In Ossianic times there were prophets and prophetesses, who were consulted by the chiefs of armies and by the common people on important occasions. Even a thousand years after the time of Ossian, the bards uttered their prophetic sayings. We have the story of five bards passing an October night in the house of a chief, who, like his guests, was a poet, entertaining their hearers with poetic descriptions of the night. The first bard delivered himself thus: "Night is dull and dark. The clouds rest on the hills. No star with green trembling beam; no moon looks from the sky. I hear the blast in the wood, but I hear it distant far. The stream of the valley murmurs, but its murmur is sullen and sad. From the tree, at the grave of the dead, the long-howling owl is heard. I see a dim form on the plain! It is a ghost! it fades, it flies. Some funeral shall pass this way: the meteor marks the path. The distant dog is howling from the hut of the hill. The stag lies on the mountain moss: the hind is at his side. She hears the wind in his branchy horns. She starts, but lies again. The roe is in the cleft of the rock; the heath-cock's head is beneath his wing. No beast nor bird is abroad, but the owl and the howling fox. She on a leafless tree; he in a cloud on the hill. Dark, panting, trembling, sad, the traveller has lost his way. Through shrubs, through thorns he goes, along the gurgling mill. He fears the rock and the fen. He fears the ghost of night. The old tree groans to the blast; the falling branch resounds. The wind drives the weathered burs, clung together, along the grass. It is the light tread of a ghost! He trembles amidst the night. Dark, dusky, howling night, cloudy, windy, and full of ghosts! The dead are abroad! My friends, receive me from the night." The second bard says: