⁴"Battle of Culloden." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culloden>.
The Battle of Culloden (April 16th, 1746) marked the final, failed effort of the Jacobite forces of Charles Stuart to defeat the Hanoverian forces of the Duke of Cumberland.
According to James Porter, "Macpherson had caught the mood of the age, exploiting a folk tradition that impinged on English consciousness as a result of the Jacobite army's sudden and terrifying arrival in Derby in 1745, a consciousness that later, despite Culloden and the brutal repression of Highland dress and music, continued to regard Highlanders as "barbaric." With the military threat removed, the poems of Ossian became safe for readers who would formerly have found them not merely politically unacceptable, but menacingly so." (Porter, James. "'Bring Me the Head of James Macpherson': The Execution of Ossian and the Wellsprings of Folkloristic Discourse." The Journal of American Folklore 114.454 (2001): 405.)