To this evidence remains to be added the specific testimony of the committee of the Highland Society who investigated the whole subject. In their Report, already referred to, they explicitly state as the result of their enquiries that "such poetry," as that published by Macpherson, "did exist; that it was common, general, and in great abundance; that it was of a most impressive and striking sort, in a high degree eloquent, tender, sublime." The researches of the committee resulted in the accumulation of a mass of detailed evidence of which the extracts below are fair specimens. It has to be remembered, in examining the Report, that the committee possessed no clue whatever to the quarters from which Macpherson had derived his originals. It must also be noted that the independent versions of many of the passages were got from people who knew no English, and who had never heard of Macpherson.
Letter from Rev. Donald Macleod, Glenelg, to Dr. Blair, March 26th, 1764:—"It was in my house that Mr. Macpherson got the description of Cuchullin's horses and car in Book i, p. 2, from Allan MacCaskie, schoolmaster, and Rory Macleod, both of this glen. He has not taken in the whole of the description; and his translation of it (spirited and pretty as it appears, so far as it goes) falls so far short of the original in the picture it exhibits of
