The Poems of Ossian

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James Macpherson (1736 – 96) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector, and politician best remembered for these poems of Ossian, which he claimed to have discovered and tran slated from Gaelic. Based on Celtic mythology, the poems were supposedly sung by the blind bard Ossian. The authenticity of these so-called translations from the works of a 3rd-century bard was immediately challenged by historians, especially Charles O'Conor, who noted technical errors in chronology and the forming of Gaelic names. Samuel Johnson, believed Macpherson had found fragments of poems and stories and wove them into a romance of his own composition. Regardless of Macpherson's charlatanry, "Ossian" shows a deep appreciation of natural beauty and melancholy tenderness typical of the later Romantic era. Show more