James Macpherson

James Macpherson (Gaelic: Seumas MacMhuirich or Seumas Mac a' Phearsain; 27 October 1736 – 17 February 1796) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector, and politician. He is known for the Ossian cycle of epic poems, which he claimed to have discovered and translated from Gaelic. Early life and education Macpherson was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie in Badenoch, Inverness-shire. This was a Scottish Gaelic-speaking area but near the Ruthven Barracks of the British Army, established in 1719 to enforce Whig rule from London after the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Macpherson's uncle, Ewen Macpherson joined the Jacobite army in the 1745 march south, when Macpherson was nine years old and after the Battle of Culloden, had had to remain in hiding for nine years. In the 1752-3 session, Macpherson was sent to King's College, Aberdeen, moving two years later to Marischal College (the two institutions later became the University of Aberdeen), reading Caesar's Commentaries on the relationships between the 'primitive' Germanic tribes and the 'enlightened' Roman imperial army; it is also believed that he attended classes at the University of Edinburgh as a divinity student in 1755–56. During his years as a student, he ostensibly wrote over 4,000 lines of verse, some of which was later published, notably The Highlander (1758), a six-canto epic poem, which he attempted to suppress sometime after its publication. Collecting Scottish Gaelic poetry On leaving college, he returned to Ruthven to teach in the school there, and then became a private tutor. At Moffat he met John Home, the author of Douglas, for whom he recited some Gaelic verses from memory. He also showed him manuscripts of Gaelic poetry, supposed to have been picked up in the Scottish Highlands and the Western Isles; one was called The Death of Oscar. In 1760, Macpherson visited North Uist and met with John MacCodrum, the official Bard to the Chief of Clan MacDonald of Sleat. As a result of their encounter, MacCodrum made, according to John Lorne Campbell, "a brief appearance in the Ossianic controversy which is not without its humorous side." When Macpherson met MacCodrum, he asked, "A bheil dad agaibh air an Fheinne?" Macpherson believed himself to have asked, "Do you know anything of the Fianna?" He had actually said, however, "Do the Fianna owe you anything?"