Chapter I: Front Matter

THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.

No. III. JANUARY 1876.

THE STATE OF THE OSSIANIC CONTROVERSY.

[CONTINUED.]

MR ARNOLD in that handsome, but slightly ambiguous admission of his, that the Celts in their intellectual capacity come very near the secret of nature and of natural magic, does not seem to imply more in reality than that they have a subtler sense of certain natural affinities than their Anglo-Saxon brethren have; that they apprehend more surely when, where, and how the truest impress of physical nature occurs on the percipient faculties of the soul, than men of a more phlegmatic constitution do; and that they can draw from such intuitions of their own a sort of inspiration, or second-sight of nature, comparable to prophecy, which gives their highest poetic utterance a rapt enthusiasm--and the accuracy of this estimate need not be disputed, but, so far as Ossian is concerned, it must be considerably extended. To read Ossian as we do, from the text of Macpherson, there was another sort of insight, purely scientific, into the mysteries of nature, inherited and expressed by him; a certain acquaintance with her hidden powers, and a certain augury of her possible future development, if men could only attain to it, far beyond the mere rapt enthusiasm of a poet, or the so-called second-sight of a seer. Whether this peculiar faith of his was derived by tradition, and if so, from whom; or whether it was the result of practical experiment in his own generation, is foreign for the moment to our present inquiry. But that it was relied upon as an endowment of the most gifted heroes; that it was exercised by them in extremity, as if to subdue nature from whom they had borrowed it, and to wrest the very power of destruction out of her hand; and that such practical conquest was sometimes achieved by them, or is said to have been achieved by them, is just as certain as that Macpherson's translation is before us now. What we refer to more especially for the present, is the secret of extracting or discharging electricity from the atmosphere by mechanical means--by the thrust of a spear, or of a sword, into the bosom of the low-hanging cloud, or lurid vapour, and so dislodging the imaginary spirit of evil by which they were supposed to be tenanted. Only the very best, and bravest, and wisest could prevail in such conflict with nature; but they did prevail, according to Ossian; and the weapons of their warfare, and the mode of their assault, were precisely similar to what an experimentalist in electricity might employ at the present day, or to what the Egyptians employed in the days of Moses. We shall not now go further back in the prosecution of this inquiry, but would seriously recommend the reader who has any difficulty on the subject to compare, at his leisure, the work of Moses on the top of Mount Sinai and elsewhere, with an Egyptian "rod" in his hand, and the exploits of Fingal in conflict with the Spirit of Loda on the heights of Hoy, with a sword in his hand. There might have been a far-derived and long traditional secret connection between the two, most edifying, or at least most curious, to investigate; or they might both have resulted from that sort of intuition which only the most gifted of any nation enjoy independently, re-appearing again in Franklin, and now familiarised to the world. Let those who doubt, or who differ on this point, satisfy themselves. What we are now concerned to maintain and prove is, that the fact is more than once described by Ossian, in circumstances, in situations, and with instrumentalities, which render the allegation of it at least indubitable. In the case above referred to, for example, Fingal, challenged and assaulted in a thunderstorm by the Spirit of Loda, encounters his antagonist with a sword, on the very verge of a cliff overhanging the Atlantic; and by one or two scientific thrusts, with incredible daring, disarms the cloud, dissipates the storm, and sends his atmospheric adversary shrieking down the wind with such violence that "Innistore shook at the sound; the waves heard it on the deep, and stopped on their course with fear." The scene is described in that well-known passage in _Carric-Thura_, which Macpherson himself characterises as "the most extravagant fiction in all Ossian's poems."

Now the question as regards the authenticity or reliability of this very passage, is whether Macpherson understood the meaning of it; what it represented, where the conflict occurred, or how it happened? It has been sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere--in "Ossian and the Clyde," pp. 311-324--that the encounter took place near the celebrated "Dwarfie Stone" on the western headland of Hoy in the Orkneys--a region more remarkable for its sudden electric gatherings and violent atmospheric currents than almost any other in Great Britain, and at that particular spot so much so, that the very scene described in Ossian has been selected by Walter Scott for a similar electrical display in the "Pirate." But of this obvious fact, and of all that is connected with it in his own translation, Macpherson is so ignorant that he not only does not point it out, but does not understand it, and cannot even conjecture where it was. His great antagonist Laing is equally at fault on the subject, and by way of exposing, as he believes, the dishonesty of Macpherson, endeavours to show that in patching up his account Macpherson had mistaken Thurso for Thura. Macpherson, in fact, knew nothing either about Thurso or Thura--even less than Laing did; and it is only in the work above cited that either the scene has been identified, or the encounter explained.

Here, then, is a question, not of linguistic criticism, but of scientific fact--of geographical position, of atmospheric agency--which should be disposed of on its own merits, and which, like many others of the same sort, must ultimately transfer the whole inquiry to a much higher field than that of syllables and syntax.

But the description in question, it may be objected, is very much exaggerated, and therefore cannot be relied on: which is the very objection Macpherson himself urged--that it is "the most extravagant fiction in all Ossian's poems." But if that was the case in his opinion, how could the passage be his own? It was easy enough either to remedy or explain it, if he could explain it, or not to introduce it. On the other hand, when rightly understood, there is no undue exaggeration in the account at all--not more than might be reasonably expected from a poet of the highest sensibility and the most vivid imagination in describing an incomprehensible natural phenomenon; not more, for example, than in "the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words" on Mount Sinai. Still it is not the question of descriptive exaggeration, but of scientific fact, that is now before us; and if the whole of the so-called conflict of Fingal with the Prince of the Power of the Air on Roraheid in Hoy was so utterly inexplicable to Macpherson, both as to place and character, that he speaks of it hopelessly as a story "concerning ghosts," on what principle of critical consistency, or of common sense, can he be said to have been the author of it? If the Septuagint translators, for example, had added a note of their own on the giving of the Law at Sinai, to the effect that it appeared "the most extravagant fiction" to them, at the same time transferring, in defiance of their own text, the entire scene from one end of the Red Sea to the other, would any reader in his senses accuse the Seventy of having fabricated not only the two chapters in question, but the whole Book of Exodus--even although the original had been now lost? Their very simplicity and ignorance would have acquitted them. Yet Macpherson, in similar circumstances, is to be held guilty, although he could have more easily cleared himself by altering or omitting the whole passage, than a man in London could prove by an _alibi_ that he had been guilty of no forgery at Inverness or Edinburgh six hours before! But if this hitherto incomprehensible passage in Ossian be genuine then the entire poem of _Carric-Thura_, which is identified with it in every word and syllable from beginning to end, must be genuine also.

In the same sort of field, but without the addition of supernatural agency, we have another scene of scientific import in the _War of Inisthona_. Inisthona, according to Macpherson, was on the coast of Norway--he did not know where; Inisthona, according to Laing, was a wilful corruption of Inis-owen in Lough Foyle; Inisthona, in point of fact, was Iceland--as clearly and distinctly so in Macpherson's own text, as latitude, longitude, and physical configuration can make it; far more distinctly recognisable than any _Ultima Thule_ of the Romans. But here, in this Inisthona, we have first a fountain surrounded with mossy stones, in a grassy vale, at the head of a bay; then a wilderness of half a day's journey inland; then a lake at the end of the wilderness, exhaling pestilential vapours, called Lake Lano--but no volcano visible as yet: and in Iceland we have still the basin of the fountain, surrounded with its mossy stones, petrified and dried up by volcanic heat, at the head of the bay; we have still the dreary wilderness beyond it, now scorched and blackened, ending in the Plain of Thingvalla, where the King of Denmark was entertained more than a twelvemonth ago; we have still the lake beyond that, where it should be, but now relieved of its sulphurous vapours by eruptive jets of steam in its neighbourhood; and besides, we have now Mount Hecla in active operation, by whose accumulated fires and dreadful discharges, since Ossian's day, the whole island has been torn and desolated. Here, therefore, again, the same question of fact arises, and must be disposed of by all reasonable inquirers. In this one identification we have geography, geology, history, and navigation combined, beyond Macpherson's own comprehension--earthquakes, subterranean fires, latent volcanic forces; a beautiful island where there is now desolation; and a warlike people occupying its soil, subject to the Danes 600 years and more before the Danes themselves are supposed to have discovered it. In the face of such a revelation as this, nowhere else to be found but in Ossian, what does it signify that the Gaelic text of _Inisthona_ has perished? The fact that it survives in English is only a greater miracle, for which we are indebted solely to the patience and fidelity of a man who has been called a liar and an impostor.

One more miracle has yet to be added in the same field--viz., that Lake Lego or Lough Neagh in Ireland, and Lake Lano in Iceland, both emitting pestilential vapours, are geographically connected in Ossian with subterranean volcanic movements which pass from Ireland, by the west coast of Scotland, through the Orkneys to Inisthona; and thus the latest theories of the most accomplished geologists have been anticipated more than a hundred years before their announcement, by the work of a man who is supposed to have had no original to guide him, and who himself had not the remotest idea of what his own words conveyed.

It remains then, after such illustrations, for those who still deny the authenticity of Ossian to declare whether they have ever studied him; and for those who still wrangle about the style of Macpherson's so-called Gaelic to decide whether they will continue such petty warfare among vowels and consonants, and ill-spelt mediæval legends, when the science, the history, the navigation, the atmospheric phenomena, and the impending volcanic changes of Western Europe fifteen hundred years ago, are all unveiled and detailed, with an accuracy and a minuteness beyond cavil or competition, in the matchless English translation before them. Will our most erudite grammarians never understand? Would they abandon Genesis, shall we say, because _Elohim_ and _Jehovah_ are sometimes interchanged in the text? Can they believe that any Jew, who could concoct a book like Genesis, did not also know that _Elohim_ was a plural noun? Can they any more, then, believe that a Celtic man with brains enough to fabricate poems like _Fingal_ and _Temora_ did not know that the Gaelic name for the sun was feminine? Can they see no other way of accounting for such alleged variations of gender, and number, and case, than by forgery, when the very forger himself must have seen them? Or do they seriously prefer some letter of the Gaelic alphabet to a law of nature? Will they forego the facts of an epoch, for the orthography of a syllable? If so, then the friends of Ossian, who is one great mass of facts, must turn once more to the common sense of the public, and leave his etymological detractors at leisure to indulge their own predilections, and to entertain one another.

In the present aspect of the controversy, indeed, the only antagonists entitled to anything like a patient hearing are the respectable, perhaps venerable, geologists and antiquarians who still lodge or linger about the Roman Wall; who talk, with a solemn air, about stern facts; who are also fortified by the authority of Hugh Miller and Smith of Jordanhill, and are led on to continuous defeat on their own ground, under the auspices of the _Scotsman_, who knows well how to shut the door politely in any man's face who pursues them. These gentlemen are far from being either unimportant or unworthy antagonists, if they would only speak intelligently for themselves and not allow their credit to be usurped by some nameless reviewer in a newspaper, who may know less about the whole matter in dispute than they do about Sanscrit. But let them have patience. Their favourite haunts, and impregnable strongholds, about Dunglass and Duntocher, shall be investigated with religious care; and the waters of the Clyde, as high as they will honestly flow, let in upon them without ceremony or remorse. As for the others, who, with no great semblance of either grace or grammar to support them, persist in affirming, with point-blank stolid effrontery, that Macpherson "must have been an impostor," and that Ossian is a "fudge"--they may safely be consigned in silence to their legitimate fate.

P. HATELY WADDELL.

(_To be Concluded in our next._)

TO PROFESSOR JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

A LOCHABER LILT.

A health to thee, Stuart Blackie!
(I drink it in _mountain dew_)
With all the kindliest greetings
Of a heart that is leal and true.
Let happen what happen may
With others, by land or sea;
For me, I vow if I drink at all,
I'll drink a health to thee.

A health to thee, Stuart Blackie!
A man of men art thou,
With thy lightsome step and form erect,
And thy broad and open brow;
With thy eagle eye and ringing voice
(Which yet can be soft and kind),
As wrapped in thy plaid thou passest by
With thy white locks in the wind!

I greet thee as poet and scholar;
I greet thee as wise and good;
I greet thee ever lord of thyself--
No heritage mean, by the rood!
I greet thee and hold thee in honour,
That thou bendest to no man's nod--
Amidst the din of a world of sin,
Still lifting thine eye to God!

Go, search me the world and find me;
Go, find me if you can,
From the distant Faroes with their mists and snows,
To the green-clad Isle of Man;
From John O' Groats to Maidenkirk,
From far Poolewe to Prague--
Go, find me a better or wiser man
Than the Laird of Altnacraig.

Now, here's to the honest and leal and true,
And here's to the learned and wise,
And to all who love our Highland glens
And our Bens that kiss the skies;
And here's to the native Celtic race,
And to each bright-eyed Celtic fair;
And here's to the Chief of Altnacraig--
And hurrah! for the Celtic Chair!

NETHER-LOCHABER.

GENERAL SIR ALAN CAMERON, K.C.B.,

COLONEL 79th CAMERON HIGHLANDERS.

A POPULAR writer[A] of the past generation, in some introductory observations to his historical essay, makes the following on Scotland and its natives:--Considering the limited population and extent of that country, it has made a distinguished figure in history. No country in modern times has produced characters more remarkable for learning, valour, or ability, or for knowledge in the most important arts, both of peace and of war; and though the natives of that formerly independent, and hitherto unconquered kingdom, have every reason to be proud of the name of _Britons_, which they have acquired since the Union; yet they ought not to relinquish all remembrance of the martial achievements, and the honourable characteristics of their ancestors. Acting on the recommendation embodied in the foregoing quotation; and as the conductors of the _Celtic Magazine_ have intimated their intention of making biographies form occasionally part of its contents, the following sketch of one who, in his day was not the least distinguished among our Highland countrymen, but of whose eminent services to his country, little or nothing has appeared, may prove interesting. Biography is admitted to be one of the most interesting sections of literature. We therefore trust that this feature in the Magazine will be appreciated. The field will be found extensive, inasmuch that, happily for the country, its benefactors have been numerous, the record of whose deeds deserve to be remembered in this Celtic periodical for the entertainment, and may be, the emulation of its readers.

The details of the life and public services of the gallant gentleman now submitted, and deserving record, are supplied partly from oral information collected at intervals, and partly from documents received by the writer, but which, although imperfect, it is hoped may be acceptable, even at this distance since the lifetime of the subject.

The absence of any adequate notice of Sir Alan Cameron's services, save that in a couple of pages of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ at his death (1828) may be ascribed much to his own reticence in supplying information respecting them. Sir John Philliphart and Colonel David Stewart, when collecting materials for their respective "Military Annals," expressed their regret that Sir Alan's reply to their applications for particulars of his life and career was of the most meagre nature. Although in common with the majority of other distinguished men, averse to giving publicity to the incidents of his life, he was otherwise than reticent with his friends, and was never happier than when surrounded by them. His house in Gloucester Place was a rendezvous during many years for his companions in arms, and his "Highland cousins" (as he fondly termed them) were always received with a genial welcome. Notwithstanding the general absence of his name from unofficial publications, it may be affirmed, without hesitation, that in his day few were better known, and there was none whose fame stood higher than _Ailean an Earrachd_. In the army he was held in universal popularity, where, in consequence of his familiar habit of addressing the Irish and Highland soldiers with the Gaelic salute of "_Cia mar tha thu_," he was known as "Old cia mar tha." Indeed, he is so styled in Mr Lever's novel of "Charles O'Malley," where he is represented (vol. 1, chap, x.) as one of the friends of General Sir George Dashwood. Another writer (Miss Sinclair's "Scotland and the Scotch") refers to him as "a frequent visitor at her father's house in London, and a celebrity of the past generation who was said to have been one of the principals in the last duel fought with broadswords; and also known to his friends for the more than hearty grasp he shook their hands with." These distinctions, no doubt, combined many incidents for their existence. A tragic adventure at the outset of his career; his imprisonment during the American War; and afterwards his services with the Highlanders throughout the wars of the period. He was remarkable for the immense size and powerful structure of his person. In a verse from one of the many Gaelic songs written in honour of _Fear an Earrachd_, alluding to his majestic form and figure when in the Highland costume, the bard says:--

Nuair theid thu 'n uidheam Gaidheil
Bu mhiann le Ban-Righ sealladh dhiot,
Le t-osan is math fiaradh,
Do chalp air fiamh na gallinné:
Sporan a bhruic-fhiadhaich,
Gun chruaidh shnaim riamh ga theannachadh,
Gur tric thu tarruing iall as
'S ga riachaidh a measg aineartaich.

He was the firm friend of the soldier, and considered every man in his regiment committed to his personal care. In health he advised them; in sickness he saw that their wants were supplied; and once any became disabled, he was incessant in his efforts till he secured a pension for them. Numerous are the stories told of the encounters between Sir Harry Torrens (Military Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief) and himself for his persistent applications for pensions and promotions. These poor fellows, for whom he was never tired of interceding, were naturally grateful for his fatherly feeling towards them. Such is an outline of the characteristics of the subject of the following Biographical sketch.