E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Os’sian.
The son of Fingal, a Scottish warrior-bard who lived in the third century. The poems called Ossian’s Poems were first published by James M‘Pherson in 1760, and professed to be translations from Erse manuscripts collected in the Highlands. This is not true. M‘Pherson no doubt based the poems on traditions, but not one of them is a translation of an Erse manuscript; and so far as they are Ossianic at all, they are Irish, and not Scotch
