 as neither hospitable, handsome, kind, nor generous usage towards
your guest and your kinsman. My ancestors, Mr. Oldbuck« -
    »Were great and gallant chiefs, I dare say, Hector; and really I did not
mean to give you such immense offence in treating a point of remote antiquity, a
subject on which I always am myself cool, deliberate, and unimpassioned. But you
are as hot and hasty, as if you were Hector and Achilles, and Agamemnon to
boot.«
    »I am sorry I expressed myself so hastily, uncle, especially to you, who
have been so generous and good. But my ancestors« -
    »No more about it, lad; I meant them no affront - none.«
    »I'm glad of it, sir; for the house of M'Intyre« -
    »Peace be with them all, every man of them,« said the Antiquary. »But to
return to our subject - Do you recollect, I say, any of those poems which
afforded you such amusement?«
    »Very hard this,« thought M'Intyre, »that he will speak with such glee of
everything which is ancient, excepting my family.« - Then, after some efforts at
recollection, he added aloud, »Yes, sir, - I think I do remember some lines; but
you do not understand the Gaelic language.«
    »And will readily excuse hearing it. But you can give me some idea of the
sense in our own vernacular idiom?«
    »I shall prove a wretched interpreter,« said M'Intyre, running over the
original, well garnished with aghes, aughs, and oughs, and similar gutturals,
and then coughing and hawking as if the translation stuck in his throat. At
length, having premised that the poem was a dialogue between the poet Oisin, or
Ossian, and Patrick, the tutelar Saint of Ireland, and that it was difficult, if
not impossible, to render the exquisite felicity of the first two or three
lines, he said the sense was to this purpose:
 
»Patrick the psalm-singer,
Since you will not listen to one of my stories,
Though you never heard it before,
I am sorry to tell you
You are little better than an ass« -
 
»Good! good!« exclaimed the Antiquary; »but go on. Why, this is, after all, the
most admirable fooling - I dare say the poet was very right. What says the
Saint?«
    »He replies in character,« said M'Intyre: »but
