Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

304 NORTH nONA.
search after that of Ulysses. Without doubt, North Rona
must also have been the island where Plutarch tells us
that Briareus kept Saturn bound in chains, under per-
petual sleep. For this is the very Deucaledonian sea
itself; and if he was chained in North Rona, the wisest
thing he could do, was to sleep. Besides, this is amply
confirmed, I mean the chaining of Saturn, by the Abbe
Pezron, in his luminous history of the Titans. Unfortu-
nately, there are here also, differences of opinion about the
Saturnia regna, and about the geography, and the age,
and the people, and the events, and a few other trifles.
So difficult is it to withdraw the veil which conceals
truth—or fable ; 'tis all one. But then again it is all
solved by the history of the Cabiri, or it will be in the
next volume, or else by Mr. Davies, in what he chooses
to call his Celtic Researches, or by the Hermes Scythicus,
or by Bryant, or by somebody else ; and if it is not all
solved, so much the better, because we shall still have
the pleasure of writing books so vastly learned and inge-
nious that we do not understand them ourselves; trust-
ing, it is to be presumed, that the readers may have more
wit. But to return to Plutarch.
This great man indeed tells us that all the desert isles
of this sea were the habitations of Genii, and of the Spirits
of heroes ; of Fingal, Ossian, Carrii, and Rhyno, it is pro-
bable ; and thus the truth and antiquity of the poems of
Ossian are confirmed. Hence, St. Kilda also may have
so that I almost begin to fear that my own
had its share ;
theory may lapse in the contest of learned opinions.
For he assures us further, that Demetrius was sent
by Claudius, or some one else, to these islands, and
that some of them were called the islands of the Heroes.
There must therefore have been more than one. Whether
the Heroes and the Genii lived on the same islands, is
left obscure. But Sertorius intended to go to one or other