Bardic Ministers: Scotland's Gaelic-speaking Clergy in the Ossian Controversy

Although the Gaelic-speaking clergy of Scotland played a central role in the controversy over the authenticity of James Macpherson's Ossian opus, their involvement, and in particular the religious dimensions of their involvement, has received little scholarly attention. This article explores the cultural context of the Gaelic-speaking clergy, both within Gaelic society and in the broader British and Continental European milieu of clerical learning, in order to bring Evangelical revival into dialogue with the Ossian controversy, the Scottish Enlightenment, and Romanticism.