Note 45 — THE BOOK OF THE DEAN OF LISMORE.

This piece is extracted and printed in the report on the Poems of Ossian, published by the Highland Society. Dr. Smith, however, who made the extract, appears not to have read it with much care or accuracy, and the concluding portion, from the twentieth line downwards, is suppressed altogether. This seems to have arisen from a desire to suppress all the references in those poems to St. Patrick, and thus to establish by all possible means their Scottish origin. If any of the Poems are the genuine compositions of Ossian, there is sufficient evidence that the references to the Saint are of more recent introduction, in the fact, that if Ossian saw Art, who lived in the opening of the third century, as he tells us in the preceding fragment, he could hardly hold a dialogue with St. Patrick, who flourished in the fifth. In the present publication the poems of every kind are given just as they stand, without any reference to the effect on existing systems and theories, Scotch or Irish.