APPENDIX THE ADDRESS TO THE SUN In almost every defence of Ossian during the last century something is said of the famous Address to the Sun in Carthon, "O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! " 1 A version of this Address in Gaelic rhyme-ostensibly the original-was placed in the hands of the Highland Society's Committee. The evidence in its favour would seem to prove it an ancient vernacular fragment, genuine beyond dispute, and as such it was accepted; but some doubt has always been felt. The earliest date to which the Gaelic text can be certainly traced is 1780-81. We find it then in London, of all places in the world, where it lies in the desk of James Macpherson. Among Macpherson's friends was a certain Alexander Morrison, who served during the American War as captain in a body of loyalist troops. Captain Morrison, when in England, assisted Macpherson in arranging his papers; and among them he found the Gaelic version of the Address to the Sun.2 He transcribed the lines, and afterwards gave away copies to his friends in Scotland: one such copy, we know, was sent to Sir James Foulis of Colinton, a Lowland baronet who had devoted himself 2 Highland Society's Report, App., p. 175. 1 Cf. supra, p. 10. to Gaelic studies; another to the Rev. John Mackinnon, minister of Glendaruel in Argyllshire. In a letter written long afterwards Captain Morrison says:— "When writing Ossian's poems with James Macpherson at London, Sir James Foulis wrote me to send him the Address to the Sun, which I did: and that was not the one he wanted. He wrote the poem it was in, and then I sent it to him. He knew more of the Gaelic than James Macpherson, or any man I ever saw. . . . I wrote most part of Ossian's works with Mr. Macpherson before I went for my family to America in 1781." 1 There are in fact two Addresses to the Sun in Ossian, -that in Carthon, and another in Carric-thura, which begins," Hast thou left thy blue course in heaven, golden-haired son of the sky!" These appear to be the passages given in Gaelic to Sir James Foulis. Mackinnon of Glendaruel received his copy of the Address in Carthon about the same date. He afterwards communicated it to Lord Bannatyne.2 Thus we have in 1781 two Scottish gentlemen possessed of copies of the Gaelic Address, one of whom at least is ready to impart it to others. Morrison may have given away other copies, so may Mackinnon, so may Sir James Foulis of Colinton. A considerable circulation in manuscript is not unlikely. Twenty years now pass by. The Highland Society begins its investigation, and a new character comes on the stage the Rev. James M'Diarmid, minister of Weem. The son of this gentleman, John M'Diarmid, a journalist,3 sent to the Society the two Sun poems in Gaelic, along with a letter he had received from his father : 1 Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopædia, 1830, xvi. 181. 3 Cf. Dictionary of National Biography, xxxv. 23. "WEEM, April 9th, 1801. "Inclosed you have a translation of the Gaelic pieces which I sent you last week. It is as literal as pos "I got the copy of these poems, about thirty years ago, from an old man in Glenlyon. I took it, and several other fragments, now I fear irrecoverably lost, from the man's mouth. He had learnt them in his youth from people in the same glen, which must have been long before Macpherson was born." A precise and definite statement, not to be rejected without good cause. On another occasion in 1801 M'Diarmid gave the name of the old man of Glenlyon as Duncan Robertson. But this time the poems had been obtained, not thirty, but "upwards of forty" years earlier.1 The date given elsewhere by the younger M'Diarmid is 1765. A neighbour of M'Diarmid's, the Rev. Alexander Irvine of Kinloch-Rannoch, a young and able minister, assisted the Highland Society in its inquiries. Hearing that Captain Morrison was still alive at Greenock, he journeyed thither, made his acquaintance, and received from him Gaelic copies of the Address in Carthon and the Address in Carric-thura. On his return to Perthshire, Irvine visited the minister of Weem, who imparted to him his copies of the same poems, derived from the old man of Glenlyon. Irvine compared them with Morrison's, and found that the two texts "agreed almost verbatim." The similarity is so striking and perfect that it can only be accounted for by a common written source. If in these perplexities we resort to internal evidence and examine the poems themselves, we shall find the 1 Leabhar na Feinne, p. 216. gravest reasons for doubting their genuineness. They bear about them every mark of the eighteenth century. It was an age of personification, of declamation, of apostrophe. The poetry it produced abounds in Addresses,— to the Muse, to the Stars, to Freedom, to Adversity, and bristles with "O thou! and "O ye!" Nothing is spoken about if it can be spoken to a mannerism which Ossian illustrates, and which is abundantly evident in Pope, Thomson, Collins, Gray. In the Night Thoughts we shall find parallels to the Ossianic addresses, passages of no little beauty : "O majestic Night! Nature's great ancestor! Day's elder-born! By mortals and immortals seen with awe! A starry crown thy raven brow adorns, An azure zone thy waist; clouds, in heaven's loom Thy flowing mantle form; and, heaven throughout, It is the rhetoric of poetry, not written at every time, but in its period admirable. We are still in the same school and age when we turn to the addresses in Byron,— that to Ocean in Childe Harold, or to the Sun in Manfred. "Most glorious Orb! that wert a worship, ere Which gladden'd, on their mountain tops, the hearts Themselves in orisons! Thou material God! And representative of the Unknown Who chose thee for his shadow! Thou chief star! The example of Milton did much to plant this love of invocation in English poetry, and to maintain it there for a century and a half. Satan's address to the Sun in Paradise Lost "O thou that with surpassing glory crowned"— may have suggested Macpherson's "O thou that rollest above." The resemblance has often been observed. It was first pointed out, in a note to the Fingal of 1762, by Macpherson himself. But such measured eloquence is not to be looked for in popular ballads and peasant tales. Ossian's Addresses to the Sun, the Moon, and the Evening Star (placed at the opening of certain poems, as Milton's books begin with addresses to the Heavenly Muse, to Light, to Urania) are more justly open to doubt, when antiquity is in question, than any other parts of the volume. Only the most convincing evidence could make us believe that they were ever declaimed in a Highland cottage. In the Gaelic version the acuteness of J. F. Campbell 1 detected another difficulty, which has been considered decisive. Grian, the Gaelic for sun, is a feminine noun, like the German Sonne, but in these dubious passages, and everywhere in Macpherson, Grian is made masculine. In the Carric-thura Address the sun even becomes "Goldenhaired son of the sky." Such a personification seems natural in English, but in Gaelic almost impossible. The instinct of the poet would rather have led him, had the Gaelic been the original, to personify a feminine noun as a female. It is so in German. Goethe in Faust has the line, in the description of a sunset "Doch scheint die Göttin endlich wegzusinken." 1 Toid. |