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

MYTIIOLOOT OF 0S3IAN. 59
the inferior orders are sedulously preveuied from encroauliing on the
pale of those immediately above them, by the mysteries which consti-
tute their peculiar badge. Is it not probable, then, that the Bards
were expressly prohibited from encroaching upon the province of their
superiors by intermingling religion, if they had any knowledge of its
mysteries, which it is likely they had not, with the secular objects ol
their song? Thus, then, we seem warranted to conclude upon this
subject, by the time that Ossian flourished, the higher order of this
hierarchy had been destroyed ; and in all probability the peculiar
mysteries which they taught had perished along with them : and even
if any traces of them remained, such is the force of habit, and the
veneration which men entertain for the institutions in which they have
been educated, that it is no wonder the Bards religiously forbore
to tread on ground from which they had at all times, by the most
awful sanctions been excluded. In this view of the subject, it would
eeem, that the silence which prevails in these poems, with regard to
the higher mysteries of religion, instead of furnishing an argument
against their authenticity, affords a strong presumption of their having
been composed at the very time, in the very circumstances, and by the
very persons to whom they have been attributed."
But it is unnecessary to enlarge further on this subject. The pubr
lication of the original poems, so long withheld from the world by the
unaccountable conduct of Alacpherson, has settled the question of their
authenticity, and there are few persons now so sceptical as not to be
nonvinocd that these poems are of very high antiquity.