Blind Ossian's Fingal Fragments and Controversy

To the accompaniment of the harp, Ossian enchanted his third-century listeners with tales of savage battles, magnanimous victories, graceful defeats, doomed romances and bloody feuds.The rediscovered Ossianic epics inspired the Romantic movement in Europe, but caused a political storm in Britain and up to recently have been denounced as one of the greatest literary hoaxes of all time. When James Macpherson published his translations of the poetry of Ossian, a third-century Highland bard, they were an instant success. However, the plaudits soon gave way to controversy. Were the poems part of a great Gaelic oral tradition, or the work of Macpherson's imagination?