The oldest texts,
prose for the most part, but also in verse, are preserved in Irish MSS.
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and go back to a period from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty years older at least. The
bulk of Ossianic literature is, however, of later date as far as the
form under which it has come down to us is concerned. A number of
important texts, prose for the most part, are preserved in MSS. of the
fourteenth century, but were probably redacted in the thirteenth and
twelfth centuries. But by far the largest mass consists of narrative
poems, as a rule dramatic in structure. These have come down to us in
MSS. written in Scotland from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of
the seventeenth century, in Ireland from the sixteenth down to the
middle of the nineteenth century. The Gaelic-speaking peasantry, alike
in Ireland and Scotland, have preserved orally a large number of these
ballads, as also a great mass of prose narratives, the heroes of which
are Ossian and his comrades.
"Were all Ossianic texts preserved in MSS. older than the present
century to be printed, they would fill some eight to ten thousand octavo
pages. The mere bulk of the literature, even if we allow for
considerable repetition of incident, arrests attention. If we further
recall that for the last five hundred years this body of romance has
formed the chief imaginative recreation of Gaeldom, alike in Ireland and
Scotland, and that a peasantry unable to read or write has yet preserved
it almost entire, its claims to consideration and study will appear
manifest.
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