In the first half of the eighteenth century the Highlands held no appeal for Lowland Scots. The scenery had no attraction, as evidenced by descriptions such as Daniel Defoe's 'frightful country full of hidious desart mountains.' The language was considered barbarous and the people were seen as superstitious and incorrigibly idle. Indeed, their whole way of life seemed an offence against the Calvinist work ethic.

The only attraction which the Highlands had at this time was potential. If the Highlanders could be remade in the image of Lowlanders—learn to speak English, become honest, hardworking, and industrious, discover the delights of true religion, and become imbued with the principles of the Glorious Revolution—then the area might become peaceful and prosperous instead of warlike and poor.

As far as the reformers were concerned there was nothing to be weighed in the balance against these benefits. If someone had suggested to them (no one did) that perhaps there was much joy to be gained from singing songs and reciting poetry in a language rich in such productions; that a conviction of kinship with the chief of the clan might give a feeling of worth to every man however poor and lowly; that hospitality, generosity and loyalty were virtues not to be despised; and that hardiness, endurance and the ability to withstand extremes of cold and hunger were in any way admirable, the response would have been utter incomprehension. The Highlanders were 'savages'; no one in the early eighteenth century was interested in observing them or in learning more about them. The aim was to 'civilise' them.

After the '45 it became necessary to get to grips with the Highlands. The strand of thought which dominated the pre-1745 attitude toward the Highlands—that the whole of the Gaidhealtachd should be refashioned in the image of the Lowlands—can be found in the aftermath of the rising, particularly in the debate which took place within the pages of the Scots Magazine in 1746. One writer enjoined compassion on the 'poor ignorant men, whose whole way of life rendered them incapable of enjoying the benefit, and insensible of the blessing of a mild and gracious government, and so more liable to be drawn into the snare by the subtle insinuations of their chiefs'. The notion of the common people as slaves who could be redeemed and rendered respectable citizens if only they were removed from the sway of their chiefs is one which recurs frequently in this period.

The idea of 'civilising' the Highlands could be illustrated from many other sources, but the theme of this paper is the very different stream of thought which became prevalent after the publication of James Macpherson's 'Ossianic' poems in the early 1760s. This stream of thought also started from the premise that the Highlanders were 'savage', but it came to a different conclusion, because the primitivist ideas which were so intrinsic to Enlightenment thinking saw virtue in 'savage' societies. Important seeds were sown by the publication of Jerome Stone's translation (or, rather, adaptation) of a fine old Gaelic elegy in the Scots Magazine in January 1756, for it made it feasible to consider the possibility of more fine ancient poetry emanating from the 'savage' Highlands. Clearly it was this belief that made John Home, and later Hugh Blair and others, so eager to accept the fragments and then the 'epic' which James Macpherson presented to them. Similarly, the belief already in existence, that primitive societies were not just braver and bolder than modern societies but also somehow more refined and nobler of spirit, made it easy for the literati to accept the type of society which Macpherson pictured for them in the Ossianic poems. The frequency with which Ossian was subsequently invoked to 'prove' such theories is evidence enough of this.

A great deal of attention has been given to the effect of Ossian on Germany and other Continental countries but very little to how it affected Lowland Scots. The effects were threefold, but they coalesced to form a new image of the Highlands.

First of all, Ossian provided a new way of looking at wild and desolate scenery. 'Sublimity' is the key concept here. Hugh Blair's writing enlarged the theme considerably and his ideas gained wide credence. A sublime object, according to Blair, 'produces a sort of internal elevation and expansion; it raises the mind much above its ordinary state; and fills it with a degree of wonder and astonishment'. Flowery fields were not conducive to sublimity, 'but the hoary mountain, and the solitary lake; the aged forest, and the torrent falling over the rock'. The way in which so much of the scenery of the Highlands conforms to these ideas of the sublime is an important element in the impact of Ossian.

The question of whether Blair's ideas about sublimity preceded or post-dated Ossian is an interesting one and can probably best be answered by saying, 'both'. Blair's published material appeared after Fingal and Temora, he used Ossianic examples to illustrate his points. Blair's biographer summed up the situation: 'Macpherson's stuff was meat for Blair's theories, and Blair's theories were, one suspects, the food on which Macpherson's poetical efforts throve and flourished' [R.N. Smitz, Hugh Blair, 1948].

The new way of looking at Highland scenery may be illustrated by the following passage from a book entitled Observations relative chiefly to Picturesque Beau ty made in the year 1776, on several parts of Great Britain; particularly the High-Lands of Scotland by William Gilpin. Referring to remarks made by Samuel Johnson about his tour of the Highlands, Gilpin writes [in Observations Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty …, 1789]:

It is true indeed, that an eye, like Dr Johnson's, which is accustomed to see the beauties of landscape only in flowery pastures, and waving harvests, cannot be attracted to the great, and sublime in nature … Dr. Johnson says, the Scotch mountain has the appearance of matter incapable of form, or usefulness … as for it's being incapable of form, he can mean only that it cannot be formed into cornfields, and meadows. Its form as a mountain is unquestionably grand and sublime in the highest degree. For that poverty in objects, or simplicity, as it may be called, which no doubt injures the beauty of a Scottish landscape; is certainly at the same time the source of sublimity.

Not everyone was able to respond to Highland scenery in this way, but in the post-Ossianic era every visitor knew how he or she was expected to respond. This is beautifully captured in the following remarks by Mrs Anne Grant of Laggan, who was born in the Highlands but spent most of her childhood in America, before returning in 1773:

When I came … to Scotland, Ossian obtained a complete ascendant over my imagination … Thus determined to like the Highlands; a most unexpected occurrence carried me, in my seventeenth year, to reside there, and that at Abertarfe, the most beautiful place in it; yet it is not easy to say how much I was repelled and disappointed. In vain I tried to raise my mind to the tone of sublimity. The rocky divisions that rose with so much majesty in description, seemed like enormous prison walls, confining caitiffs in the narrow glen. These, too, seemed like the dreary abode of solitude and silence. These feelings, however, I did not even whisper to the rushes. [Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland, 1811]

After she had lived there for some time, Anne Grant became a passionate advocate of the Highlands and Highlanders, but her initial reaction is certainly revealing.

Apart from the supposed appeal of the sublime in general, the enormous success of Ossian also gave the Highlands specific associations. When Charles Cordiner, a minister from Banff who was asked by Thomas Pennant to draw some picturesque scenes of Highland Scotland, visited a locality connected with Ossian, he not only described the scene at length, with appropriate quotations from Temora, he also included a blind harper in the foreground of his picture of the waterfall.

Robert Burns certainly fell under the Ossianic spell. In September 1786, when he returned to Edinburgh after a tour which included Highland Perthshire, he wrote to his brother Gilbert, hardly mentioning the last stages of his journey for, as he put it, '[wa]rm as I was from Ossian's country where I had seen his very grave, what cared I for fisher-towns and fertile carses?'

In Tobias Smollett's novel, Humphry Clinker, the character of Jery, who is depicted as a very ordinary, down-to-earth young man, writes to a friend from the Highlands: 'I feel an enthusiastic pleasure when I survey the brown heath that Ossian wont to tread; and hear the wind whistle through the bending grass—When I enter our landlord's hall, I look for the suspended harp of that divine poet, and listen in hopes of hearing the aerial sound of his respected spirit.'

However, for Lowland visitors to the Highlands it was not simply a question of losing themselves in associations with a literary past; they also saw present-day Highlanders in a new light. The surroundings in which they lived were said to have had a profound effect on the Ossianic heroes, and those surroundings had not changed significantly over the centuries, so it followed that eighteenth-century Highlanders possessed many of the same qualities as their noble ancestors. Anne Grant writes of 'the hold which long-descended habits of thinking, heightened by wild poetry and wilder scenery, took of even the more powerful intellect, giving to the whole national character a cast of "dreary sublimity" as an elegant critic has happily expressed it, altogether unique and peculiar'.

This new perception made Highlanders acceptable in a way which would hitherto have been unimaginable. It is significant to note that one of Anne Grant's books was entitled Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders, for in the Romantic era superstitions were not to be despised; they added to the mystical aura of primitive societies. It is fascinating to recall that Anne Grant actually lived among Highlanders, and her books do reveal a good deal of perception about them. For example, she writes of the Highlander that 'he perfectly comprehends that we know many things of which he is ignorant; but then he thinks, first, that in his situation, none of those things would make him better or happier, though he did know them; and, next, that he possesses abilities to acquire all that is valuable in knowledge, if accident had thrown him in the way of culture'. This is all very commonsensical, yet at the same time she can turn them into living exemplars of the primitivist idea, as in the following extract:

The importance and necessity, in a country thus enervated by luxury, thus lost in frivolous pursuits and vain speculations, to cherish in whatsoever remote obscurity they exist, a hardy manly Race, inured to Suffering, fearless of Danger, and careless of Poverty, to invigorate Society by their Spirit, to defend it by their Courage, and to adorn it with those Virtues that bloom in the shade, but are ready to wither away in the sunshine of prosperity. [The Highlanders and Other Poems, 3rd. ed., 1810]

It seems to me that Anne Grant is inhabiting two worlds simultaneously, a real one and a mythological or idealised one. She did in fact become proficient enough at the Gaelic language to translate some old poems, and her translations, while versified to suit current taste, are close enough to the originals to be recognisable. However, when she switched to writing her own poetry it became full of sentimental clichés. Here are just three lines from The Highlanders:

Where ancient Chieftains rul'd those green retreats,
And faithful Clans delighted to obey
The kind behests of patriarchal sway.

It is noteworthy that in the course of half a century clan chiefs have been transformed from ruthless oppressors to kindly patriarchs.

Anne Grant was by no means the only person capable of inhabiting the two worlds simultaneously. Patrick Graham, who contributed one of the century's numerous essays on the 'authenticity' of Ossian, observed that 'the prospect which perpetually engages the eye of the Highlander, of barren heath, lofty mountains, rugged precipices, and wide stretched lakes, has a natural tendency to call forth sentiments of sublimity, which are unfavourable to frivolousness of thought'. Now Patrick Graham was in fact minister at Aberfoyle, and one can scarcely credit that he did not come into contact with some 'frivolousness of thought' in his daily contact with parishioners. Indeed, in the same publication quoted above he wrote: 'to such scenery as the Trossachs exhibit, the natives attribute no beauty. They consider such scenes as horrible; and however attached they may be to their native soil, they sigh after an exchange of such abodes, for the rich and level plains of the low-country. To enjoy these scenes, the culture of taste is requisite'. If the 'culture of taste' is necessary, then what becomes of the natural tendency of the scenery to call forth sentiments of sublimity?

A final quotation—from Francis Jeffrey's review of The Lady of the Lake [Edinburgh Review, August, 1810]—seems to me to encapsulate the new view of the Highlands. It will be noted that all the things which everyone wanted to destroy before, and immediately after, the '45 are the very things which are here being lauded:

There are few persons, we believe, of any degree of poetical susceptibility, who have wandered among the secluded vallies of the Highlands, and contemplated the singular people by whom they are still tenanted—with their love of music and of song—their hardy and irregular life, so unlike the unvarying toils of the Saxon mechanic—their devotion to their chiefs—their wild and lofty traditions—their national enthusiasm—the melancholy grandeur of the scenes they inhabit—and the multiplied superstitions which still linger among them,—without feeling, that there is no existing people so well adapted for the purposes of poetry, or so capable of furnishing the occasions of new and striking inventions.

I am certainly not arguing that Ossian led to a greater understanding of Gaelic culture on the part of Lowlanders. The eighteenth century was the era of some of the finest Gaelic poetry ever composed, but this genuine poetry was largely ignored by the Lowlanders who lapped up Ossian. Ossian was eagerly accepted because it chimed in so well with Enlightenment ideas about primitive societies, and because it fulfilled a genuine need by transforming a hitherto unacceptable section of the Scottish population into one which was universally admired.