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In this still place remote from men

Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen …

… He sung of battles and the breath

Of stormy war and violent death,

(Wordsworth 1803, 176)

When the people of the glen heard that the soldiers had shifted the massive stone, they carried away the bones uncovered in the grave beneath the boulder to be reinterred somewhere further west in upper Glen Almond - Gleann Amain. A large party of clansmen bore the remains away to the sound of bagpipe music (Tranter 1971). The people were quite consciously remapping a landmark in the cognitive map of their territory. Curiously there is an Allt Chill Fhinn – Burn of Fionn’s Church (NN842378 – mapped as Allt Cill-Fhinn) on the south side of Glen Quaich, which may be connected to the tale. The large detached rock sitting mutely by the road in the Sma’ Glen, is still shown on the OS map as Ossian’s Grave (NN895906), despite the removal and reinterring of the remains, which it once concealed (ssss1).

Plate 9: Clach Oisein - Ossian’s Grave, An Caol-ghleann - Sma’ Glen, Aberfeldy, Perthshire.