Translations of Ossian, Thomas Moore and the Gothic by 19th Century European Radical Intellectuals: The Democratic Eastern Federation

This article will show how translated works by European radical writers of The Poems of Ossian by the Scot James Macpherson and Irish Melodies and other works by the Irishman Thomas Moore, were disseminated. Moore prefaced Irish Melodies with “In Imitation of Ossian”.  It will also demonstrate how Celtic literature, written in English, influenced the Gothic genre. The propagation of these works was also disseminated in order to implement democratic federalism, without monarchy; one example is the Democratic Eastern Federation, founded in Athens and Bucharest. To what extent did translations and imitations by Russian and Polish revolutionary intellectuals of Celtic literature and the Gothic influence Balkan revolutionary men of letters?


Ossian and Revolution
The Scots and Irish were suppressed by English monarchy after the 1745 Jacobite War and the 1798 Irish Uprising, respectively. The Seven Islanders were colonized by the English (1815-1864). Russian Decembrists and Polish intellectuals were crushed by Tsarist Russia and forced into exile in the second decade of the nineteenth century. These Russians radical intellectuals, who influenced Polish writers, used their pen in support of the oppressed living under despotism.
Alexander Pushkin, the Russian poet and Decembrist (MacWhite, 1972, pp. 49-62), was influenced by Ossian (Tymianov, 1999, pp. 842-843). He was exiled to Bessarabia by the Tsar for publishing the poem Ode to Freedom: 'in his poem dedicated to the Greek Revolution Arise, o Greece Arise! in which the last line refers to both Byron and Rhigas (Farsolas , 1971, p. 79). This poem resembles the one propagated by Rhigas Velistinlis, a Greek-Rumanian scholar, entitled Battle Cry. Rhigas set up the Anatolian Confederation in 1780 in Bucharest inviting all oppressed people of every creed, to fight the tyranny of the Sultan. His Battle Cry was translated by Byron (1866Byron ( /1919 and Gneditch ; the important role of the law is also stressed in his other works (O'Donnell, 2015). Pushkin praised Gneditch for his translation of Greek Klephic song regarding it as a "tour de force" (Farsolas, 1971, p.79).
Pushkin, in his turn met Alexander Ipsilantis in St. Petersburg and made several sketches of him (Vournas, 1982, p. 14-16). Ipsilantis was a Greek-Rumanian who served as a Russian officer under the Tsar. Ipsilantis is also referred to in several of Pushkin's short stories, including Kirdjali. In a footnote Pushkin states that although he showed personal courage as a leader of the Greek Revolution and the Philiki Eteria, a secret organization, against the despotic Ottomans, Alexander Ipsilantis was too impetuous.
There was a network of scholars, influenced by Rhigas Velestinlis who, realising the threat of usurpation of Western monarchy on territory ruled by the dwindling Ottoman Empire, sought to instil unity to combat this presentiment. While Ipsilantis actively fought for these ideals, exiled Russian Decembrists would endeavour to depict the political upheaval resulting from the French Revolution through a new genre -the Gothic.
Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin spoke French, German and English. He had great respect for the peasantry. He translated some stories from Les Veillées du Chateau by Madame de Genlis (Field, 1971).
One of the first Russian Gothic novels entitled Ostrov Bornyolm (Island of Bornholm) written by Karamzin in 1793, began the trend of the Gothic novel in Russia (Karamzin, 1967). It was influenced by Ossian: Here too the grieving heart can relieve itself of the burden of misfortunes in the embrace of sympathetic NATURE (p. 105).
The sublime magnificence of nature can provoke sentiments of fear and bewilderment which prevail in The Poems of Ossian (Stafford, 1991, pp. 49-72). This relates to the "joy of grief" or the "morality of memory" which prevail in this work (Dwyer, 1991, p. 165). Nikolay Ivanovich Gneditch published his Don Corrado de Gerra in 1802. Some songs by Jhoukovsky, such as Ludmilla (1808) and Svellana (1813) are Gothic in style.
Many translations and imitations of Moore's works, mainly Lalla Rookh and Irish Ballads were translated into Russian cresting in the second decade of the nineteenth century when Moore's Lalla Rookh became internationally famous: it is regarded as "a dramatization of Irish patriotism in an Eastern parable" (MacWhite, 1972, p. 50) and was translated by Jhoukovsky, Kozlov, Batiushkov, Pushkin and Lermontov, among others. The French translator Amedée Pichot entitled his translation of Moore's as Lalla Roukh ou La Princesse Mogole in 1820. In his translation of Lalla Rookh, Jhoukovsky in the poem Paradise and the Peri (a peri is a creature of the imagination, higher than man but lower than an angel) influenced Pushkin who, in turn, quotes from Saadi's Garden included in his eastern verse tale entitled The Fountain of Bakhchisarai: Many, like me, have viewed this fountain, but they are gone, and their eyes are closed for ever (p. 506 Pushkin is poignantly pointing to Russian Decembrists hanged under Tsarist rule in 1825. The Gothic mode is evident in that it embraces the change of the political role of lower echelons after the French Revolution (Imposti, 2013, pp. 135-149).

Thomas Moore and Polish Translation
Mickiewicz, the national poet of Poland who belonged to a secret organization known as Philomats (similar to that of the Decembrists or the Carbonari [MacWhite, 1972, p, 51, 53] (Moore, 1857, pp. 109-111). In the previous edition Campbell's poem entitled The Power of Russia, the first two lines of which are as follows: Poland's wrested brand Is now a weapon new to widen his command (Campbell, 1857, p. 95). This poem appeared in the same periodical, referring to the defeat of the Polish revolution in 1830. This edition also included Moore's revolutionary letter to the students of Trinity College Dublin written in 1797 for which his young age saved him from imprisonment (Campbell, 1857, p. 95). In Moore's memoirs he records that Count Krasiński was very fond of Irish Melodies singing aloud "Oh blame not the bard" as the one he preferred. He also informed Moore that The Fire Worshippers from Lalla Rookh appeared in Polish written by Odyniec "in a Polish sense" and that there was a Russian version in existence, which was likely to have been translated by the Decembrist N. A. Bestuzhev, penned with a "definite political intent". Moore also mentions in his memoirs that a Polish writer had gifted him with his work of The Fire Worshippers which he felt to be more valuable, considering it was related to recent events. Apparently the work 1 Retrieved January 14, 2019, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lord-byron.

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had been saved just before the Poles were fleeing from their oppressors. This work was made world famous by the German composer Robert Schumann who set it to music in 1843. When it was performed in Polish its adaptations of the work were rendered by Odyniec, Pajgert and Koźmian. The attitude of Moore towards Tsar Nicholas is captured when he refers to him as "tyrant Nick" in one of his satirical poems, written in 1832, entitled Missing when a new British ambassador to Russia took up his position (MacWhite, 1972, pp. 53-60).
Thomas Moore's condemnation of the Polish nation by the Russians is portrayed in the following poem: 'When Catherine, 'ere she crush'd the Poles Appeal'd to the benign Divinity; Then cut them up in protocols Made fractions of their very souls All in the name of the bless'd Trinity (p. 84) Moore escaped censorship (Healy, 2017). The Gothic genre through its ambiguity and its sometimes hidden criticism of Catholicism was a safe genre to use under despotic rule in support of democratic values and equality (Botting, 1999).

Ossian and the Gothic
Panayiotis Panas, a Kephalonian radical scholar, journalist, main translator of The Poems of Ossian and founder of the Democratic Eastern Federation (O'Donnell, 2014, pp. 165-172), was the direct successor to Rhigas Velistinlis. Panas remarked on Celtic influence in his translation of Dar-thula-Lathmon on its use of metaphor, unknown in Greece, where a cave "howls", the sea smiles, the earth "sighs", a tree "cries" (Panas, 1862, p. 22). The poem Dar-thula contains a Gothic trope in that a heroine is kidnapped by the tyrant Cairbar who will kill her with an arrow after she escapes. She is used as a symbol of the oppressed while Cairbar symbolizes western monarchy.
In Oithona, also translated by Panas (1862), there is an example of an isolated heroine who has been raped by her kidnapper. His "eyes" rolled in fire and "whose bloody sword" murdered her people.
The sense of abandonment in buildings is depicted in Carthon: I have seen the walls of Balclutha but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the people is heard no more. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina (p. 128).
The motifs of isolation and of a woman in distress are greatly manifested in The Songs of Selma. This poem describes Colma who is mourning her dead lover and his enemy, her brother, amidst shrieking "torrents". She converses with the wind imploring the ghosts of the dead to speak to her (Macpherson, 1996, pp. 184-185, 128, 166-167). This poem was hugely popularized by Goethe who included it in his The Sorrows of Young Werther (Boker, 1991, pp. 73-93 It is noteworthy that Byron wrote an adaption of Fingal entitled The Death of Calmar and Orla in 1811. It was translated into Greek in 1850.
An example of the description of sublime nature abounds in Fingal: and they have fallen like the oak of the desart; when it lies across a stream, and withers in the wind of the mountain (p. 95). And: as an oak on the banks… which had its branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven. It bends over the stream, and the gray moss whistles in the wind (p. 86).
Thus it will become evident how The Poems of Ossian influences many Gothic tropes.
In Hugh Blair's work entitled A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, the Son of Fingal, he describes Ossian as possessing two main traits; that of "tenderness and sublimity". The sombre depictions of nature are emulated in the Gothic genre together with a sense of decay in the ruins of Balclutha in Carthon (Macpherson, 1996, pp. 86, 129, 133, 137, 356).

Comparison of Gothic Novels with Ossian
The use of nature which is manifested in the character of Emily in Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho when she connects her feelings with nature through a beautiful and sublime aspect, as in the following: All without was silent and dark, unless that could be called light, which was only the faint glimmer of the stars, sheening imperfectly the outline of the mountains (Almodovar, 2014).

This passage can be compared to many examples in The Poems of Ossian
where there are similar descriptions of nature: The moon rests behind the hill. The beam is still on that lofty rock. Long are the shadows of the trees. Now it is dark over all. Night is dreary, silent, and dark (Macpherson, 1996, p. 191).
This depiction of nature in The Poems of Ossian is also demonstrated when compared to nature in The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe (1966): and upon a few with trunks of decayed trees (p. 225).
This excerpt, also similar to the bleak atmosphere in The House of Usher', is parallel to The Oval Portrait by Poe. The beginning of the story opens with an abandoned castle with its "commingled gloom". There is also a reference to Mrs Radcliffe. The visitor then goes on to describe a portrait of a beautiful woman whose fanatical painter husband paints his wife until she drops dead. The above extract, from Carthon, is identical with the tale of Morella in which a strange woman called Morella dies in childbirth: The winds of the firmament breathed but one sound… the ripples upon the sea murmured (p. 568).
Her demise is similar to that of Moina. This trope is evident in Poe's story of Morella: The winds of the firmament breathed but one sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermore -Morella (Poe, 1966, p. 222).
In 1852, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe was translated into Greek by A.G., published in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire (Denisi, 1995, p. 67 (Oţetea, 1970, p. 80 ) . Nineteenth century European propagators of Celtic and Gothic literature recognize the threat of imperialism. Celtic and Gothic literature through translation presented a united front against Western Imperial domination. It depicted justice and moral virtue. Through the sublime in nature, humankind was transcended, promoting it with a greater feeling of vigour and liberty (Botting, 1999).
Panas translated A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which includes a ghost, similar to Calmar in The Death of Cuchullin, as well as the Gothic dualism of generosity and avariciousness. Panas used his skill as a translator to instill a moral message to his readers in his choice of literature which he mentions in his preface to The Drunkard's Death by Charles Dickens (Stavropoulou, 1987, pp. 286, 287, 261).
Gothic dualism is a theme captured by Russian Gothic writers. The most significant Russian Gothic novel is that of Pushkin's The Queen of Spades (1833). This story was translated into Greek from the French by Prosper Mérimée (1808-1870) by a T. N. G, published in Patras in 1855 (Denisi, 1995, p. 70). Merimée translated several works of Pushkin, Turgenev and Gogol, perhaps writers who also wrote Gothic novels (Braunschvig, 1958, p. 608-609). Influences from The Poems of Ossian are echoed in Merimée's work in La Guzla: "It seems … that the guzla of the Slavs will be as celebrated as the harp of Ossian" (van Tieghem, 1917, pp. 360-361). Here is an example of The Poems of Ossian being used to cement cultural similarities of the Slavs with other groups of people in the Balkans, including the Greeks, as is shown in the following example.
Nicholas Politis, the Greek folklorist and member of the Rigas Society, a disguise for the Democratic Eastern Federation (Stavropoulou, 1987, p. 100), wrote an article entitled On the Superstitions of Ghosts according to the People of Greece in May 1870, citing short extracts on ghosts from The Poems of Ossian (Politis, 1870, pp. 453-454, 457-458). Politis showed similarities of a Gothic folk song that was sung all over the Balkans in his comparison with extracts taken from Ossian with the Modern Greek oral song The Dead Brother which was composed in Anatolia. In Serbian it is known as Giovan and Gelitsas. There are four different versions in Bulgarian and it was known as Constanti and Garendina in Albanian (Koulouphakos, 1984, p. 137, 140-144) 2 . By pointing out the connection of this folk song using the symbolism of unity through marriage, and comparing it to The Poems of Ossian, a sense of harmony was retained among the indigenous, which had been greatly harmed through the machinations of the Orthodox Church, encouraged by Western monarchy, which led to the Bulgarian schism, in February 1870 (Lyberatos, 1995, pp. 9, 28, 38, 41, 43, 45, 46, 51, 60, 71).
The second Polish national poet Juliusz Słowacki (1809-1849) translated Irish Melodies, which he wrote in Paris in 1832. Presumed lost it was only published in Paris in 1952(MacWhite, 1972. Słowacki met the national poet of Greece, Dionysius Solomos on a boat trip from Corfu to Zakinthos in September, 1836. A passenger list included Zenone Brozoneski as well as the Kephalonian scholar Andreas Mustoxidis (Zora, 1952, p. 325-328). Solomos wrote his long poem 'Hymn to Liberty' of which the first few lines comprise the Greek National Anthem. Słowacki translated this poem. D. Christianopoulos at the International Congress of Dionyssius Solomos 200 years of the birth of the Poet 7-10 October 1998 in his paper on Hymn to Liberty by D. Solomos stated that this work was translated seventy four times into seventeen languages, two of which were in Polish including Juliusz Słowacki's version (Christianopoulos, 1998, p. 10 October).
Written together in manuscript in the early 1820s, were two poems by Solomos entitled Ode to the Moon and The Mad Mother. The name of Ossian is included in Ode to the Moon (Boukala, 1998, p. 23). Sung by the illiterate inhabitants, this poem was accompanied by a guitar (Koulouphakos, 1984, p. 137). The moon acts like a balm on the feeling of injustice 3 . Ode to the Moon includes a literary technique which influenced radical Greek poets who used it for political reasons. An example is evident in the poem Stateless which was written by the Kephalonian radical poet Gerassimus Mavroyiannis, who self-exiled himself in1850 as a protest against the English occupation of the Seven Islands (O'Donnell, 2014a, p. 7): In a wood when the pale mysterious little Moon sheds her light over it, Someone sings a plaintive chant in time, And the voice of his Country's pain shows (Mavroyiannis, 1850, p.3).
The neglected scholar, Mavroyiannis, director of the School of Fine Arts (1875-1879), Greek consul in Marseilles and Trieste, historian, lyricist, editor of Palingennisia, art critic (Vouna, 1966, p. 20-26) and donator of art works to the state 4 , translated excerpts from The Poems of Ossian from Italian and Irish Melodies by Moore from French which appeared in On Ossian. He refers to O'Carolan. In the periodical Chrysalis when On Ossian was published in 1863 (Mavroyiannis, 1863, pp. 417-420, 525-531) a Seven Islander poet Panayiotis Mataragkas, translated Come o' er the Sea from Irish Melodies by Moore (1964, p. 688-689) one year later. Biographies of both Pushkin and Karamzin were published in the same year (Mavroyiannis, 1864, p. 370, 719). Mavroyiannis visited Russia after he went into self-exile. It is not certain if the following story is a translation from Russian into Greek, which Mavroyiannis may have read during his trip there. It is set in St. Petersburg and is about a banker of "Gostiny Dvor" (Mavroyiannis, 1864, pp. 334-341). His preface to the story entitled Gallant Retribution is as follows: 3 Five Zakinthians were hanged; their corpses were put into cages on a hill for ten years for disobeying the English law of neutrality in the 1821 Greek Revolution; English cruelty of a young boy sent his mother insane (Kairophillas, 1957, pp. 133-154). 4 International Art Exhibition, Thessaloniki, 8 May-30 June 1900 by National Art Gallery and Alexander Soutsos Museum, 2nd edition.
A certain young man, a lieutenant, disappointed with his army profession, resigned from it and wanted to return to his country, but he lacked the wherewithal. He went to the richest banker in St. Petersburg and asked that he lent him an amount, without a guarantee except his word of honour to repay the amount. This offended the young lieutenant; how the banker did not count as worthy his word of honour. He knew that one day he had to become himself the richest of all the bankers in St. Petersburg. He managed to be appointed as an employee in a commercial wine company. There he showed such industry and such dexterity that in a short time he not only became a wine merchant himself but the richest of them all. At the same time the banker of St. Petersburg became poor. A piece of property, the only dowry he had left for his only daughter, his creditors put up for auction. There, by chance, the extremely rich and old lieutenant was present. Once he learned to whom the landed property belonged, he hid and when the auction was secured in his name, he made a present of it to the poor banker. That was how he got his revenge (Markakis, 1950, p.18).

This story contains a Gothic element of dualism that is found in A Christmas
Carol by Dickens.
There is a sense of magnanimity and the sublime in the action of the young lieutenant that depicts a role model. Using Gothic and Celtic literature these scholars attempted to unite people of all faiths in the hope of forming a Federation against the threat of Western Imperialistic domination.
Mavroyiannis's colleague, Panas, translated A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens published in 1888 in the series Greek Library printed by G. Bart and K. Wilberg. Panas also translated The Rose of Alhambra by the American Gothic writer, Washington Irving, in 1889. Panas published it in his journal Terpsis, together with translations of Ossian, which is, according to his biographer, not available and its existence is only known through the reading of other journals of the period.
Interestingly, Panas translated into Greek The Bridal Ring by the Polish novelist, Anna Nakwaska, written just before the outbreak of the November Polish Uprising of 1830, which gives descriptions of the event. His objective in translating this work was to make his readers aware of the brutal despotism of foreign monarchy imposed on the Poles.
Gothic and Romantic features drew the reader's attention to the split from bygone times so as to awaken feelings of awe in anything that might disintegrate while at the same time holding the desires of retrieving a feeling of 'unity' and worth 5 .

The Democratic Eastern Federation, the Paris Commune and Polish Patriotism
The Democratic Eastern Federation was set up to oppose Russian expansion. Panas was associated with Theodore Kolokotronis (Falez), Member of Parliament and G. Glynis, an editor. Kolokotronis was a member of the Rhigas Association 100 and thus a supporter of the Democratic Eastern Federation. Both Kolokotronis and Glynis had set up a committee in Athens for a whip round for Polish people who had suffered in the Polish Uprising of 1863. Glynis was an editor of the newspaper Mellon in which Panas was the only Greek journalist to report on the Paris Commune as he was a secret friend of Gustave Flourens (Stavropoulou, 1987, p. 280 ) a scholar and revolutionary and one of the central leaders of the Commune. Jarosław Dąbrowski and Walery Wróblewski, two Polish officers, who had fought in the 1863 Polish Uprising also fought in the Paris Commune, whose main supporters were Proudhonnians in the Paris Commune. Therefore, the tenets of Proudhon represented what the Communards were fighting for. As Marx had no role whatsoever in this Uprising and its "leaders were not communists" (Rosenburg, 1967, p.4 and see also pp. 8, 12, 18, 19), to name a Soviet ship Dąbrowski in 1921 in a Communist regime is a misrepresentation of fact (Fournier, 2013, p. 83). Proudhon was an adversary of Marx. As Panas was a translator of Gothic literature and an ardent supporter of the Commune as mentioned above, it is relevant to point out that there existed three, not two forms of rule; capitalism, communism and Proudhon's mutualism (D'Amato, 2014) which was silenced after the crushing of the Commune. Unlike Marx, although Proudhon was against ecclesiasticism, he believed that God is the conscience of humanity (Voyenne, 2004, p. 76). He prophetically labelled Marx as "the tapeworm of socialism". In his letter to Marx in1846, he stated that anyone who sells socialists' ideas is no more indignant than someone selling a sermon (Proudhon, 1929, pp. 71-76).
When he visited Proudhon in 1860, Tolstoy borrowed the title War and Peace from a work by Proudhon whose ideas prevail in Tolstoy's War and Peace (Woodcock, 1972, pp. 166, 229, 278).
After the fall of the Commune, France became a republic in 1871. While Flourens was assassinated, Dąbrowski died on 23 May in combat; Wróblewski survived (Dittmar, 2003, pp. 9, 10, 122, 123-124, 131). Panas published On Hellenism by Flourens. He also refers to Delescluse, a Communard who also died shortly after Dąbrowski. This article was published in the newspaper Iris (Stavropoulou, 1987, p. 280). in Bucharest in 1873, edited by Thomas Paschides, head of the Democratic Eastern Federation in Bucharest. Therefore, the publication of Flourens' article signifies that the ideas of the Commune lived on through the Democratic Eastern Federation. As a lofty complement to Greek-speaking Rumanians, Paschides started his own newspaper Decebal. Under the title is the heading in French Fraternisation des Peuples d'Orient (Hatziphotis, 1974, p. 13). He also donated all his inheritance to the Cretan cause. Flourens had fought in the Cretan Uprising of 1866-69 (O'Donnell, 2014c). Panas dedicated the second part of his book of poetry entitled Hours of Idleness to his secret friend, Gustave Flourens in1883 (Stavroupoulou, 1987. As Flourens also fought in the anti-Tsarist Polish Uprising in 1863 (Flourens, 2014, p. 176) it can be concluded that there were strong links among these patriots who were fighting against social and political despotism. This cause continued through the Democratic Eastern Federation. In a reassessment of the Commune it is suggested that we should all regularly read The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe, so that we might understand that at times we do not see that which is evident (Fournier, 2013, p. 176). The leader of the Democratic Eastern Federation, Panayiotis Panas, together with other intellectuals, fought with the pen, using translations of Celtic literature and Gothic works to promote ethical precepts, which had originated with Russian revolutionary intellectuals.
The exiled Russian men of letters, namely Jhoukovsky, Pushkin and Gneditch resided in Bessarabia, a Russian province, close to Moldavia. These Decembrists also influenced Polish writers whose works in turn inspired Rumanian writers.
Costache Negruzzi translated Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies from the French version by Louise Swanton Belloc, which he did while in prison in 1868 (MacWhite, 1972, p. 51, 49). He met Pushkin in exile. Negrussi translated: Dergavin's Ode catre Dumnezeu; Jhoukovsky; Pushkin (Salul negru, Cirjaliul and La Maria); a fragment from The History of Moldavia' by Karamzin and Oscar of Alva by Byron.
The translator Costache Stamati met Pushkin and Jhoukovsky in Chisniau when he was working in Bessarabia. He spoke French, Greek and Russian. He translated an extract from Jhoukovsky's Aeolian harp; Irish Melodies by Moore; Pushkin's The Prisoner of the Caucuses and a work by Krilov and Lermontov into Rumanian. Because Lermontov wrote poetry in support of the Polish uprising he was forced to abandon tertiary education by the Russian authorities (Grigson & Gibbs-Smith, 1954, p. 341, 240-241). Stamati also translated Polish writers; Krasicki's satire on feudalism and a satire by O. Senkowski.
The female writer C. Dunca Schiau studied at the College of France in Paris. An editor of one of the first women's magazines in Bucharest, she published a translation of 'The Songs of Selma' in her first edition in1863, and Mozart and Salier by Pushkin a year later. Two other authoresses, Sofia Cocea and Maria Rosetti translated Palmyre et Flaminie ou Le Secret and Zuma ou la découverte du quinquina by Madame de Genlis respectively.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it is evident that exiled Revolutionary Russian translators emulated Thomas Moore in using The Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson as a literary weapon, together with his Irish Melodies and Lalla Rookh, and with their Gothic tales, to fight brutal oppression under English monarchy. This influenced Polish, Greek and Rumanian radicals whose aim was to forge political change to that of a secular harmonious society living under social democracy.