SOURCE: "Eighteenth-Century Fraud and Oral Tradition: The 'Real' Ossian," in Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media, edited by Dietrich Scheunemann, Camden House, 1996, pp. 44-61.

In the following essay, Gunderloch examines the manner in which Macpherson, under the guise of Ossian, approached and appropriated Scottish oral traditions, and explores the tension that exists between the genuine Scottish oral materials and Macpherson's literary treatment of them.

The Gaelic literary tradition which flourished in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the second half of the eighteenth century was almost exclusively oral in character and only a small amount of this material is extant in the shape of manuscripts which contain texts taken down from the recitation of the bearers of oral tradition. One example of these survives in the intriguing collection of Gaelic heroic ballands made by the Rev. Alexander Camp-bell of Portree, a minor figure in the infamous Ossianic Controversy...