Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for Clach-na-Ossian

Clach-na-Ossian, a large stone on the banks of Almond Water, near the upper end of Glenalmond Pass, in Crieff parish, Perthshire, a little to the W of Dunmore Hill, and 5 miles S of Amulree. It is 8 feet high, and from 4 to 5 feet broad; and, about 1728 being removed from its original site at the forming of Wade's military road, it was found to cover a cavity 2 feet long, 1½ foot wide, and 2 feet deep, fenced with four stone slabs, and containing some bones and ashes. 'I have learned,' says Newte, who was here in 1791, 'that when Ossian's Stone was removed, and the coffin containing his supposed remains discovered, the people of the country for several miles around, to the number of three or four score of men, venerating the memory of the bard, rose with one consent, and carried away the bones, with bagpipes playing and other funereal rites, and deposited them with much solemnity within a circle of large stones, on the lofty summit of a rock, sequestered, and of difficult access, where they might never more be disturbed by mortal feet or hands, in the wild recesses of western Glenalmond.' Macculloch, ever at war with 'old poetic feeling,' discredits the story of Ossian's burial here, which Dr Donald Smith upheld most learnedly, and of which Wordsworth sings-

Does then the Bard sleep here indeed?
Or is it but a groundless creed?
What matters it?-I blame them not
Whose fancy in this lonely spot
Was moved, and in such way expressed
Their notion of its perfect rest.
A convent. even a hermit's cell,
Would break the silence of this deil:
It is not quiet. is not ease.
But something deeper far than these:
The separation that us here
Is of the grave, and of austere
Yet happy feelings of the dead.
And. therefore, was it rightly said
That Ossian. last of all his race,
Lies buried in this lonely place.'


(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a large stone"   (ADL Feature Type: "natural rock formations")
Administrative units: Crieff ScoP       Perthshire ScoCnty

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