The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

138 T H E H I G H L A N D E R S [part I
including Conn in that race. Secondly, all agree that Conn
was succeeded by his son Art or Arthur, and Art by his son
Cormac. Thirdly, Cairpre is not made by Tighernac the son
of Cormac, but his father is not given at all. And the Annals
of Innisfallen shew that he was of the race of the Bol^as, for
Tighernac says in 322 that Fiach, King of Ireland, was killed
b}- the three Collas, sons of Eacho, who was son of Cairpre ;
and the Annals of Innisfallen say that the battle was fought
by the Collas along with the seven tribes of Bolgas, thus
showing that Cairpre, their grandfather, must also have been
of that race.
We thus see that Ossian is supported throughout by the
old Irish annals, and that even when he is in direct opposition
to the system of Irish history at present received. Now when
we consider that the history contained in these old annals was
iinknozi'u, and the annals themselves unpublished when the
poems of Ossian were first given to the world, we must come
to the conclusion that the poems are necessarily as old at least
as the fourteenth century, and that in them we have handed
down to us a complete body of the most ancient historical
poems by which a knowledge of the early history of the country
was preserved to posterit}'. ^ It ma}', however, be proper to
notice here shortly some of the other objections which have
been made to Ossian as a historian.
One objection is, that the Lochlannach, or Norwegians, are
mentioned in these poems, but that the Norwegians did not
appear on the coasts of Britain till the ninth century. In
answer to this I have onl}' to remark, that the word Loch-
lannach applies equally to all the tribes inhabiting Scandinavia
and the North of German}', and to mention the well-known
piracies of the Saxons, who infested the shores of Britain from
the second centurx' to the fourth, when thev were defeated and
'An argument of the same nature
has been used with great success by
the well-known Danish antiquarj-,
of that religion was unknown to
modern scholars when Macpherson
published his Finn Magnussen. He proves that the
Ossian, and coulii not
have been known to him. Finn
Odenism, or religion of the Lochlans, Magnussen is unquestionably the best
8S contained in Ossian, is a correct authority on the subject of the religion,
picture of the ancient religion of the
Scandinavians, and that the real nature
of the Eddas.