Scottish Authors > James Macpherson Poet & Translator 1736-1796

James Macpherson was born in Ruthven, Badenoch on 27th October 1736 and attended both Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities before returning to his native district as a teacher. By 1758 he had moved to Edinburgh where he worked as a tutor and tried to make his name as a poet.

Celticism was then in vogue through the "discovery" of Welsh bardic poetry. The excitement generated by a Gaelic ballad published in the Scots magazine in 1756 may have spurred Macpherson to similar activity. In 1760 he published Fragments of ancient poetry, which gave glimpses of a rugged, ancient land inhabited by venerable warriors brooding on past glories.

Son of the noble Fingal, Ossian, Prince of men! What tears run down the cheeks of age? What shades thy mighty soul?

Memory, son of Alpin, memory wounds the aged. Of former times are my thoughts; my thoughts are of the noble Fingal.

These "translations" gave Macpherson a success his original compositions had not achieved. Having claimed that the "fragments" represented larger works still obtainable, he was encouraged to collect more. Before long Macpherson published his main works, Fingal and Temora: verse translations (or so he claimed) of epic poems by Ossian, commemorating the exploits of a warrior race flourishing in Scotland in pre-Christian times.

The success of these works was phenomenal. Innumerable editions in most European languages bear testimony to the magic of their elemental landscapes and the proud, melancholy men who haunted them. Comparisons with Homer were frequent. However, there was also controversy, since some critics accused Macpherson of forgery and deception. The debate took on political overtones and continued throughout Macpherson's lifetime, and still colours people's attitudes towards Macpherson, and towards Gaelic poetry.

In truth, there were no third-century Gaelic epics preserved, even fragmentarily, by eighteenth century tradition-bearers. There were, however, orally preserved heroic ballads in which larger-than-life characters (including Fionn and Oisean) repelled invaders and had adventures in stylistically distanced, linguistically archaic verse. Reminiscences of this poetry are embedded in Macpherson's texts, and he perhaps saw himself as reconstituting epics from fragmentary remains. Yet much of the poetry is his own, and his "learned" commentaries are disingenuous.

Opinions vary as to Macpherson's literary standing. Distaste for his deception has loaded the dice against him, as have our contemporary preferences for the realism of Gaelic folk-poetry. However, Macpherson's influence on European literature (e.g. on Goethe and the German Romantics) is undeniable.

Macpherson himself took little part in the controversy after its initial exchanges, in which he clashed famously with Dr Johnson. In 1764 he was preferred to an administrative post in Florida. In 1766 he returned to England, where he lived in considerable comfort as a historian, lobbyist and pensioned Government propagandist. In his last years he returned to Badenoch, where he died in 1796. He was buried, at his own direction, in Westminster Abbey.

William Gillies

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