“In the same manner we are told, that his _three_ nephews came from Streamy Etha, one of whom married an Irish lady; but there is no mention made of the real name of the place of their nativity, although the translator assures us in another note, that they also were Caledonians. But, in fact, it is from the internal evidences of the poems themselves, not from the notes of Mr. Macpherson, nor indeed altogether from his beautiful but unfaithful translation, that we are to decide on the nation to which these poems belong. In Fingal, the first and most perfect of the collection, that hero is first mentioned by Cuchullin as Fingal, _King of Desarts_--in the original---_Inis na bf hiodhuide_, or _Woody Island_; without any allusion whatever to his being a Caledonian. And afterwards he is called King of Selma, by Swaran, a name, with little variation given to several castles in Ireland. Darthula’s castle is named Selma; and another, whose owner I do not remember, is termed Selemath. _Slimora_, to whose fir the spear of Foldath is compared, is a mountain in the province of Munster, and through out the whole, even of Mr. Macpherson’s translation, the characters, names, allusions, incidents and scenery are all Irish. And in fact, _our Irish spurious ballads_, as Mr. Macpherson calls them, are the very originals out of which he has spun the materials for his version of Ossian. * “Dr. Johnson, who strenuously opposed the idea of _Ossian_ being the work of a Scotch bard of the third century, asserts that the ‘Erse never was a written language, and that there is not in the world a written Erse manuscript a hundred years old.’ He adds, ‘The Welsh and Irish are cultivated tongues, and two hundred years back insulted their English neighbours for the instability of their orthography.’ Even the ancient Irish _letter_ was unknown in the Highlands in 1690, for an Irish version of the Bible being given there by Mr. Kirk, was printed in the Roman character. “When Dr. Young, ** led by tasteful enterprize, * “Some of the remaining footsteps of these old warriors are known by their first names at this time [says Keating] as for instance, Suidhe Finn, or the, Palace of Fin, at Sliabh na Mann, &c., &c.” There is a mountain in Donegal still called Alt Ossoin, surrounded by all that wild sublimity of scenery so exquisitely deliniated through the elegant medium of Macpherson’s translation of Ossian; and in its environs many Ossianic tales are still extant. In an extract given by Camden from an account of the manners of the native Irish in the sixteenth century--“they think, [says the author] the souls of the deceased are in communion with the famous men of those places, of whom they retain many stories and sonnets--as of the giants Fin, Mac Huyle, Osker, Mac Osshin, &c., &c., and they say, through illusion, they often see them.”