to such composition, and he relates a curious anecdote to illustrate the translator's deficiency in Gaelic. It was to the effect that, during Macpherson's tour in 1760 a party of gentlemen were escorting him across the Muir to Benbecula, Clanronald's seat in Uist. Upon the way they fell in with a man who was afterwards discovered to be Mac Codrum the poet. Macpherson addressed him with A bheil dad agad air an Fheinn? wishing to ask whether he knew any poems of Ossian regarding Fingal, but in fact asking whether Fingal owed him anything. Whereupon Mac Codrum wittily took advantage of the mistake, and answered that, if the hero had been in his debt, he had lost the bonds, and feared that any attempt to recover them at that time of day would be unavailing—an answer which hurt Macpherson greatly, and cut short the colloquy. Apart from this, there are in the printed original many archæic and obsolete words which Macpherson evidently made out with great difficulty, and which he certainly could not have used or invented. Adding the fact that these compositions are Gaelic poems of great rhythmic beauty and technique, their publication becomes a mountain of proof of the good faith of Macpherson's work.
Within late years students of Highland antiquities have identified many of the localities referred
