heroes, or those who pretended to be defcended from them, heard with pleasure the eulogiums of their ancestors; bards were employed' to repeat the poems, and to record the connection of their patrons with chiefs fo renowned. Every chief in process of time had a bard in his family, and the office became at laft hereditary. By the fucceffion of these bards, the poems concerning the ancestors of the family were handed down from generation to generation; they were repeated to the whole clan on folemn occafions, and always alluded to in the new compofitions of the bards. This cuftom came down to near our own times; and after the bards were difcontinued, a great number in a clan retained by memory, or committed to writing, their compofitions, and founded the antiquity of their families on the authority of their poems.

known

THE ufe of letters was not known in the north of Europe till long after the inftitution of the bards: the records of the families of their patrons, their own, and more ancient poems were handed down by tradition. Their poetical compofitions were admirably contrived for that purpofe. They were adapted to mufic; and the moft perfect harmony was observed. Each verse was so connected with those which preceded or followed it, that if one line had been remembered

bered in a ftanza, it was almoft impoffible to forget the reft. The cadences followed in fo natural a gradation, and the words were fo adapted to the common turn of the voice, after it is raised to a certain key, that it was almost impoffible, from a fimilarity of found, to fubftitute one word for another. This excellence is peculiar to the Celtic tongue, and is perhaps to be met with in no other language. Nor does this choice of words clog the fenfe or weaken the expreffion. The numerous flections of confonants, and variation in declenfion, make the language very copious.

THE defcendants of the Celta, who inhabited Britain and its ifles, were not fingular in this method of preferving the moft precious monuments of their nation. The ancient laws of the Greeks were couched in verse, and handed down by tradition. The Spartans, through a long habit, became fo fond of this cuftom, that they would never allow their laws to be committed to writing. The actions of great men, and the eulogiums of kings and heroes, were preferved in the fame manner. All the hiftorical monuments of the old Germans were comprehended in their ancient fongs *! which were either hymns to their gods, or elegies in praise of their heroes, Tacitus de mor. Germ.

and were intended to perpetuate the great events in their nation which were carefully interwoven with them. This fpecies of compofition was not committed to writing, but delivered by oral tradition. The care they took to have the poems taught to their children, the uninterrupted custom of repeating them upon certain occafions, and the happy measure of the verse, ferved to preserve them for a long time uncorrupted. This oral chronicle of the Germans was not forgot in the eighth century, and it probably would have remained to this day, had not learning, which thinks every thing, that is not committed to writing, fabulous, been introduced. It was from poetical traditions that Garcillaffo compofed his account of the Yncas of Peru. The Peruvians had loft all other monuments of their history, and it was from ancient poems which his mother, a princefs of the blood of the Yncas, taught him in his youth, that he collected the materials of his hiftory. If other nations then, that had been often overrun by enemies, and had fent abroad and received colonies, could, for many ages, preferve, by oral tradition, their laws and hiftories uncorrupted, it is much more probable that the ancient Scots, a people fo free of intermixture

* Abbé de la Bleterie Remarques fur la Germaine.

with foreigners, and fo ftrongly attached to the memory of their ancestors, had the works of their bards handed down with great purity.

WHAT is advanced, in this fhort Differtation, it must be confeffed, is mere conjecture. Beyond the reach of records, is fettled a gloom, which no ingenuity can penetrate. The manners defcribed, in these poems, fuit the ancient Celtic times, and no other period, that is known in hiftory. We must, therefore, place the heroes far back in antiquity; and it matters little, who were their cotemporaries in other parts of the world. If we have placed Fingal in his proper period, we do honour to the manners of barbarous times. He exercised every manly virtue in Caledonia, while Heliogabalus difgraced human nature at Rome.