Celtic MSS. in Relation to the Macpherson Fraud: With a Review of Professor Freeman's Criticism of [P.b. Du Chaillu's] "The Viking Age," by the Author of "Celticism a Myth

James Cruikshank Roger turns his formidable scholarship toward one of literature's most consequential frauds: James Macpherson's Ossian poems. Published in 1760, Macpherson's supposed translations of ancient Gaelic bardic poetry seduced all of Europe, shaping Romanticism and influencing everyone from Napoleon to Goethe. But as Roger demonstrates with meticulous precision, the original manuscripts Macpherson claimed to have discovered in the Scottish Highlands simply do not exist. Drawing on Dr. Johnson's earlier investigation and the work of J.M. Kemble, Roger dismantles the mythology surrounding Celtic cultural purity, arguing that much attributed to ancient Gaelic sources actually bears Scandinavian imprint. His target is not merely Macpherson's original deception, but the 19th-century scholars, like Professor Mackinnon, who perpetuated the legend by claiming to possess manuscripts they could never produce. This is forensic literary history at its most bracing: a Victorian scholar rigorously applying reason to national mythology, exposing how a fabricated past was assembled and why it proved so irresistible to a culture hungry for ancient roots.