The Fragments were immensely popular, as were the slightly more
coherent epics that Macpherson spun off from them in Fingal and
Temora. Napoleon carried his volume of Ossian with him on
campaign. Every major Romantic poet wrote imitations of the
famed Ossianic style of "rhythmic prose." With Ossian begin the
Sorrows of Young Werther and the European Romantic hero;
translated into a dozen languages, and even into "proper"
English verse, the Ossianic poems provide a telling insight into
history, culture and literature, particularly as they reveal how
often our conceptions of those are built on wispy shreds of
evidence, the merest fragments. But you may judge for yourself
of the poems below. Only a few other sites on the web focus
directly on Macpherson, Ossian or the texts involved in the
Ossianic controversy. These include the full text of Temora (a
later epic), a brief biography of Macpherson, and a useful
introductory bibliography. The edition of the Fragments that
follows is a lightly modernized, lightly co