ON THE POEMS OF OISIN.

By Professor Connellan, of Queen's College, Cork.

(READ 3RD FEBRUARY, 1859.)

INTRODUCTION.

For nearly one hundred years a controversy has been carried on by Irish and Scotch writers respecting the authenticity of Ossian's poems, while both parties have claimed Ossian as their own countryman. My object is to prove from ancient records and other authorities that Oisin, Finn the son of Cumhall, and the Fiana, were Irishmen and not Scotchmen; and that the poems published by Macpherson were fabrications, founded upon fragments of the compositions of Oisin and other Irish bards, which made their way into the Highlands of Scotland.

In the first place it will be necessary to shew that Ireland alone was called Scotia or Scotland, and the inhabitants Scoti or Scots, until the eleventh century, when, for the first time, Caledonia, or North Britain, received the name of Scotia; and also, that the Scots of that country were colonists from Ireland, while the language spoken in the Highlands of Scotland and that of Ireland were identically the same.

It is evident that the Irish were known as Scoti or Scots, at a very early period; the oldest Irish manuscripts bear testimony to this fact, and Tigearnach in his Annals adds his testimony. Tigearnach was Abbot of Clonmacnois, and his death is recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 1088. He was one of the most learned men of the 11th century, and his annals are considered as a high authority on ancient Irish history. They are written partly in Latin, and partly in Irish; and by one not blindly credulous, as at the very first page of the work we read, "Omnia monumenta Scotorum usque Cimbaoth incerta erant,"—" all the records of the Scots, till the time of Cimbaoth, were uncertain." He lived in the 3rd century A.C.

But the most unexceptionable authorities on this head are those foreign

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