“I look unto the times of old, but they seem dim to Ossian's eyes, like reflected moonbeams on a distant lake. Here rise the red beams of war! There, silent dwells a feeble race! They mark no years with their deeds, as slow they pass along. Dweller between the shields! thou that awakest the failing soul! descend from thy wall, harp of Cona, with thy voices three! Come with that which kindles the past: rear the forms of old, on their own dark-brown years!”

Is this bad poetry, or good poetry? Most people now would probably say it was very bad poetry indeed, but most people when it was first published went absolutely wild over it. It was considered one of the most important literary works of the era. It inspired paintings and operas- and a great deal of controversy.

The poetry in question is from an epic work called “Ossian,” attributed to the legendary ancient Gaelic bard Ossian by its supposed translator James MacPherson. Largely due to racist preconceptions that the supposedly barbaric Scottish Highlanders could not possibly have produced a literature, it was denounced in some circles as a fraud. It was defended just as eagerly by others.

So, was it a fraud? Well, sort of. Gaelic oral tradition contains a number of chanted ballads known as “Ossianic chants,” and MacPherson seems to have taken as many of these as he could find, rewritten them drastically to suit the literary tastes of the Romantic era, and then published them as “translations.” By modern standards, they were definitely not translations, but he didn't make them up out of whole cloth either. The “poems of Ossian” really did exist- they just didn't sound anything like this.

This is a quote from an actual (translated) Ossianic ballad so you can see how different they really are:

“Three kings came from the waves,
My hand it was left them headless;
And it was I loosed thee with blood,
Why shouldst thou leave me of all men?”

Still, even though MacPherson wasn't really translating anything, he may have believed he was, since modern standards for translation had not yet been established.