TO J.D. ESQ. M.P.

Here is a bonne bouche for your antiquarian taste, and Ossianic palate! Almost every evening after vespers, we all assemble in a spacious hall, [1] which had been shut up for near a century, and first opened by the present prince when he was driven for shelter to his paternal ruins.

This Vengolf, this Valk-halla, where the very spirit of Woden seems to preside, runs the full length of the castle as it now stands (for the centre of the building only, has escaped the dilapidations of time), and its beautifully arched roof is enriched with numerous devices, which mark the spirit of that day in which it was erected. This very curious roof is supported by two rows of pillars of that elegant spiral lightness which characterizes the Gothic order in a certain stage of its progress. The floor is a finely tesselated pavement; and the ample but ungrated hearths which terminate it at either end blaze every evening with the cheering contributions of a neighbouring bog. The windows, which are high, narrow, and arched, command on one side a noble view of the ocean, on the other they are closed up.

When I inquired of Father John the cause of this singular exclusion of a very beautiful land view, he replied, ‘that from those windows were to be seen the greater part of that rich tract of land which once formed the territory of the Princes of Inismore; [2] and since,’ said he, ‘the possessions of the present Prince are limited to a few hereditary acres, and a few rented farms, he cannot bear to look on the domains of his ancestors, nor ever goes beyond the confines of this little peninsula.’

This very curious apartment is still called the banquetting-hall — where

‘Stately the feast and high the cheer,
Girt with many a valiant Peer,’

was once celebrated in all the boundless extravagance and convivial spirit of ancient Irish hospitality. But it now serves as an armory, a museum, a cabinet of national antiquities, and national curiosities. In short, it is the receptacle of all those precious relics, which the Prince has been able to rescue from the wreck of his family splendour.

Here, when he is seated by a blazing hearth in an immense armchair, made, as he assured me, of the famous wood of Shilelah, his daughter by his side, his harper behind him, and his domestic altar not destitute of that national libation which is no disparagement to princely taste, since it has received the sanction of imperial approbation; [3] his gratified eye wandering over the scattered insignia of the former prowess of his family; his gratified heart expanding to the reception of life’s sweetest ties — domestic joys and social endearments; — he forgets the derangement of his circumstances — he forgets that he is the ruined possessor of a visionary title; he feels only that he is a man — and an Irishman! While the transient happiness that lights up the vehement feelings of his benevolent breast, effuses its warmth o’er all who come within its sphere.

Nothing can be more delightful than the evenings passed in this vengolf — this hall of Woden; where my sweet Glorvina hovers round us, like one of the beautiful valkyries of the Gothic paradise, who bestow on the spirit of the departed warrior that heaven he eagerly rushes on death to obtain. Sometimes she accompanies the old bard on her harp, or with her voice; and frequently as she sits at her wheel (for she is often engaged in this simple and primitive avocation), endeavours to lure her father to speak on those subjects most interesting to him or to me; or, joining the general conversation, by the playfulness of her humour, or the original whimsicality of her sallies, materially contributes to the ‘molle atque facetum’ of the moment.

On the evening of the day of the picture scene, the absence of Glorvina (for she was attending a sick servant) threw a gloom over our little circle. The Prince, for the first time, dismissed the harper, and, taking me by the arm, walked up and down the hall in silence, while the priest yawned over a book.

I have already told you, that this curious hall is the emporium of the antiquities of Inismore, which are arranged along its walls, and suspended from its pillars. — As much to draw the Prince from the gloomy reverie into which he seemed plunged, as to satisfy m own curiosity and yours, I requested his Highness to explain some characters on a collar which hung from a pillar, and appeared to be plated with gold.

Having explained the motto, he told me that this collar had belonged to an order of knighthood hereditary in his family — of an institution more ancient than any in England, by some centuries.

‘How!’ said I, ‘was chivalry so early known in Ireland? and rather, did it ever exist here?’

‘Did it!’ said the Prince, impatiently, ‘I believe, young gentleman, the origin of knighthood may be traced in Ireland upon surer ground than in any other country whatever. [4] Long before the birth of Christ, we had an hereditary order of knighthood in Ulster, called the Knights of the Red Branch. They possessed, near the royal palace of Ulster, a seat, called the Academy of the Red Branch; and an adjoining hospital, expressively termed the House of the Sorrowful Soldier.

‘There was also an order of chivalry hereditary in the royal families of Munster, named the Sons of Deagha, from a celebrated hero of that name, probably their founder. The Connaught Knights were called the Guardians of Jorus, and those of Leinster, the Clan of Boisgna. So famous, indeed, were the knights of Ireland, for the elegance, strength, and beauty of their forms, that they were distinguished, by way of pre-eminence, by the name of the Heroes of the Western Isles.

‘Our annals teem with instances of this romantic bravery and scrupulous honour. My memory, though much impaired, is still faithful to some anecdotes of both. During a war between the Connaught and Munster Monarchs, in 192, both parties met in the plains of Lena, in this province; and it was proposed to Goll M’Morni, chief of the Connaught Knights, to attack the Munster army at midnight, which would have secured him victory. He nobly and indignantly replied: “On the day the arms of a knight were put into my hands, I swore never to attack my enemy at night, by surprize, or under any kind of disadvantage; nor shall that vow now be broken.”

‘Besides those orders of knighthood with I have already named, there are several others [6] still hereditary in noble families, and the honourable titles of which are still preserved: such as the White Knights of Kerry, and the Knights of Glynn: that hereditary in my family was the knights of the Valley; and this collar [7], an ornament never dispensed with, was found about fifty years back in a neighbouring bog, and worn by my father till his death.

‘This gorget,’ he continued, taking down one which hung on the wall, and apparently gratified by the obvious pleasure evinced in the countenance of his auditor,- ‘This gorget was found some years after in the same bog.’ [8]

‘And this helmet?’ said I —

‘It is called in Irish,’ he replied, ‘salet, and belonged, with this coat of mail, to my ancestor who was murdered in this castle.’

I coloured at this observation, as though I had been myself the murderer.

‘As you refer, Sir,’ said the priest, who had flung by his book and joined us, ‘to the ancient Irish for the origin of knighthood,[9] you will perhaps send us to the Irish Mala, for the derivation of the word mail.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ said the national Prince, ‘I should; but pray, Mr Mortimer, observe this shield. It is of great antiquity. You perceive it is made of wicker, as were the Irish shields in general; although I have also heard they were formed of silver, and one was found near Slimore, in the county of Cork, plated with gold, which sold for seventy guineas.’

‘But here,’ said I, ‘is a sword of curious workmanship, the hilt of which seems of gold.’

‘It is in fact so,’ said the priest — ‘Golden hilted swords have been in great abundance through Ireland; and it is a circumstance singularly curious, that a sword found in the Bog of Cullen should be of the exact construction and form as those found upon the plains of Canae. You may suppose that the advocates for our Milesian origin gladly seize on this circumstance, as affording new arms against the skeptics to the antiquity of our nation.’

‘Here too is a very curious hauberjeon, once perhaps impregnable! And this curious battle-axe,’ said I —

‘Was originally called,’ returned the Prince, ‘Tuath Catha, or axe of war, and was put into the hands of our Galloglasses, or second rank of military.’

‘But how much more elegant,’ I continued, ‘the form of this beautiful spear; it is of course of a more modern date.’

‘On the contrary,’ said the Prince, ‘this is the exact form of the cranuil of lance, with which Oscar is described to have struck Art to the earth.’

‘Oscar!’ I repeated, almost starting — but added — ‘O, true, Mr Macpherson tells us the Irish have some wild improbable tales of Fingal’s heroes among them, on which they found some claim to their being natives of this country.’

‘Some claims!’ repeated the Prince, and by one of those motions which speak more than volumes, he let go my arm, and took his usual station by the fire-side, repeating some claims!

While I was thinking how I should repair my involuntary fault, the good-natured priest said with a smile,

‘You know, my dear Sir, that by one half of his English readers, Ossian is supposed to be a Scottish bard of ancient days; by the other he is esteemed the legitimate offspring of Macpherson’s own muse. But here,’ he added, turning to me, ‘We are certain of his Irish origin, from the testimony of tradition, from proofs of historic fact, and above all, from the internal evidences of the poems themselves, even as they are given us by Mr Macpherson.

‘We who are from our infancy taught to recite them, [10] who bear the appellations of their heroes to this day, and who reside amidst those very scenes of which the poems, even according to their ingenious, but not always ingenuous translator, are descriptive — we know, believe, and assert them to be translated from the fragments of the Irish bards, or seanachies, whose surviving works were almost equally diffused through the Highlands as through this country. Mr Macpherson combined them in such forms as his judgment (too classically correct in this instance) most approved; retaining the old names and events, and altering the dates of his originals as well as their matter and form, in order to give them an higher antiquity than they really possess; suppressing many proofs which they contain of their Irish origin, and studiously avoiding all mention of St Patrick, whose name frequently occurs in the original poems; only occasionally alluding to him under the character of a Culdee; conscious that any mention of the Saint would introduce a suspicion that these poems were not the true compositions of Ossian, but of those Fileas who, in an after day, committed to verse the traditional details of one equally renowned in song and arms.’[11.]

Here, you will allow, was a blow furiously aimed at all my opinions respecting these poems, so long the objects of my enthusiastic admiration: you may well suppose I was for a moment quite stunned. However, when I had a little recovered, I went over the arguments used by Macpherson, Blair, &c. &c. &c. to prove that Ossian was an Highland bard, whose works were handed down to us by oral tradition, through a lapse of fifteen hundred years.

‘And yet,’ said the priest, having patiently heard me out — ‘Mr Macpherson confesses that the ancient language and traditional history of the Scottish nation became confined to the natives of the Highlands, who falling, from several concurring circumstances, into the last degree of ignorance and barbarism, left the Scots so destitute of historic facts, that they were reduced to the necessity of sending John Fordun to Ireland for their history, from whence he took the entire first part of his book. For Ireland, owing to its being colonized from Phonicia, and consequent early introduction of letters there, was at that period esteemed the most enlightened country in Europe: and indeed Mr Macpherson himself avers, that the Irish, for ages antecedent to the Conquest, possessed a competent share of that kind of learning which prevailed in Europe; and from their superiority over the Scots, found no difficulty in imposing on the ignorant Highland seanachies, and established that historic system which afterwards, for want of any other, was universally received.

‘Now, my dear friend, if historic fact and tradition did not attest the poems of Ossian to be Irish, probability would establish it. For if the Scotch were obliged to Ireland, according to Mr Macpherson’s own account, not only for their history, but their tradition, so remote a one as Ossian must have come from the Irish; for Scotland, as Dr Johnson asserts, when he called on Mr Macpherson to shew his originals, had not an Erse manuscript two hundred years old. And Sir George M’Kenzie, though himself a Scotchman, declares, ‘that he had in his possession, an Irish manuscript written by Cairbre Liffeachair, [12] monarch of Ireland, who flourished before St Patrick’s mission.’

‘But,’ said I, ‘even granting these beautiful poems to be effusions of Irish genius, it is strange that the feats of your own heroes could not supply your bards with subjects for their epic verse.’

‘Strange indeed it would have been,’ said the priest, ‘and therefore they have chosen the most renowned chiefs in their annals of national heroism, as their Achilleses, their Hectors, and Agamemnons.’

‘How!’ exclaimed I, ‘is not Fingal a Caldonian chief? Is he not expressly called King of Morven?’

‘Allowing he were, in the originals, which he is not,’ returned the priest, ‘give me leave to ask you where Morven lies?’

‘Why, I suppose of course in Scotland,’ said I, a little unprepared for the question.

‘Mr Macpherson supposes so too,’ replied he, smiling, ‘though he certainly is at no little pains to discover where in Scotland. The fact is, however, that the epithet of Riagh Môr Fhionne, which Mr Macpherson translates King of Morven, is literally King or Chief of the Fhians, or Fians, a body of men of whom Mr Macpherson makes no mention, and which, indeed, either in the annals of Scottish history of Scottish poetry, would be vainly sought. Take then their history, as extracted from the book of Howth into the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy in 1786. [13]

‘”In Ireland there were soldiers called Fynne Erin, appointed to keep the sea coast, fearing foreign invasion, or foreign princes to enter the realm; the names of these soldiers were, Fin M’Cuil, Coloilon, Keilt, Oscar, M’Ossyn, Dermot, O Doyne, Collemagh, Morna, and divers others. These soldiers waxed bold, as shall appear hereafter, and so strong, that they did contrary to the orders and institutions of the kings of Ireland, their chiefs and governors, and became very strong, and stout, and at length would do things without licence of the King of Ireland, &c. &c.” It is added, that one of these heroes was alive till the coming of St Patrick, who recited the actions of his compeers to the Saint. This hero was Ossian, or, as we pronounce it, Ossyn; whose dialogues with the Christian missionary is in the mouth of every peasant, and several of them preserved in old Irish manuscripts. Now the Fingal of Mr Macpherson (for it is thus he translates Fin M’Cuil, sometimes pronounces and spelled Fionne M’Cumhal, or Fionn the son of Cumhal) and his followers, appear like the earth-born myrmidons of Deucalion, for they certainly have no human origin; bear no connexion with the history of their country; are neither to be found in the poetic legend or historic record [14] of Scotland, and are even furnished with appellations which the Caledonians neither previously possessed nor have since adopted. They are therefore introduced to our knowledge, as living in a barbarous age, yet endowed with every perfection that renders them the most refined, heroic, and virtuous of men. So that while we grant to the interesting poet and his heroes our boundless admiration, we cannot help considering them as solecisms in the theory of human nature.

‘But with us, Fingal and his chiefs are beings of real existence, their names, professions, rank, characters, and feats, attested by historic fact as well as by poetic eulogium. Fingal is indeed romantically brave; benevolent and generous; but he is turbulent, restless, and ambitious: he is a man as well as a hero; and both his virtues and his vices bear the stamp of the age and country in which he lived. His name and feats, as well as those of his chief officers, bear an intimate connexion with our national history.

‘Fionne, or Finnius, was the grandsire of Milesius; and it is not only a name to be met with through every period of our history, but there are few old families even at this day in Ireland, who have not the appellative of Finnius in some one or other of its branches; and a large tract of the province of Leinster is called Fingal: a title in possession of one of our most noble and ancient families.

‘Nay, if you please, you shall hear our old nurse run through the whole genealogy of Macpherson’s hero, which is frequently given as a theme to exercise the memory of the peasant children.’ [15]

‘Nay,’ said I, nearly overpowered, ‘Macpherson assures us that Highlanders also repeat many of Ossian’s poems in the original Erse: nay, that even in the Isle of Sky, they still shew a stone which bears the form and name of Cuchullin’s dog.’ [16]

‘This is the most flagrant error of all,’ exclaimed the Prince, abruptly breaking his sullen silence — ‘for he had synchronized heroes who flourished in two distant periods; both Cuchullin and Conal Cearneath are historical characters with us; they were Knights of the Red Branch, and flourished about the birth of Christ. Whereas Fingal, with whom he has united them, did not flourish till near three centuries after. It is indeed Macpherson’s pleasure to inform us, that by the Isle of Mist is meant the Isle of Sky, and on that circumstance alone to rest his claim on Cuchullin ’s being a Caledonian; although, through the whole poems of Fingal and Temora, he is not once mentioned as such: it is by the translator’s notes only we are informed of it.’

‘It is certain,’ said the priest — ‘that in first mention made of Cuchullin in the poem of Fingal, he is simply denominated “the Son of Semo,” “the Ruler of High Temora,” “Mossy Tura’s Chief.” [17] So called, says Macpherson, from his castle on the coast of Ulster, where he dwelt before he took the management of the affairs of Ireland into his hands, though the singular cause which could induce the lord of the Isle of Sky to reside in Ireland previous to his political engagements in the Irish state, he does not mention.

‘In the same manner we are told, that his three nephews came from Streamy Etha, one of whom married and Irish lady; but there is no mention made of the real name of the palce of their nativity, although the translator assures us, in another note, that they also were Caledonians. But in fact, it is from the internal evidences of the poems themselves, not from the notes of Mr Macpherson, nor indeed altogether from his beautiful but unfaithful translation, that we are to decide on the nation to which these poems belong. In Fingal, the first and most perfect of the collection, that hero is first mentioned by Cuchullin as Fingal, King of Desarts — in the original — Inis na bfhiodhuide, or Woody Island; without any allusion whatever to his being a Caledonian. And afterwards he is called King of Selma, by Swaran, a name, with little variation, given to several castles in Ireland. Darthulla’s castle is named Selma; and another, whose owner I do not remember, is termed Selemath. Slimora, to whose fir the spear of Foldath is compared, is a mountain in the province of Munster, and throughout the whole even of Mr Macpherson’s translation, the characters, names, allusions, incidents, and scenery are all Irish. And in fact, our Irish spurious ballads, as Mr Macpherson calls them, are the very originals out of which he has spun the materials for his version of Ossian. [18]

‘Dr Johnson, who strenuously opposed the idea of Ossian being the work of a Scotch bard of the third century, asserts that the “Erse never was a written language, and that there is not in the world a written Erse manuscript an hundred years old.” He adds, “The Welsh and Irish are cultivated tongues, and two hundred years back insulted their English neighbours for the instability of their orthography. Even the ancient Irish letter was unknown in the Highlands in 1690, for an Irish version of the Bible being given there by Mr Kirk, was printed in the Roman character.”

‘When Dr Young, [19] led by tasteful enterprize, visited the Highlands (on an Ossianic research) in 1784, he collected a number of Gaelic poems respecting the race of the Fiens, so renowned in the annals of Irish heroism, [20] and found, that the orthography was less pure than that among us; for he says, “the Erse being only a written language within these few years, no means were yet afforded of forming a decided orthographic standard.” But he augurs, from the improvement which had lately taken place, that we soon may expect to see the Erse restored to the original purity which it possesses in the mother country. And those very poems, whence Mr Macpherson has chiefly constructed his Ossian, bear such strong internal proof of their Irish origin, as to contain in themselves the best arguments that can be adduced against the Scottish claimants on the poems of the bard. But in their translation, [21] many passages are perverted, in order to deprive Ireland of being the residence of Fingal’s heroes.’

‘I remember,’ said the Prince, ‘when you read to me a description of a sea-fight between Fingal and Swaran, in Macpherson’s translation, that I repeated to you, in Irish, the very poem whence it was taken, and which is still very current here, under the title of Laoid Mhanuis M’hoir.’

‘True,’ returned the priest, ‘a copy of which is deposited in the University of Dublin, with another Irish MS entitled, “ Oran eadas Ailte agus do Maronnan,” whence the Battle of Lora is taken.’

The Prince then, desiring Father John to give him down a bundle of old manuscripts which lay on a shelf in the hall, dedicated to national tracts, after some trouble, produced a copy of a poem, called “The Conversation of Ossian and St Patrick,” the original of which, Father John assured me, was deposited in the library of the Irish University.

It is to this poem that Mr Macpherson alludes, when he speaks of the dispute reported to have taken place between Ossian and a Culdee.

At my request, he translated this curious controversial tract. [22] The dispute was managed on both sides with a great deal of polemic ardour. St Patrick, with apostolic zeal, shuts the gates of Mercy on all whose faith differs from his own, and, with an unsaintly vehemence, extends the exclusion, in a pointed manner, to the ancestors of Ossian, who, he declares, are suffering in the limbo of tortured spirits.

The bard tenderly replies, ‘It is hard to believe thy tale, O man of the white book! that Fian, or one so generous, should be in captivity with God or man.’

When, however, the Saint persists in the assurance, that not even the generosity of the departed hero could save him from the house of torture, the failing spirit of ‘the King of Harps’ suddenly sends forth a lingering flash of its wonted fire; and he indignantly declares, ‘that if the Clan of Boisgna were still in being, they would liberate their beloved general from this threatened hell.’

The Saint, however, growing warm in the argument, expatiates on the great difficulty of any soul entering the court of God: to which the infidel bard beautifully replies:— ‘Then he is not like Fionn M’Cuil, our chief of the Fians; for every man upon the face of the earth might enter his court, without asking his permission.’

Thus, as you perceive, fairly routed, I however artfully proposed terms of capitulation, as though my defeat was yet dubious.

‘Were I a Scotchman,’ said I, ‘I should be furnished with more effectual arms against you; but as an Englishman, I claim an armed neutrality, which I shall endeavour to preserve between the two nations. At the same time that I feel the highest satisfaction in witnessing the just pretension of that country (which now ranks in my estimation next to my own) to a work which would do honour to any country so fortunate as to claim its author as her son.’

The Prince, who seemed highly gratified by this avowal, shook me heartily by the hand, apparently flattered by his triumph; and at that moment Glorvina entered.

‘O, my dear!’ said the Prince, ‘you are just come in time to witness an amnesty between Mr Mortimer and me.’

‘I should rather witness the amnesty than the breach,’ returned she, smiling.

‘We have been battling about the country of Ossian,’ said the priest, ‘with as much vehemence as the claimants on the birth-place of Homer.’

‘O! I know of old,’ cried Glorvina, ‘that you and my father are natural allies on that point of contention; and I must confess, it was ungenerous in both, to oppose your united strength against Mr Mortimer’s single force.’

‘What, then,’ said the Prince, good humouredly, ‘I supposed you would have deserted your national standard, and have joined Mr Mortimer, merely from motives of compassion.’

‘Not so, my dear Sir,’ said Glorvina, faintly blushing, ‘but I should have endeavoured to have compromised between you. To you I would have accorded that Ossian was an Irishman, of which I am as well convinced as of any other self-evident truth whatever, and to Mr Mortimer I would have acknowledged the superior merits of Mr Macpherson’s poems, as compositions, over those wild effusions of our Irish bards whence he compiled them.

‘Long before I could read, I learned on the bosom of my nurse, and in my father’s arms, to recite the songs of our national bards, and almost since I could read, the Ossian of Macpherson has been the object of my enthusiastic admiration.

‘In the original Irish poems, if my fancy is sometimes dazzled by the brilliant flashes of native genius, if my heart is touched by strokes of nature, or my soul elevated by sublimity of sentiment, yet my interest is often destroyed, and my admiration often checked, by relations so wildly improbably, by details so ridiculously grotesque, that though these stand forth as the most undeniable proofs of their authenticity and the remoteness of the day in which they were composed, yet I reluctantly suffer my mind to be convinced at the expence of my feeling and my taste. But in the soul-stealing strains of “the Voice of Cona,” as breathed through the refined medium of Macpherson’s genius, no incongruity of style, character, or manner, disturbs the profound interest they awaken. For my own part, when my heart is coldly void, when my spirits are sunk and drooping, I fly to my English Ossian, and then my sufferings are soothed, and every desponding spirit into a sweet melancholy, more delicious than joy itself; while I experience in its perusal a similar sensation as when, in the stillness of an autumnal evening, I expose my harp to the influence of the passing breeze, which faintly breathing on the chords, seems to call forth its own requiem as it expires.’

‘Oh, Macpherson!’ I exclaimed, ‘be thy spirit appeased, for thou hast received that apotheosis thy talents have nearly deserved, in the eulogium of beauty and genius, and from the lip of an Irishwoman.’

This involuntary and impassioned exclamation extorted from the Prince a smile of gratified parental pride, and overwhelmed Glorvina with confusion. She could, I believe, have spared it before her father, and received it with a bow and a blush. Shortly after she left the room.

Adieu! I thought to have returned to M— house, but I know not how it is —

‘Mais un invincible contraint
Malgrè moi fixe ici mes pas,
Et tu sais que pour aller à Corinth,
Le desir seul ne suffit pas.’

Adieu!

H.M.