Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

O SSIan the Bai'd. 275
northern people, which were sent on to Professor ITuf^h
Blair. Macpherson was requested to translate some of
them, and these were published by Blair in 1760. Search
was then made for similar traditions by Macpherson himself,
who found in Lord Bute a patron for the publishing
of Fifigal'm 1762. Dr. Johnson, the hater of all that was
Scotch, furiously attacked the book.
In 1849, Dr. Lounrost published 22,793 verses rescued
from memory. The 1862 edition of the Dean of Lismore's
book gives, in the appendix, a long poem taken down
from the mouth of an old woman as late as 1856. Sir
Walter Scott collected many Scotch ballads in the same
way. The story of Grainne and Diarmuid has been long
known in the cabins of Ireland. Fenian poems have been
circulating for ages among the peasantry of Ireland and
Scotland. In 1785, Ford Hill published an ancient Erse
poem, collected among the Scottish Highlands, to illustrate
Macpherson 's Ossian.
In Gillies's History of Greece, we are told that " the
scattered fragments of Grecian History were preserved
during thirteen centuries by oral tradition." Bards did
the same service for Roman history till
before Christ.
the second century
" The DscJmngariade of the Calmucks," the
learned Heeren writes, " is said to surpass the poems o
Homer in length, as much as it stands beneath them in
merit ; and yet it exists only in the memory of a people
which is not unacquainted with writing. But the songs
of a nation are probably the last things which are committed
to writing, for the very reason that they are
remembered."
Dr. Garnett, in his Totir in Scotland, 179S, says, "It
seems to me wonderful that any person who has travelled
in the Highlands should doubt the authenticity of the
Celtic poetry, which has been given to the English reader