‘THE LANGUAGE IN WHICH OSSIAN COMPOSED’
MACFARLANE, Patrick.
A new and copious English and Gaelic Vocabulary, with the different Parts of Speech; in alphabetical Order. By P. Macfarlane, Translator of Dodderidge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, Blair’s Sermons, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, &c. &c.
Edinburgh: Printed [by R. Menzies] for the Author, and Sold by A. Constable and Co. Edinburgh. 1815.
8vo, pp. [2], v, [1], 3-226; some dust soiling and foxing; uncut and partially unopened in original grey boards, edges scuffed, chip to head of spine; bookplate and cancellation stamp of Edinburgh University library.
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A new and copious English and Gaelic Vocabulary, with the different Parts of Speech; in alphabetical Order. By P. Macfarlane, Translator of Dodderidge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, Blair’s Sermons, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, &c. &c.
First edition of this early English-Gaelic dictionary. The English-Gaelic Vocabulary was published alone, as here, at 5s.6d., or together with the Gaelic-English part at 12s.6d. The Gaelic scholar complied it because the ‘want of an English and Gaelic Vocabulary has long been a desideratum with those who wish to be acquainted wth the language in which Ossian, the son of Fingal, composed and sung’. The work begins with a guide to reading and the rules of pronunciation, ‘chiefly taken from those prefixed to the Gaelic Bible’. Macfarlane had corrected the proofs of the Gaelic New Testament of 1813 and of MacLeod and Dewar’s Dictionary of the Gaelic Language (1831).
