The Macphersons were poor, but they saw that their son was clever, and they determined that he should be well taught.  So when he left school they sent him to college, first to Aberdeen and then to Edinburgh.

Before he was twenty James had left college and become master of the school in his own native village.  He did not, however, like that very much, and soon gave it up to become tutor in a family.

By this time James Macpherson had begun to write poetry.  He had also gathered together some pieces of old Gaelic poetry which he had found among the Highland folk.  These he showed to some other poets and writers whom he met, and they thought them so beautiful that he published them in a book.

The book was a great success.  All who read it were delighted with the poems, and said that if there was any more such poetry in the Highlands, it should be gathered together and printed before it was lost and forgotten for ever.  For since the ’45 the English had done everything to make the Highlanders forget their old language and customs.  They were forbidden to wear the kilt or the tartan, and everything was done to make them speak English and forget Gaelic.

So now people begged Macpherson to travel through the Highlands and gather together as much of the old poetry of the people as he could.  Macpherson was at first unwilling to go.  For one thing, he quite frankly owned that he was not a good Gaelic scholar.  But at length he consented and set out.

For four months Macpherson wandered about the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, listening to the tales of the people and writing them down.  Sometimes, too, he came across old manuscripts with ancient tales in them.  When he had gathered all he could, he returned to Edinburgh and set to work to translate the stories into English.

When this new book of Gaelic poetry came out, it again was a great success.  It was greeted with delight by the greatest poets of France, Germany, and Italy, and was soon translated into many languages.  Macpherson was no longer a poor Highland laddie, but a man of world-wide fame.  Yet it was not because of his own poetry that he was famous, but because he had found (so he said) some poems of a man who lived fifteen hundred years before, and translated them into English.  And although Macpherson’s book is called The Poems of Ossian, it is written in prose.  But it is a prose which is often far more beautiful and poetical than much that is called poetry.

Although at first Macpherson’s book was received with great delight, soon people began to doubt about it.  The Irish first of all were jealous, for they said that Ossian was an Irish poet, that the heroes of the poems were Irish, and that Macpherson was stealing their national heroes from them.