Blind Ossian's Fingal: Fragments and Controversy

by James MacPherson, Allan Burnett (Editor), Linda Andersson Burnett (Editor)

When James Macpherson published his translations of the poetry of Ossian, a third-century Highland bard, they were an instant success. However, the plaudits soon gave way to controversy. Were the poems part of a great Gaelic oral tradition, or the work of Macpherson's imagination?

Editors Allan Burnett and Linda Andersson Burnett take a fresh look at the twists and turns of the Ossian story. They investigate the controversy surrounding the poems and what inspired Macpherson to put such works together, and provide an insight into why the poems captured the public imagination. This volume includes Fragments of Ancient Poetry and Fingal together with contemporary commentary.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1760

About the author

James Macpherson (Gaelic: Seumas Mac a' Phearsain) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of epic poems.

It was in 1761 that Macpherson claimed to have found an epic on the subject of the hero Fingal, written by Ossian. The name Fingal or Fionnghall means "white stranger". His publisher, claiming that there was no market for these works except in English, required that they be translated. He published translations of it during the next few years, culminating in a collected edition, The Works of Ossian, in 1765. The most famous of these poems was Fingal.

The poems achieved international success (Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson were great fans) and were proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical writers such as Homer. Many writers were influenced by the works, including the young Walter Scott. In the German-speaking states Michael Denis made the first full translation in 1768, inspiring the proto-nationalist poets Klopstock and Goethe, whose own German translation of a portion of Macpherson's work figures prominently in a climactic scene of The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).

The poem was as much admired in Hungary as in France and Germany; Hungarian János Arany wrote Homer and Ossian in response, and several other Hungarian writers Baróti Szabó, Csokonai, Sándor Kisfaludy, Kazinczy, Kölcsey, Ferenc Toldy, and Ágost Greguss, were also influenced by it.

Reviews

[Monty Milne · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good to have Ossian's tales - or some of them, anyway - brought together in a handsomely produced volume. I'm not entirely convinced by the editors opinions, however. The poems of Ossian have been convincingly shown to be a literary fraud: a fraud not without artistic merit, and of great interest on account of their influence on early nineteenth century Romanticism. The editors efforts to suggest they incorporate a lot of genuinely ancient material are wholly unconvincing. It is true that some names and themes are found both in Macpherson's Ossian and in the medieval book of the Dean of Lismore. But to point this out as evidence of Macpherson's use of antique sources is a bit like saying that Bernard Cornwell's novels about King Arthur are authentic because parallels can be found in the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth.

The editors also show a very Scottish tendency to discern anti-Scottish bias on what seem to me to be rather flimsy grounds. For example, it is claimed that the background for the unjust debunking of Macpherson's Ossian was anti-Scottish prejudice against the unpopular Prime Minister and royal favourite Lord Bute. Most historians would surely agree that, even if some people disliked Bute because he was Scottish, the main reason he was so unpopular was because he was useless. (Even today, one occasionally hears people described as "The worst Prime Minister since Lord Bute" - I heard it most recently about David Cameron - perhaps the editors think that is also evidence of anti-Scot racism, given Mr Cameron's Scottish surname).

Overall, there is way too much Scottish chippiness here for my liking, and a lot of material which is simply wrong. (The recapitulation of the events of the Jacobite Rebellion seems to buy into the fictitious narrative beloved by modern Scots Nats that it was an attempt by a "Scottish" army to "regain independence" opposed by an army of English butchers. Which would all come as surprising news to the many English supporters of the Jacobite cause, or the large number of Scots who fought to defeat it). I have no doubt whatsoever that the Burnetts are fervent supporters of that annoyingly whiney lovechild of a Bay City Roller and a Shetland pony also known as Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

In spite of it all, however, I'm glad I read and own this book. James Macpherson may have been a fraudster but he was a brilliant artist. And who could not love an atmosphere of wild seas, grey mist, characters who kill each other accidentally or die of love or grief, and the whole thing steeped in a wonderful sepia aquatint of ancient nostalgia and yearning loss. It makes me want to grow a long beard so I can sit on a wild clifftop, beard streaming in the cold wind, strumming a harp while grey seas crash onto the rocks below.