teaching by living in the Highlands and by having Gaelic taught in their own families. This conviction and cry of the imaginative Celt that the world is slipping from his grasp—that his affairs are in a hopeless condition—has done much injury to his own interests. And it is not at all surprising although his neighbours and the rising generation of his own people have regarded his language and literature with persistent indifference. Ossian himself is proverbially known to us—“Oisein an déigh na Féinne”—as the “last of the race.” It would almost seem that every generation of Gaels during the last millennium regarded itself as the last of the “race.” Yet, strange to say, the Gaelic language is spoken to-day within pretty nearly the same limits as it was a thousand years ago, a fact encouraging to the sanguine and poetic natures of men like William Livingston, that very original Islay bard, who once sang as follows:— “Cànain àigh nam buadhan òirdhearc, A b’ fharsuing cliù air feadh na h-Eòrpa; Bithidh i fathast mar a thòisich, Os ceann gach cainnt ’na h-iuchair eòlais.” ENGLISH:— _Strange mystic pow’rs lie in that tongue, Whose praise through Europe wide has rung; As ’twas of yore in school and college, It shall be first—the key of knowledge._ [Illustration: (decorative end-of-chapter icon)] [Illustration: (decorative banner)] CHAPTER I. EARLY GAELIC LITERATURE—PATRICK. “Si labhair Padric ’nnínse Fail na Riogh, ’S an faighe caomh sin Colum náomtha ’n I.”— _Maclean in Lhuyd’s Ar. Brit. (1707.)_ ENGLISH: _’Twas it that Patrick spoke in Inis-Fayle, And saintly Calum in Iona’s Isle._ The present state of our knowledge does not enable us to assign an exact date to the first beginnings of Gaelic literature. The most ancient ballads have certainly come down to us through the hands of Gaelic Churchmen; and it may be taken as absolutely certain that writing was unknown until it was introduced by Christian missionaries. The monuments of Runes and Oghams, the study of which may be pursued in the works of Stephens, Anderson, and Ferguson, can scarcely be regarded as literature in the proper sense of the term. At the threshold of the temple of Gaelic letters we are confronted with one name which can not be ignored—that of Ossian which we see inscribed on the portals. In his days and those of his peculiar people, the Féinne, the Pagan and pre-Celtic Period was coming to a close. Let us look a little at the picture that has been handed down to us of this great bard with whom the heathen dispensation ended.