Oscar's Ghost - A Bodleian Ballad Halloween - #5

Oscar's Ghost is the 2nd ballad on this sheet, and only occurs once in the archive:
http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/view/edition/18576

Interestingly, the words are different to those that appear in this 1776 tourist book about Scotland:
https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_observations-relative-ch_gilpin-william_1789_1/page/n167

These word's claim to have been seen by William Gilpin as an inscription in Ossian's Cave in Dunkeld. Most tourist guides now say that the inscription no longer exists:
https://www.showcaves.com/english/gb/subterranea/Ossian.html

The song is undoubtably about the Poems of Ossian, by James Macpherson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossian

The entry at the top of this page clearly inspires the final half-stanza about grey stones and hunters:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924013188960/page/n185/

The Bodleian version, and this one that attributes the poem to Ann Murray Keith, both miss the final lines (which are what makes the song clearly about a ghost):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Scottish_Song/Oscar%27s_Ghost

There is a tantalizing inference here that Ann had converted much more of Ossian into verse:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XcCq3wYcTOYJ:https://electricscotland.com/webclans/families/keiths.htm&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&lr=lang_en|lang_zh-CN|lang_zh-TW

Blog post about this song:
https://www.folklounge.org/ossians-cave-mystery/

#Halloween #Scotland #Ossian

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