It is curious now, looking back on the great Macpherson Ossianic controversy, which called forth all this industry, this laborious writing and research, to reflect on its rise and progress. Doubtless it was felt then, as it is recognised now, that the only real way to solve the riddle was to glean in the fields of poetry and history—a task prior to that period too much neglected. They wanted data. Had they the records we now possess, and had they been able to read the ancient scrolls, there would have been no literary wrangle. How quietly and naturally the question, then a problem, has with the advent of scientific scholarship solved itself. As a controversy the Macpherson squabble is now as extinct as the dodo. And the Celtic champions who heralded the dawn of last century, as we did of this, would perhaps be almost as much taken aback with the issue could they know, as with the wonders of steam or electricity and the camera. It is an interesting fact that the earliest to achieve a printed collection of ancient Gaelic poetry was Ronald Macdonald, son of the Ardnamurchan bard, who published a volume in 1776, presumably from materials treasured by his father. But if through the past centuries the master gleaners appeared only at rare intervals, the nineteenth has not been thus barren. For almost simultaneously with the Celtic renaissance abroad, enthusiastic harvesters entered the field at home. Four works especially, all produced within the last sixty years, call for particular attention. Following the modern method, their authors have each taken up a special line, ransacking the past and the present for their own peculiar pearls. And thus for the first time the whole Scottish field of Gaelic poetry has been well-nigh gone over, and representative poems of every age and class have been gleaned and printed. First in the order of the antiquity of its contents, though not first in the field, comes Campbell’s _Leabhar na Feinne_. It appeared in 1872, its title page announcement sufficiently indicating its aim and scope. As a sub-title, the latter runs as follows:— “Heroic Gaelic Ballads Collected in Scotland Chiefly from 1512 to 1871 copied from old manuscripts preserved at Edinburgh and elsewhere, and from rare books; and orally collected since 1859; with lists of collections and of their contents; and with a short account of the documents quoted. Arranged by J. F. Campbell, Niddry Lodge, Kensington, London, W.”