"A small part of the way through this glen having been marked out by
two rows of camp-colours, placed at a good distance one from another,
whereby to describe the line of the intended breadth and regularity of
the road by the eye, there happened to lie directly in the way an
exceedingly large stone, and, as it had been made a rule from the
beginning to carry on the roads in straight lines, as far as the way
would permit, not only to give them a better air, but to shorten the
passenger's journey, it was resolved that the stone should be removed,
if possible, although otherwise the work might have been carried along
on either side of it.
"The soldiers, by vast labour, with their levers and jacks, or
hand-screws, tumbled it over and over till they got it quite out of the
way, although it was of such an enormous size that it might be matter
of great wonder how it could ever be removed by human strength and art,
especially to such who had never seen an operation of that kind; and
upon their digging a little into that part of the ground where the
centre of the stone had stood, there was found a small cavity, about
two feet square, which was guarded from the outward earth, at the
bottom, top, and sides, by square flat stones."[2]
"The people of the country," says Newte, who travelled through the
district in 1791, "venerating the memory of the bard, rose with one
consent, and with bagpipe music carried the sacred dust away by force,
and buried it on the top of Dunmore, in the centre of his father's
fort." Burns visited Ossian's grave. Writing to his brother, on his
return to Edinburgh from the North, he says--"Being warm from Ossian's
country, where I have seen his very grave, what care I for fertile
plains and fishing villages?" Whether the dust of Ossian slumbers
amidst these mountains or within this glen no one can say--we have but
dim tradition to guide us; but surely no spot seems more suitable for
the resting-place of the Caledonian bard. No monument is erected to
perpetuate his memory, nor speaking stone whispers to each passer-by in
the language of Wordsworth--
"In this still place remote from men
Sleeps Ossian in the narrow glen";
but it is surrounded by mountains torn and thunder-split, and it is
laved by a stream as pellucid as his own Cona, which ever sings as it
flows the lonely dirge of the bard who sang of battles and the breath
of stormy war. "We feel a pride," says Fittis, writing of Ossian's
tomb, "we feel a pride in cherishing the thought that the hoary bard's
pilgrimage closed in Perthshire's 'narrow glen,' where the murmuring
Almond sang his requiem, and that his ashes still rest not far from the
banks of the stream."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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