In the XVIII century, the Scottish poet James Macpherson managed to pull off a literary hoax of such scale and genius that the whole world was deceived, and with joy. And the exposure of the literary man shocked prominent figures in Britain.

For a long time James Macpherson could not boast of success in the writing field, but in 1760 he went on a trip to northern Scotland to collect historical material, and returned with a valuable find - the manuscripts of the legendary bard Ossian. Ossian lived in the 3rd century and was the son of the Celtic hero Fingal (Finn McCool). His poems about the exploits of his father and other local heroes, written in Gaelic, is what Macpherson discovered. At least that is what the writer claimed.

To prove his claim, he published translations of Ossian's works: the poems “Fingal” and “Temora”. The publication of works caused a strong reaction and elevated Macpherson to literary Olympus. There was no end to the rave reviews.

Macpherson became famous throughout Europe and could have enjoyed the fame of translating a great text for the rest of his life, but he made a major mistake. The poet intended to use his work as proof of the superiority of the Scots over the other peoples of Britain. He claimed that the poems describe the adventures of brave warriors, who in the III century settled new lands and were the ancestors of the Irish nation. That is, Macpherson categorically stated: the Irish are not a distinctive people, they are descended from the Scots. The literary scholar threw a stone in the garden of the English. Equating the talent of Ossian to the genius of Homer, Macpherson emphasized that it was the Scottish poet who created an epic comparable in grandeur and scale to the Iliad, while English bards could not boast of such a feat.

Of course, after such statements, the writer had many opponents who set out to prove the falsity of his statements. Researchers took a hard look at the Poems of Ossian and found a number of anachronisms. Then the translator was asked to immediately provide the original manuscripts in Gaelic, which Macpherson, of course, did not have. As a result, it turned out that the writer, during his expedition, had simply collected stories from Scottish folk songs and tales, creatively reworked them and passed them off as an ancient epic.

But revealing the truth did not hurt Macpherson, because the artistic merits of his “fake” works were undeniable. “Poems of Ossian” significantly influenced European literature of the Romantic era and inspired other writers.

Without them some masterpieces of Goethe, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Lermontov and many other creators of the pen would not have appeared.