OSSIAN, POEMS OF. Ossian, or Oisin (a word which is interpreted the "little fawn"), a Celtic warrior-poet, is said to have lived in the 3d c., and to have been the son of Fingal or Fin MacCumhaill. The poems which are ascribed to him in manuscripts of any antiquity arc few and short, and of no remarkable merit. But in 1760-63, a High land school-master, James _Macpherson (q.v.), published two epics, Fingal and lemora, and several smaller pieces and fragments. which he affirmed to be translations into Eng lish prose of Gaelic poems written by Ossian and preserved by oral tradition in the Scottish Highlands. Their success was wonderful. They were received with admira tion in almost every country of Europe, and were translated not only into French and Italian, but into Danish and Polish. But their authenticity was challenged almost as ori as they saw the light, and a long and angry controversy followed. That they were what they claimed to be was maintained by Dr. Blair, lord Karnes, the poet Gray, and sir John Sinclair. That they were more or less the fabrication of Macpherson him self was maintained by Dr. Johnson, David Hume, Malcolm Laing, and John Pinker ton. While this controversy still raged, another sprang up scarcely less angry or pro tracted. Macpherson made Ossian a Scotch Highlander, but the Irish claimed him as an Irishman. The fact is lie was both: for in those early times the n.e. of Ireland and the w. coast of Scotland were practically one country; the people spoke one language, they were of one blood; and the narrow strip of sea that divided them served not as a wall of separation, but rather as an easy passage of communication by means of boat'.
As to the real authorship of the poems, as the original manuscripts which Macpherson used have never been produced, there will always remain doubts; one thing only we know, that he did use materials of the same 'nature as the Ossianic traditions that may be picked up from the mouth of the people in many parts of Ireland and ti.e High lands at the present day; but how far under Macplierson's hands they were remodeled remains a secret. The recent contribution to this question made by J. F. Campbell in his Leabhati ita Feinne—a digest of all the Ossianic ballads either published by others or collected by Mr. Campbell himself—has not tended much to clear up the matter. No trace of Macpherson's two large poems has been recovered. On one point all Gaelic scholars seem agreed—that Macpherson did not, and could not have written the Gaelic. Poems ascribed to Ossian, committed to writing in the Highlands in the first !mil of the 16th c., are printed in the Dean of Lismore's Book (Edin 1862), with translathms into English. and into modern Gaelic. The poems ascribed to Ossian, preserved in Ire land, were published by the Ossianic society in 6 volumes (Dublin, 1854-61). Students of the Ossianic poems will find much assistance from consulting the edition of the Gaelic with a new translation by Dr. Clark of Kilmallie (Edin. 1870). In 1876 the Ossian controversy was again agitated, but came to nothing.