A history of the Highlands and of the Highland clans : with an ...

5S HISTORY or THR HII3HT,AVT>R.
The most formidable objection against the genuineness of the poems
of Ossian, and which has been urged with great plausibility, is the
absence of all allusions to religion. " Religion," says Mr. Laing, " was
avoided as a dangerous topic that might lead to detection. The
gods and rites of the Caledonians were unknown. From the danger,
however, or the difficulty of inventing a religious mythology, the
author has created a savage society of refined atheists ; who
believe in ghosts, but not in deities, and are either ignorant of, or
indifferent to, the existence of superior powers. In adopting Rousseau's
visions concerning the perfection of the savage state, which was
then so popular, Macpherson, solicitous only for proper machinery,
has rendered the Highlanders a race of iniheard-of infidels, who believed
in no gods but the gliosts of their fathers."
It is certainly not easy to account for this total want of religious
allusions, for to suppose that at the era in question the Caledonians
were entirely destitute of religious impressions, or in other words, a
nation of atheists is contrary to the whole history of tlie human race.
That the druidical superstition was the religion of ail the Celtic tribes
is placed beyond all doubt, and that the influence and power of impe-
rial Rome gradually weakened and finally extinguished that system is
equally certain. The extinction of that superstition took place long
before the supposed era of Ossian, but to imagine that all recoUectior.
of the ancient belief had also been obliterated, is to suppose what i»
far from probable. Indeed, the well known traditions respecting the
disputes between the Druids, and Trathal and Cormac, ancestors to
Fingal, in consequence of the attempts of the former to deprive Tren-
mor, grandfather to Fingal, of the office of Vergobretus or chief Magis-
trate which was hereditary in his family, show plainly that Ossian
could not be ignorant of the tenets of the Druids ; and as the Fingaliau
race from the circumstance noticed were the enemies of the Druids, the
silence of Ossian respecting them and their tenets is not much
to be wondered at.
It cannot, however, be denied that this silence has puzzled the
defenders of the poems very much, and many reasons have been given
to account for it. The reason assigned by Dr. Graham of Aberfoil
'II his valuable Essay appears to be the most plausible. " We are in
formed," says he, " by the most respectable writers of antiquity, that
the Celtic hierarchy was divided into several classes, to each of which
its own particular department was assigned. The Druids, by the con-
SdUt of all, constitute the highest class ; the Bards seem to have been
the next in rank ; and the Eubages the lowest. The higlier mysterie-
of religion, and probably, also, the science of the occult powers ot
nature, which they had discovered, constituted the departmi'nt of the
Druids. To the Bards, again, it is allowed by all, were committed tl.e
celebration of the heroic achievements of their warriors, and the public
record of the history of the nation. But we know, that in every poi'ty
which depends upon mystery, as tluit of the Druids undoubliilly uid.