Ossian, the great heroic poet of the Gael. In form the name is a diminutive—Oisean, Oisin, the little os or deer. In Gaelic story Ossian was the son of Fionn MacCumhail, a celebrated hero who flourished in the 3d century A.D. Fionn gathered about him a band of warriors like himself, who were collectively termed the Féinn. The adventures and exploits of these heroes, and especially of the principal figures in the group—of Fionn himself, magnanimous and wise; of his grandson Oscar, chivalrous and daring; of his nephew Diarmad, handsome and brave; of his rival Goll, the one-eyed; and Conan, the villain of the band—their jealousies, dissensions, and final overthrow constitute the literature of the Feinn. The story goes that Ossian was carried away by his fairy hind-mother to Eilean na h-Oige, 'the isle of the ever young,' from whence he returned betimes; and now old, blind, and alone, 'Ossian after the Feinn,' he told the story of the heroes to St Patrick.
The legends of the Feinn are but a fragment of the heroic literature of the Gael, and in the oldest MSS. the deeds of Fionn and his companions occupy but little space. There were two earlier cycles. The first of these extended from unknown antiquity until the settlement of the Gael in Ireland. The legends of this period preserve traditions of the old divinities of the race, notably the Tuatha de Danann, under the guise of earlier colonists whom the Gael conquered and displaced. Several tales of this cycle are preserved, among which the Fate of the Children of Tuirenn and the Fate of the Children of Lir are the best known. The second, and by far the richest, epoch in Gaelic romance is that of Cuchullin, Conall Cearnach, Fergus, and the Sons of Uisneach. The date is about the commencement of the Christian era, when Conchobar MacNessa ruled Ulster and Queen Meave ruled Connaught. The great literary product of this period is the Tain or Cattle Spoil of Cuaighe, the Iliad of the Gael. Another noted Saga recounts the death of the Sons of Uisneach and suicide of the Lady Deirdre, the Darthula of James Macpherson. Eventually the legends of the Feinn partly absorbed and totally eclipsed the earlier traditions; so that Ossianic literature is now but another name for the heroic literature of the Gael.
These traditions have come down from the misty past in tale and ballad. They were early reduced to writing, and as time goes on we observe great development in incident and detail. In ballads preserved in the Book of Leinster (circa 1150 A.D.) Ossian is represented as old and blind, surviving father and son. A 15th-century MS. recounts the boyish exploits of Fionn. As we come down, the volume of tradition gets fuller, while cycles tend to become confused. The leader of the Feinn is at one time a god, at others a hero, a king, a giant, but usually a great warrior, as wise as brave. In the book of the Dun Cow his mother is Muirn 'of the Fair Neck'; in later traditions we hear of Fionn as the son of a sister of Cuchullin; at another time a Scandinavian princess is his mother. But the literary form in which the legends are preserved remains practically unchanged. A Gaelic tale is of a distinct type—narrative prose with verse interspersed. Gaelic poetry, older and later, is ever rhymed lyric verse.
To the majority of people Ossian is known through the publications of James Macpherson (q.v.). In 1760-62-63 this remarkable man published Fingal, an epic poem, in six books; Temora, another epic, in eight books; with a number of shorter pieces, epic and dramatic—all purporting to be translations of poems composed by Ossian, the son of Fingal. 'The translation,' Dr Blair is made to say in the preface to the Fragments printed in 1760, 'is extremely literal.' These publications, in the opinion of the most competent judges, possessed great literary merit. They brought wealth and fame to the author, and before the end of the century a translation of them appeared in nearly every European language. Encouraged by the success that attended Macpherson's venture, other publications of a somewhat similar kind followed. In 1780 Dr Smith of Campbeltown issued a volume of Scan Dana, or ancient poems, 'composed by Ossian, Orran, Ullin,' &c.; and in 1787 Baron Edmund de Harold, an Irishman in the service of the Elector Palatine, printed at Düsseldorf seventeen so-called Ossianic poems in English. The genuineness of Macpherson's Ossian was early called in question by Dr Johnson and others. An angry controversy followed. It was maintained that Macpherson had jumbled together persons and periods to an unwarrantable extent; that his originals, so far as he had any, were not Scottish, but Irish. If this were all that could be said one would feel justified in regarding, with Professor Windisch of Leipzig, Macpherson's Ossian as a legitimate development of the old traditions. For the legends of the Feinn are the common property of the Gael, whether in Ireland, Scotland, or Man. They are located in Scottish topography time out of mind, and within the last four hundred years quite as rich a harvest of ballad and tale has been recovered in Scotland as in Ireland. It is no doubt absurd to represent Fionn, whom Macpherson after Barbour calls Fingal, as a mighty Caledonian monarch, at one time successfully fighting the Roman legions in the 3d century, at another assisting Cuchullin, who lived in the beginning of the 1st century, to expel from Ireland the Norsemen who made their appearance for the first time in the end of the 8th. But Macpherson had warrant in genuine tradition for mixing up names and epochs. In the 'Battle of Ventry' Fionn defeats the kings of the world. According to a Gaelic tale, his father Cumhal sets up as king of Alba, and the kings of Ireland and Scandinavia combine to effect his overthrow; while the son is ever fighting Norsemen. Zimmer has propounded the theory that the whole of these Finnsage are in their origin traceable to Teutonic sources, the very names by which the hero and his band are known being borrowed from the Norse. Find, finn, Fionn this distinguished Celtic scholar regards as a translation of hvitr, 'white;' while fiann, féinn are merely fjanda, 'foe,' later 'fiend.' Again, in genuine Gaelic ballad Fionn and Cuchullin are not directly brought together, but we find Garbh or the Rough, son of Starno, now fighting the latter hero, and again opposed to Caoiltc, a distinguished companion of the former. According to some spirited verses composed in Perthshire before James Macpherson was born, the tailor of the Feinn passes, in the exercise of his calling, from the house of Goll to Dundalgar, the abode of Cuchullin, and back again to the palace of Fionn, without the least consciousness of anachronism.
But in Macpherson's Ossian there is a wide departure from genuine Gaelic literature and tradition. In his magnifying of the past, in his sympathy with nature, and in his powerful descriptions of the scenery of his own mountain-land James Macpherson is true to the genius of his people. But there he parts company with it. Gaelic literature supplies material for epics and dramas; but the epic and dramatic, as literary forms, were unknown to the people. The dim and shadowy characters of Macpherson are in sharp contrast to the clear-cut features of the Gaelic heroes. Rarely does this author make a definite statement of fact; but when he does, as when, for example, he arms the old Gaels with bows and arrows, he blunders hopelessly. Macpherson is the most vague and abstract of writers; Gaelic poets are wearisome in detail, and revel in the concrete. In the opening of Book iii. of Cathloda, the author inquires regarding the origin and issue of things; but he is indebted for his answer rather to Bishop Berkeley than to the son of Fionn.
Macpherson was not a Gaelic scholar, and the fact is considered conclusive proof of his inability to compose the Gaelic text of Ossian. The only Gaelic printed in the author's lifetime was Temora, Book vii. Ossian was published in all the languages of Europe before he appeared in his own. And when at length the great edition of 1807 did appear, there were Gaelic texts for only one-half of the poems, and for about three-fourths of the matter published by Macpherson in English forty-five years previously. For the others, no 'original,' ancient or modern, has ever yet been found. And it must be allowed that this truncated Ossian does not show to advantage in his native garb. The Gaelic-speaking people have never known him. There is not a single line of these Gaelic texts which can be proved to have been committed to writing before Macpherson's day. The diction is essentially modern. The loan-words are numerous, several of them borrowed from English. The idioms and constructions are colourless, and show traces of classical training rather than of the turns of phrase characteristic of native authors. The so-called blank verse in which the poems are written is unknown to Gaelic poetry. The archaic orthography of the seventh book of Temora was adduced by Dr Clerk of Kilmallie as proof of the antiquity of the writing. But in his frequent use of the tenues (c, p, t), instead of the media (g, d, b), Macpherson merely followed Alexander Macdonald, who published his own poems twelve years previously. By the same gifted man he was led into the blunder of making grian, 'sun,' a masculine noun, contrary to invariable Gaelic usage, which has the sun as well as the moon of the feminine gender.
The truth seems to be that these so-called translations were essentially the compositions of James Macpherson, and that the Gaelic texts were prepared with or without aid from his friends, but how and when we do not now know. The only man who could explain things died and made no sign. One regrettable consequence of this famous episode in the history of Gaelic literature still remains. To many persons the discrediting of James Macpherson means the blotting out of existence of an extensive and interesting literature—the heroic literature of the Gael.
See the Poems of Ossian (1762-63); Brooke's Reliques of Gaelic Poetry (1789); Ossian (1807); Transactions of the Ossianic Society of Dublin (6 vols. 1854-61); Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860-62); Dean of Lismore's Book (1862); Clerk's Ossian (1870); Leabhar na Féinne (1872); Folk and Hero Tales from Argyllshire (1890); Windisch, Irische Texte (1880); Zeitschr. für deutsches Alt., vol. liii.; Academy, February 1891; William Sharp's Introduction to the centenary edition of Ossian (1896); and books noted at MACPHERSON (JAMES).