Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

2 74 Old Irish Religions.
phallic origin is given by H. O'Brien and Sir W. Betham ;
a cemetery memorial, by Westropp ; a baptistery by Canon
Smiddy
; a hermitage, by Dean Richardson and E. King
;
and a penitentiary, by Sir R. Colt Hoare. Who can decide
when such authorities disagree ?
OSSIAN THE BARD.
A WILD storm of controversy once raged, when Macpherson
put forth a work purporting to be a collection of old
Gaelic songs, under the name of the " Poems of Ossian,"
who was the last of the Fenian Chiefs, and who, as
reported, on his return to Ireland after his enchantment,
failed to yield his paganism to St. Patrick's appeals.
While generally condemned as the inventor of the lays,
the charms of which enthralled even Byron and Goethe,
he must surely have been a poet of great merit, if they
were of his own composition. But if they were remains
of ancient traditions, carried down by word of mouth,
Macpherson might at least be credited with weaving them
into more or less connected narratives.
There has been much debate as to the possibility of
such rude people, as in Erin and on the opposite shore of
North Britain, having so retentive a memory, with the
ability to transmit ideas at once beautiful and refined, in
language of imagination and taste. But, as with the
Edda, and the folklore of other semi-barbarous nations,
facts prove the reality of extraordinary memory. It is
not generally known that many Jews could repeat faithfully
the whole of their sacred scriptures.
The history of the poems is interesting. The Rev.
John Home, the author of Douglas and other publications,
found a Tutor with transcripts taken down from old