'Poems of Ossian' title page

This image appears in a 1842 edition of 'The Poems of Ossian', published by Thomas Nelson in Edinburgh. The poems were originally published in 1762 by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, who claimed to have gathered their contents through early Gaelic manuscripts and oral storytelling before translating them into English. Ossian, son of the heroic Fingal, is the the titular author-narrator of these poems.

In this image, Ossian is drawn as an elderly man with a white beard and hair. Unusually for a depiction of Ossian at this age, however, he does not appear to be blind. The harp is a fairly common feature in illustrations of Ossian, given that his role in the poems is one of a bard-like storyteller.

[Oss.126]