Nach math an t-aite ifrin féin, A chléirich dh’an lĕir an sgoil! Nach go math is flaitheas Dé Ma gheibhear innt’ féidh is coin? Translation. OSSIAN’S PRAYER. _Ossian._—O clerk of the white book thy tale From me no faith can win; That God or man could keep in pain The brave and generous Finn. _Patrick._—Ay, captive, he is now in hell Who used to scatter gold; Because he scorned to worship God They thrust him in that hold. _O._ Clan-Morni and Clan-Baoisgne brave, If they would there resort, Soon would we have great Finn released, And make our own the fort. _P._ Though Erin’s Clans should all unite, A mighty host, believe, Possessing all that place yourselves, You could not Finn relieve. _O._ But hell is not so bad a place, Clerk, to whom school is clear? As good as is the high heaven of God, If _there_ be dogs and deer? Earnest Reformers could not regard this sort of literature as a powerful auxiliary in the recasting of a nation’s faith; so Carsuel thought the Gaelic population would benefit spiritually by the substitution of his own Gaelic liturgy for the popular songs and tales. Ossian’s “Prayer” appears to have been treated with disparagement by the Highlanders of last century as well, especially by the “clerics,” who were such a source of annoyance to poor Ossian himself while he lived. One feels inclined to ask, after reading some of the old ballads, whether the Patrick who described all the ancient Finians as in hell, was a species of the modern Protestant, so well represented by the late valiant Dr Begg and the late Dr Cumming. Whether or not it is evident that he was a persistent Protestant against the heathenism of the Féinne, indeed quite a thorn in the side of the poor old bard. The Irish monks of later days, however, appear to have taken very kindly to the laureate of the Fingalians, and to have lopped off many of the excrescences of the faithful Patrick. Scottish ecclesiastics appropriated the new Irish versions, but pruned off the excrescences with which the Basque, or Spano-Iberian imagination of the south-west of Ireland, had clothed the simple originals. Carsuel, in the sixteenth century, under the pressure of Reformation doctrines, was the first to touch unkindly the hoary locks of the ancient bard. The Féinne and their singer, however, survived in the affections and traditions of the population, until the Gospel according to the English Puritans and our own Scottish Covenanters began to out-root entirely the semi-heathen and Finian ideals of the people. So now in many districts of the Highlands, and throughout the Islands, much to the disgust of students of folk-lore, like Campbell of Islay, the only singing you hear is, not the rehearsal of the old heroic lays or the Ossianic duans, but the Psalms of David