Fingal

Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books: Together with Several Other Poems, Composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic Language, 1762, and Temora, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Eight Books (1763).

These epics, which purported to be translated from an ancient Gaelic original were in fact largely the work of J. Macpherson; the first was based loosely on various old ballads and fragments, the second was entirely invented. Macpherson transforms the legendary Irish hero Finn or Fionn into the Scottish Fingal, ignores various episodes and characters in the original Fenian and Ossianic stories and brings together Fingal and Cuthullin (the Irish Cuchulain) who according to legend were divided by centuries. Morven, Fingal's kingdom in the north-west of Scotland, is Macpherson's invention. The original Finn MacCoul, whether historical or mythical, is usually assigned to the 3rd cent. ad; he was the son of Comhal, and the father of Ossian the warrior bard; he was also leader of the Fianna or Fenians. Fingal is pictured by Macpherson as fighting both the Norwegians and the Romans under Caracalla—‘Caracul, King of the World’. The astonishing sway of Macpherson's version is indicated by the fact that even Gibbon took the trouble to discuss it; he writes (though with some irony) of ‘the tenderness, the elegant genius of Ossian’. The appeal of Fingal lay in its primitivism, its qualities of the sublime, and its sentiment.