy to conceive, how one of the first rank could be totally unacquainted with a religion that had been known for any time in the country. The dispute bears the genuine marks of antiquity. The obsolete phrases and expressions, peculiar to the time, prove it to be no forgery. If Ossian then lived at the introduction of Christianity, as the name of Carron, and runs in the neighbourhood of Agricola's wall, which Carausius repaired to obstruct the incursions of the Caledonians. Several other passages in traditions allude to the wars of the Romans; but the two just mentioned clearly fix the epocha of Fingal to the third century; and this account agrees exactly with the Irish histories, which place the death of Fingal, the son of Combal, in the year 283, and that of Oscar and their own celebrated Cairbre, in the year 296. own heroes, who imitated his character as described in the eulogies of his poets, endeavoured to excel his people in merit, as he was above them in station. This emulation continuing, formed at last the general character of the nation, happily compounded of what is noble in barbarity, and virtuous and generous in a polished people. When virtue in peace, and bravery in war, are the characteristics of a nation, their actions become interesting, and their fame worthy of immortality. A generous spirit is warmed with noble actions, and becomes ambitious of perpetuating them. This is the true source of that divine inspiration, to which the poets of all ages pretended. When they found their themes inadequate to the warmth of their imaginations, they varnished them over with fables supplied with their own fancy, or furnished by absurd traditions. These fables, however ridiculous, had their abettors; posterity either implicitly believed them, or, through a vanity natural to mankind, pretended that they did. They loved to place the founders of their families in the days of fable, when poetry, without the fear of contradiction, could give what character she pleased of her heroes. It is to this vanity that we owe the pre Some people may imagine, that the allusions to the Roman history might have been derived, by tradition, from learned men, more than from ancient poems. This must then have happened at least three hundred years ago, as these allusions are mentioned often in the compositions of those times. Every one knows what a cloud of ignorance and barbarism overspread the north of Europe three hundred years ago. The minds of men, addicted to superstition, contracted a narrowness that destroyed genius. Accordingly we find the compositions of those times trivial and puerile to the last degree. But, let it be allowed, that, amidst all the untoward circumstances of the age, a genius might arise; it is not easy to determine what could induce him to allude to the Roman times. We find no fact to favour any designs which could be entertained by any man who lived in the fifteenth century. The strongest objection to the antiquity of the poems now given to the public under the name of Ossian, is the improbability of their being handed down by tradition through so many centuries. Ages of barbarism, some will say, could not produce poems abound-servation of what remain of the more ancient ing with the disinterested and generous sentiments so conspicuous in the compositions of Ossian; and could these ages produce them, it is impossible but they must be lost, or altogether corrupted, in a long succession of barbarous generations. poems, and to record the connexion of their patrons with chiefs so renowned. Every chief in process of time had a bard in his family, and the office became at last hereditary. By the succession of these bards, the poems concerning the ancestors of the family were handed down from generation to generation; they were repeated to the whole clan on solemn occasions, and always alluded to in the new compositions of the bards. This custom came down to near our own times; and after the bards were discontinued, a great number in a clan retained by memory, or committed to writing, their compositions, and founded the antiquity of their families on the authority of their poems. poems. Their poetical merit made their heroes famous in a country where heroism was much esteemed and admired. The posterity of these heroes, or those who pretended to be descended from them, heard with pleasure the eulogiums of their anThose objections naturally suggest them-cestors; bards were employed to repeat the selves to men unacquainted with the ancient state of the northern parts of Britain. The bards, who were an inferior order of the Druids, did not share their bad fortune. They were spared by the victorious king, as it was through their means only he could hope for immortality to his fame. They attended him in the camp, and contributed to establish his power by their songs. His great actions were magnified, and the populace, who had no ability to examine into his character narrowly, were dazzled with his fame in the rhymes of the bards. In the mean time, men assumed sentiments that are rarely to be met with in an age of barbarism. The bards, who were originally the disciples of the Druids, had their minds opened, and their ideas enlarged, by being initiated into the learning of that celebrated order. They could form a perfect hero in their own minds, and ascribe that character to their prince. The inferior chiefs made this ideal character the model of their conduct; and, by degrees, brought their minds to that generous spirit which breathes in all the poetry of the times. The prince, flattered by his bards, and rivalled by his The use of letters was not known in the north of Europe till long after the institution of the bards: the records of the families of their patrons, their own, and more ancient poems, were handed down by tradition. Their poetical compositions were admirably contrived for that purpose. They were adapted to music; and the most perfect harmony was observed. Each verse was so connected with those which preceded or followed it, that if one line had been |