"Over the Caspian. "So frowned the mighty combatants, that hell "Grew darker at their frown." The apostrophe to the maid of Inistore-" Weep on thy "rock of roaring winds, O maid of Inistore! bend thy fair "head over the waves: he is fallen! thy youth is low, pale "beneath the sword of Cuthullin;" is borrowed from Hardiknute : "On Norway's coast the widow'd dame, May wash the rocks with tears, May lang look o'er the shipless seas, "Before her mate appears. "Cease, Emma, cease to hope in vain! "Thy lord lies in the clay 39," &c. The episode of Cairbar and Brassolis contains a singular detection. "Here rests their dust, Cuthullin; and these "two lonely yews sprung from their tombs, and wish to "meet on high." As the conceit had been reprobated by Dr. Blair, the obsequious text of Ossian disappeared. "The lonely yews sprung from their tomb, to shade them. "from the storm 40." The yew was not then a funeral plant, nor appropriated to the grave till introduced into church-yards. But if the two lonely yews that sprung from their graves were suggested by Blair, the poet's "chearless unsocial plant," I am afraid that the sentimental conceit was derived from Swift's version of Baucis and Philemon metamorphosed into yews: when the parson cut Baucis down, the other tree Even this is borrowed from the older ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, drowned at sea; 66 O lang, lang may our ladies look," &c. 4 Blair's Diss. 383. Fingal, 1st edit. 18. Ossian's Poems, 1778. v. i. "Grew scrubby, died a-top, was stunted, "So the next parson stubbed and burnt it." The next book opens with Crugal's ghost of mist, introduced in imitation of the shade of Patroclus, Texas, like a thin smoke, but diversified happily by the "stars "dim-twinkling through his form." The same image is repeated in Cuthullin; but not satisfied with this success, the author, to vindicate his ancestors from idolatry, produced afterwards, in a serious history, a poem in Earse and English, representing Griannius, the genius of the sun, arrested and struggling, in the polar regions, with a sudden frost; and the Cruglians, a name derived from Crugal, shrinking into their caves at his horrible outcries ". A single image in Fingal is derived from frost. "The heroes "stood on the heath, like oaks with all their branches "round them, when they echo to the stream of frost, and "their withered branches are rustling to the wind." But this, and another transplanted from the Highlander, "They "stood like a half consumed grove of oaks, when we see "the sky through its branches, and the meteor passing be"hind," are both from Milton: "Yet faithful how they stood, "Their glory withered, as when heaven's fire As, "Satan alarmed, "Collecting all his might, dilated stood, 4 Introduction to the Hist. of Britain, 168. "His stature reached the sky, and on his crest "Sat horror plumed;" "Horrendumque intonat armis, << Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis "Cum fremit ilicibus quantus, gaudetque nivali " Vertice se attollens pater Appenninus ad auras." VIRGIL. So "Cuthullin stood before him like a hill that catches "the clouds of heaven: the winds contend on its head of pines: the hail rattles on its rocks. But firm in its "strength it stands, and shades the silent vale of Cona." In another passage, "Fierce Cairbar rushed along like "ocean's whale. He saw the death of his daughter. He "roared in the midst of thousands.” "Penthesilea furens, mediisque in millibus ardet.” VIRGIL. But perhaps the most egregious imitation is that of Milton's sun in eclipse. "Connal mounts the car of "gems. They stretch their shields like the darkened moon, the daughter of the starry skies, when she moves. "a dun circle through heaven, and dreadful change is ex"pected by men." "Or from behind the moon "In dim eclipse, disasterous twilight sheds "Perplexes monarchs." As if the moon, moving a dun circle through heaven, were insufficient to indicate the dim eclipse, the dreadful change expected by men, which was suppressed in the first Original ballads. tation might remain. The episode of Comal and Galvina, who tries her lover in the arms of a man, is a gross imitation of the fable of Procris; and Hardiknute is almost literally repeated by Fingal. "Gaul, take thy terrible "sword. Fergus, bend thy crocked yew. Throw, Fillin, thy "lance through heaven." And, "Robin of Rothsay, bend thy bow, Cuthullin "stands alone like a rock in a sandy vale. "The sea comes with its waves, and roars against its hard"ened sides; its head is covered with foam; the hills are "echoing around," from a noted simile in Homer and Virgil. "Ille, velut pelagi rupes immota, resistit ; ÆNEID. 7. Instead of tracing perpetual imitations, let us proceed to the originals. Ossian's courtship of Evirallin is an episode for which there is some foundation. The original is a ballad of twenty-two stanzas, addressed to a woman with whose proposals the frigid old bard, to use his translator's expression ", was unable to comply. It begins thus: "He is a dog "who is not compliant;" and, instead of the sentimental affectation of Ossian, discovers little else than the blunt and barbarous manners of the age. "But I tell you, wanton 4 Ossian, ii. 142. "girl! I once was valiant in battle, though now I am worn out with age. When we went to lovely Evir of the shin"ing hair, the maid of the white hand, the disdainful "favourite of Cormac, we went to Loch Lego, twelve men "the most valiant beneath the sun. Would you know our determined resolution? it was to make cowards fly "before us. Then Bran said, and he did not speak a false"hood, if I had twelve daughters, such is his fame among "the Fions, Ossian should have the first 43." Such are the originals, and should they, in some passages, exceed expectation, let it be remembered that the Irish, to which they belong, was a written language, cultivated since the introduction of letters by Saint Patrick. But let us hear the translator. "Daughter of the hand of snow, I was not so "mournful and blind, I was not so dark and forlorn, when "Evirallin loved me. Evirallin with the dark brown hair, "the white bosomed love of Cormac. I went in suit of the "maid to Lego's sable surge-to Branno of the sounding "mail;—though twelve daughters of beauty were mine, "thine were the choice, thou son of fame." i. 284. Thus he proceeds to enumerate Ossian's champions, and their combat with Cormac, in prose sublime; but he retains inadvertently, the barbarous conclusion of the original, that the humane Ossian, whose generosity is so superior to Homer's, cuts off his rival's head, which he carries to Fingal. The original of Fingal itself, is not more extensive. Ossian and St. Patrick the clerk, or the combat of Fingal and Magnus, is a ballad of forty-seven quatrains of short lines, (the second and fourth rhyming together) a few passages of which are transcribed in Fingal. "The seven brave sons of the little lake of Lano, says Gaul without guile, 43 Transact. of the Royal Irish Academy, i. 52. Collect. of Gaelic Poems by Gillies at Perth, 1786, p. 11, |