19/9/07 - English Literature - Ossian

The term "Ossian" refers to a general kind of poetry as well as a specific type. It derives from around the 1760s when translations from Scots Gaelic poems were published (although it turned out that they were not).


In 1713 Pope wrote "Windsor Forest":


"Ye vigorous swains! while youth ferments your blood,
And purer spirits swell the sprightly flood,
Now range the hills, the gameful woods beset,
Wind the shrill horn, or spread the waving net.
When milder autumn summer's heat succeeds,
And in the new-shorn field the partridge feeds,
Before his lord the ready spaniel bounds,
Panting with hope, he tries the furrow'd grounds;
But when the tainted gales the game betray,
Couch'd close he lies, and meditates the prey:
Secure they trust the unfaithful field beset,
Till hovering o'er 'em sweeps the swelling net.
Thus (if small things we may with great compare)
When Albion sends her eager sons to war,
Some thoughtless town, with ease and plenty blest,
Near, and more near, the closing lines invest;
Sudden they seize the amazed, defenceless prize,
And high in air Britannia's standard flies."

The poem is full of life, vigour and action. We can imagine the scene; the pack of dogs bounding and crouching. It is about availability and order; dogs obey; there are plenty of birds. There is a natural and universal succession of the seasons, ordered, recurring, seasonal year. Pope gives instructions on how to read the poem: in the lines, "if small things we may with great compare," he asks us to compare his 'humble' poem with the great ones. So it is a metaphor, it is urbane, and we must compare the poem to greater things. The poem can be descirbed as rural, rustic, Georgic and pan-British (Scotland, as well as England, for note the last line).

MacPherson also writes about a hunting scene in his Fragments of Ancient Poetry:

"VINVELA
My love is a son of the hill. He pursues the flying deer. His gray dogs are panting around him; his bow-string sounds in the wind. Whether by the fount of the rock, or by the stream of the mountain thou liest; when the rushes are nodding with the wind, and the mist is flying over thee, let me approach my love unperceived, and see him from the rock. Lovely I saw thee first by the aged oak of Branno; thou wert returning tall from the chace; the fairest among thy friends.

SHILRIC
What voice is that I hear? that voice like the summer-wind.—I sit not by the nodding rushes; I hear not the fount of the rock. Afar, Vinvela, afar I go to the wars of Fingal. My dogs attend me no more. No more I tread the hill. No more from on high I see thee, fair moving by the stream of the plain; bright as the bow of heaven; as the moon on the western wave.

VINVELA

Then thou art gone, O Shilric! and I am alone on the hill. The deer are seen on the brow; void of fear they graze along. No more they dread the wind; no more the rustling tree. The hunter is far removed; he is in the field of graves."

[from Macpherson, Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760)]

Firstly, no one knew how to receive this poem. It is far removed from Pope's traditional poetry. For example, Pope uses rhyming couplets and iambic pentameter and rigid line structure. Instead of parallelism, MacPherson's poem uses fragmentation, with no connecting device and no instruction on how to read the poem. Pope had not intended to surprise us, but Ossian was strange. Pope's poetry was intellectual and logical, whereas Ossian was affective, it worked on the senses of the reader. It has no underlying meaning; we must only listen to the incantatery, mystical language rather than work out intellectual meaning. Pope's poem has a celebratory tone: it talks of blood, plenitude, fecundity, the seasons, the predictability of the universe, and Britain. But Ossian's poem is about mourning and loss, and bareness: "no more." Are these people literally there or are they speaking from beyond the grave? Pope's poem is set in the present; it is about modernity. Ossian's is set in the distant past, in an archaic and mystic past which is impossible date; it is universal. It is not set in 'Britain'. Pope's poem is set in Britain; Windsor Forest is seen as the epitomy of all British country. Ossian's poem is set in the vague mystic past of Scotland. After the Fragments were published, Scotland suddenly became important for poetry and other literature.

Ossian poetry was published under the pretence of being newly-translated by James MacPherson in the 1760s. The Poems of Ossian was published in 1765. MacPherson was a Highlander who understood Gaelic and was familiar with the stories of Ossian in Ireland and Scotland. The term "Ossian" was used to describe phenomenon. "Ossiant" at first described something stirring, grand, ancient and vague, as quoted by Robert Burns in the Oxford English Dictionary. MacPherson claimed that his Ossian publications were real translated works of literature, and his own poetry became very popular. Napoleon was fond of Ossian and carried the poetry with him everywhere, even into battle. MacPherson claimed to have discovered ancient manuscripts of Gaelic Ossian, but people began to be sceptical and it turned out that he could not produce the manuscript. In fact, he had merely written down the oral folk tales that were commonly told in Gaelic speaking countries, and had made up the story of the manuscripts to create attention for his works. These stories were ancient but had never before been written down. MacPherson made them more literary.

What does this tell us about readership in the 1760s? Hugh Blair, the first professor of English Literature in the world, worked at the University of Edinburgh. He wrote a critical dissertation on Ossian poetry.

"His poetry, more, perhaps, than that of any other writer, deserves to be stiled, The Poetry of the Heart. It is a heart penetrated with noble sentiments, and with sublime and tender passions; a heart that glows, and kindles the fancy; a heart that is full, and pours itself forth."

[From Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian]

He advises us to let the literature wash over us and give us noble sentiments. He is not interested in history but in affectivity. However, Samuel Johnson was one of MacPherson's detractors and tried to debunk him. Boswell, a friend of Johnson's, was frequently mocked by him for being Scottish. This shows that Johnson was probably prejudiced against the Scottish in any case.

"We spoke of Fingal. Dr Johnson said calmly, ‘If the poems were really translated, they were certainly first written down. Let Mr Macpherson deposite the manuscript in one of the colleges at Aberdeen, where there are people who can judge; and, if the professors certify the authenticity, then there will be an end of the controversy. If he does not take this obvious and easy method, he gives the best reason to doubt; considering too, how much is against it a priori’."

[From James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786)]

For Johnson, all stories must have a written origin. However his opinion was in the minority. As a result of the public admission that MacPherson had written down ancient oral stories, the oral tradition became much more popular. The lyrical ballad enjoyed literary success and Johnson was proved wrong.

The controversy over Ossian poetry shows how tastes had changed. Poetry no longer had to be intellectual. Blair praised Ossian for bringing back sentiments of ancient beings who were supposedly more in touch with their feelings. Scotland tried to negotiate individual national identity at this point: there was a rise in the Scottish Antiquarian Society. Intellectual institutions were founded which tempted modern readers to change. Scottish independence coincided with Catholic Rebellion. The new prime minister was Scottish. Scots were perceived to be power-hungry. There was an increase of Scot phobia in England. But Blair embraced Scottishness, and promoted the rekindling of noble feelings, of ancients, of the past. The difference was emphasized between modern enlightenment thought and the ancient romanticism. MacPherson contributed to modernity as the difference from the past. This tradition was identified and named and a new group of people began to class themselves 'modern.' The term 'romance' grew out of Scotland, and tends to mean literature that appeals to the senses. Access to the past was provided through modern means.

The old past died, and a revival affectedly reawakened the experience of the past. Scotland emerged as a site of interest. The most popular authors and poets originated from Scotland (no one knew Wordsworth or Coleridge then). It was the beginning of a specific kind of Romanticism: that of Sir Walter Scott, Sir Robert Burns and James MacPherson. The past was not just narrative history, but romance, i.e. vague, magical, and not really sequential. It opened up a flood of poetry that wasn't immediately comprehensible of describable like Pope, but more like MacPherson.