Dimensions | 11 × 16 × 2.5 cm |
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Tan calf binding with green title plates, gilt decoration, banding and title on the spine. Dimensions are for one volume.
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A new edition of James Macpheron’s translation of the collection of the Ossian cycle of epic poems, complete in two volumes.In uniform full calf bindings. Externally sound with shelf wear and light rubbing, minor scuffing to the boards. The volumes are firmly bound. Light spotting to the occasional page, otherwise the leaves are generally very clean and bright throughout.
Scottish author James Macpherson’s ‘translation’ from the Gaelic of the epic poems of Ossian on the subject of the Fingal, which he claimed to have discovered in 1761. Irish historians immediately challenged the authenticity, and a more forceful denunciation was later made by Samuel Johnson, who claimed Macpherson found fragments of poems and stories, which he then manipulated into a romance of his own.
James Macpherson (Gaelic: Seumas MacMhuirich or Seumas Mac a’ Phearsain; 27 October 1736 – 17 February 1796) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector, and politician. He is known for the Ossian cycle of epic poems, which he claimed to have discovered and translated from Gaelic. Macpherson was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie in Badenoch, Inverness-shire. This was a Scottish Gaelic-speaking area but near the Ruthven Barracks of the British Army, established in 1719 to enforce Whig rule from London after the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Macpherson’s uncle, Ewen Macpherson joined the Jacobite army in the 1745 march south, when Macpherson was nine years old and after the Battle of Culloden, had to remain in hiding for nine years. In the 1752-3 session, Macpherson was sent to King’s College, Aberdeen, moving two years later to Marischal College (the two institutions later became the University of Aberdeen), reading Caesar’s Commentaries on the relationships between the ‘primitive’ Germanic tribes and the ‘enlightened’ Roman imperial army; it is also believed that he attended classes at the University of Edinburgh as a divinity student in 1755–56. During his years as a student, he ostensibly wrote over 4,000 lines of verse, some of which was later published, notably The Highlander (1758), a six-canto epic poem, which he attempted to suppress sometime after its publication.
On leaving college, he returned to Ruthven to teach in the school there, and then became a private tutor. At Moffat he met John Home, the author of Douglas, for whom he recited some Gaelic verses from memory. He also showed him manuscripts of Gaelic poetry, supposed to have been picked up in the Scottish Highlands and the Western Isles; one was called The Death of Oscar.
In 1760, Macpherson visited North Uist and met with John MacCodrum, the official Bard to the Chief of Clan MacDonald of Sleat. As a result of their encounter, MacCodrum made, according to John Lorne Campbell, “a brief appearance in the Ossianic controversy which is not without its humorous side.” When Macpherson met MacCodrum, he asked, “A bheil dad agaibh air an Fheinne?” Macpherson believed himself to have asked, “Do you know anything of the Fianna?” He had actually said, however, “Do the Fianna owe you anything?”
In reply, MacCodrum quipped, “Cha n-eil agus ge do bhiodh cha ruiginn a leas iarraidh a nis”, or in English, “No, and if they did it would be useless to ask for it now.” According to Campbell, this, “dialogue… illustrates at once Macpherson’s imperfect Gaelic and MacCodrum’s quickness of reply.”
Encouraged by Home and others, Macpherson produced 15 pieces, all laments for fallen warriors, translated from the Scottish Gaelic, despite his limitations in that tongue, which he was induced to publish at Edinburgh in 1760, including the Death of Oscar, in a pamphlet: Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland. Extracts were then published in The Scots Magazine and The Gentleman’s Magazine which were popular and the notion of these fragments as glimpses of an unrecorded Gaelic epic began.
Hugh Blair, who was a firm believer in the authenticity of the poems, raised a subscription to allow Macpherson to pursue his Gaelic research. In the autumn,1760, Macpherson set out to visit western Inverness-shire, the islands of Skye, North Uist, South Uist and Benbecula. Allegedly, Macpherson obtained manuscripts which he translated with the assistance of a Captain Morrison and the Rev. Gallie. Later he made an expedition to the Isle of Mull, where he claimed to obtain other manuscripts.
In 1761, Macpherson announced the discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal supposedly written by Ossian, which he published in December. Like the 1760 Fragments of Ancient Poetry, it was written in musical measured prose. The full title of the work was Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language. The narrative was related to the Irish mythological character Fionn mac Cumhaill/Finn McCool. The figure of Ossian was based on Fionn’s son Oisín. Fingal takes his name from Fionnghall, meaning “white stranger”. Another related poem, Temora, followed in 1763, and a collected edition, The Works of Ossian, in 1765.
The authenticity of these translations from the works of a 3rd-century bard was immediately challenged by Irish historians, especially Charles O’Conor, who noted technical errors in chronology and in the forming of Gaelic names, and commented on the implausibility of many of Macpherson’s claims, none of which Macpherson was able to substantiate. More forceful denunciations were later made by Samuel Johnson, who asserted (in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775) that Macpherson had found fragments of poems and stories, and then woven them into a romance of his own composition. Further challenges and defences were made well into the nineteenth century, but the issue was moot by then. Macpherson’s manuscript Gaelic “originals” were published posthumously in 1807; Ludwig Christian Stern was sure they were in fact back-translations from his English version.
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