The original MS. ended on pp. 202-220, with the following Conclusion, which I transcribe in full:
“The common Aryan traditional Gaelic history of the western parts of the British Isles is British, Scoto-Irish, and Scandinavian, from B.C. 20 and the days of Cuchullin down to Oscur, 281, Padruig 432, Conall Gulban 464, Column Cille 558, the battle of Clontarf and Murdoch Mac Brian 1014, and Magnus 1093.
“It is natural to find common traditions on both sides of the narrow sea, and the traditions of Gaelic Scotland and of Ireland were of old and still are[1] essentially the same in fact.
“No trace of Macpherson’s Gaelic Ossian of 1807 as a composition is known to exist on either side before 1763, when he printed a sample.
“It is but a continuance of the manners and customs of ancestral predatory Aryan nomads, who lived in a state of ‘war and individual action’, when Scotch and Irish would fight all round for heroes who purport to have been chiefs amongst their common ancestors, according to their common history, romance, and tradition, preserved in dialects of their common speech.
“The people still firmly believe in their traditional history. I think that their heroes were real men, about whom missionaries wove legends and Christians composed romances founded upon ancient traditions orally preserved.”
A sixteenth section was afterwards added (Dreams and their Interpretation) and, as already stated, a Chronological Appendix. In September 1876, Campbell went through the MS., and described it as “needing a deal of cutting down and condensation”. He had previously (May 1876) asked Messrs. Macmillan to publish the work, but, without seeing the MS., they declined.
As far as I could judge a work of over 250 pp. of MS. in the brief time at my disposal, I should say that it would no longer be desirable to print this Introduction as it stands. Thanks chiefly to the labours of German scholars, our knowledge of early Gaelic myth and literature has
- ↑ Added to original transcript by Campbell,
