Ossian Part 2

Among many echoes of the Iliad in these writings, our author has an especially deft touch with blood, particularly when swords are coated with it. He shows as well a proclivity for strange flashbacks, the beating of the black waves of the ancient northern seas, the vaunting before a single combat, etc.

These works, no doubt aided by their remote setting, evoke even in warfare a sense of wild silence compared to doing just about anything in our own times. I believe modern man's capacity to produce and endure incredible volumes of noise and his acceptance of this as a normal state of existence has been widely remarked so I will not go on about it here.

One cannot but comment in writings of this type on the passion for war and willingness to die violently displayed by its characters, and especially the apparent conviction of the authors that this is the finest, most proper and most uncorrupted personality a man can attain. While such characters are undeniably exciting and irresistible to the ladies, obviously civilization can only advance so far if producing such men becomes the only end of a society. Of course many authors, MacPherson included, have expressed misgivings about the effects of advancing civilization on the manly spirit. I am not immune to such suspicions myself at times, though in truth following the progress of civilization, mainly through reading about its past and present and wondering what news of it will come to me in the future (I do not experience much of anything at first hand) is the primary interest I preserve in life. While characters who live by this sort of extreme code in the modern world do hold a certain fascination for me, I do not generally find them to be very interesting in themselves, but only in the opposition of their mode of life to, well, mine.

This description of the nature does make one desire to go on a (peaceful) walking tour of some duration in the regions where the poems are set. I would even like to go in the fall when it is really quiet and dark and gloomy (I assume if you get to a village the pubs stay open year round). That is the kind of guy I am.

There is much lamentation in the poems about the fame of the heroes dying with them after a generation or two. As Fingal the great king remarks in Book VI of the work named after him: "to-day our fame is greatest. We shall pass away like a dream. No sound will be in the fields of our battles. Our tombs will be lost in the heath. The hunter shall not know the place of our rest. Our names may be heard in song, but the strength of our arms will cease." Later in the same book, mourning over the tomb of his fallen son, he remarks that "The sons of the feeble shall pass over it, and shall not know that the mighty lie there." Indeed, even if these stories are rooted in actual personages and sentiments, and the names have miraculously survived down to our time, it would still be difficult to say what of real fame remains attached to them, since anyone currently living is separated by so many layers from the impact of their actuals deeds, personalities, etc. I am not sure where I am going with this.

There is a character named 'Connan of small renown'. This is a good appellage to carry down through history.

One of Macpherson's notes: "The practice of singing when they row is universal among the inhabitants of the north-west coast of Scotland and the isles. It deceives time, and inspirits the rowers." I can hear the Celtic Woman being cued in the background.

This was an age of truly high and unforgiving parental expectations. You were going to war, you were hopefully going to kill, but at the very least if you were inadequate you would be put out of your misery right away. Cowardice and dodging the fight was not an option, whether you were sensitive or prone to anxiety or whatever, if you wanted to see or be received by your family, by your entire community, ever again. Effectively you had to conquer in battle, or else.

For me as a reader it is refreshing to get out of 18th-century London and the south of England generally for a little bit, as if I were actually taking a vacation into the country from the literary point of view.

From the address to the sun in `Carthon: A Poem`:

`Who can be a companion of thy course! The oaks of the mountains fall: the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again: the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art forever the same; rejoicing in the brightness of thy course...But thou art perhaps, like me, for a season, and thy years will have an end...Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills; the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.`

It goes without saying that medicine, or even the conception, or non-conception of it in these works is extremely primitive. Once you have a wound, apparently you are given up to bleed to death where you fall. There is not a single instance in 334 pages of anyone actually attempting to physically heal or assuage the misery of someone who has suffered an injury.

The descriptions of the ghosts forming from the mists and dissolving again in the winds are very beautiful and affecting images, as good as I have seen done anywhere. Where I went to college there was a largely deserted corner of the campus near the boathouse where there was a monument supposedly containing the graves of French soldiers killed during the American Revolution. I am not saying I ever saw ghosts there, either of French soldiers or departed students, but I used to wander there late at night a lot and be affected by the kinds of thoughts of the temporary nature of life and of the unsettling mysteries of more eternal things such as are evoked by the Ossianiac ghosts.

Death among young lovers is endemic in these poems to the point of becoming tedious. Also every maiden who appears in these poems is seventeen and the most beautiful creature her designated hero has ever seen, after which vision he immediately goes to war and is killed, his lady whom he has spent five minutes with never surviving him much longer than a hour after receiving the news.

As the book moves along, there is more rolling on the waves, something about which always grips the imagination and adds considerably to the excitement.

It is enjoyable to read about brave men of a indisputably superior bearing who are not worried about their diet and wine knowledge. In fact, apart from the feasts thrown before and after battles as a matter of ceremony, dining for its own sake appears to be considered frivolous.

I may be able to finish the rest in part 3.