Scientists reveal Ossian's works were copies of 12th-century Irish tales: Poems widely regarded as a cornerstone of Scottish history are almost certainly a hoax, according to new research.
Ossian, a legendary Celtic warrior and bard from the third century AD, is the narrator and apparent author of poems translated by the Scottish poet James Macpherson.
But an investigation by scientists concluded Ossian's poems were an ingenious fake, stolen from Ireland.
3 comments:
I think that the consensus of literary scholars has, for years, been that McPherson wrote that stuff. (I could be wrong about that.) (But that's what my memory tells me.)
You are absolutely right, Don. Macpherson has long been known as one of the premiere fakers in literary history. So the lede here is misleading; the research is confirmatory, not revelatory.
What does it mean to frame poems? Did he translate the Irish poems and call them Scottish? Did he read the Irish poems and write his own Scottish versions in English? Does that make them fake? Fake translations, I suppose. Did he ever say where he got the originals he supposedly translated, or show them to people? That article wasn't very thorough. Although it was the Daily Mail.
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