The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

634 -^ he Highland Monthly
LAST YEAR'S PROGRESS IN CELTIC
LITERATURE AND STUDY.
DURING the past year of 1892, though nothing so
important in Celtic matters has been done as in
1 89 1 in the case of Professor Zimmer's researches in the
Ossian and other Gaelic sagas and Mr Nutt's volumes of
" Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition," yet a great amount
of good, steady work has been accomplished. This is true
not merely in philology, which, since the ascendancy of the
" New School " in that subject, shows remarkable activity
on Celtic ground, but also in the departments of literature
and antiquity. Just as these lines are being written, there
comes to hand a new and complete edition of the poems of
the best of our present ^Gaelic bards—Neil Macleod, whose
' Clarsach an Doire" has just been published by Archibald
Sinclair, of Glasgow.
The works published in connection with the Highlands
and Scottish Gaelic are few but good. The most important
of them is Dr Cameron's " Reliquiae Celticse," edited by Mr
Macbain and Rev. J. Kennedy, the first volume of which
" Ossianica "—was fully reviewed in our May number.
While in itself giving a complete set of the Ossianic ballads,
with variants of the same, it forms an excellent companion
volume to Campbell's " Leabhar Na Feinne." The second
volume, which will probably appear early this summer, and
which is well under way, is to contain the Fernaig MS., a
second Turner Collection, a Gaelic History of the Mac-
donalds (17th century), topographical and philological
articles, and an introduction dealing fully, yet concisely,
with the whole subject of Gaelic grammar and philology.
Mr Hector Maclean's " Ultonian Ballads" also belongs to
the heroic and Ossianic literature of our race. In this
work, Mr Maclean brings together all the ballads that bear
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