"Son of my son," begun the king, "O Oscar, pride of youth! I saw the shining of thy sword, I gloried in my race. Pursue the fame of our fathers; be thou what they have been, when Trenmor lived, the first of men, and Trathal the father of heroes! They fought the battle in their youth. They are the song of bards. O Oscar! bend the strong in arm: but spare the feeble hand. Be thou a stream of many tides against the foes of thy people; but like the gale, that moves the grass, to those who ask thine aid. So Trenmor lived; such Trathal was; and such has Fingal been. My arm was the support of the injured; the weak rested behind the lightning of my steel."
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Poets from ScotlandTranslators from ScotlandPoliticians from ScotlandUniversity of Aberdeen alumniUniversity of Edinburgh alumni
Original Language: English
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Compare: — Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. — Spare the conquered, battle down the proud. — Virgil, Aeneid (19 BC), Book VI, line 853 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald)
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James Macpherson
James Macpherson (Gaelic: Seumas MacMhuirich or Seumas Mac a' Phearsain) (27 October 1736 – 17 February 1796) was a Scottish poet and literary hoaxer. His supposed translations from poems by the ancient Highland bard Ossian, sensationally successful in their day, were largely forgeries, though with an admixture of traditional Gaelic material.
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