Digitising Gaelic texts may not appear to be the most pressing of challenges facing our universities.

But the news this week that Glasgow University scholars working on the Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic project had managed to put ten million Gaelic words now online is important.

With perhaps as many as another twenty million to follow, it is a formidable undertaking and they are to be congratulated on their progress.

It is just possible that there are some in Scotland, including among our 58,000 Gaelic speakers, who will be able to live without logging on to check the 12th century Gaelic notes to the 10th century Book of Deer (a Latin Gospel Book) which contain some of the earliest surviving Scottish Gaelic writing. Indeed, many will dismiss it all as an esoteric pursuit, which appropriately enough belongs in an ivory tower.

But it is important work which doesn't dwell only in the past, but also deals with the language in the 21st century. Not only does it promote Scottish Gaelic and its significance at home and internationally, it does so on the basis of sound scholarship. As such it should be valued, the more so that it can only help Scotland better understand herself. That's something not to be scorned today.

But if we are talking about the written Gaelic word, we can't ignore the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, which holds the largest collection of Scottish Gaelic manuscripts in the world.

Inverness Museum and Art Gallery recently welcomed the NLS's Ulrike Hogg, senior manuscripts curator, to share a brief history of the selection of the manuscripts, which have recently been exhibited in the Inverness facility. These came to be held by the Highland Society of Scotland in the wake of the interest kindled by the works of James Macpherson, composer of Ossian.

This native Gael had gained fame and notoriety in the 1760s for the literary sensation of apparently finding and translating ancient Gaelic works of Ossian, the legendary Celtic warrior and bard.

He could count Napoleon Bonaparte and Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, among his fans

But in fact much of it was his own creation. That great man of English letters Samuel Johnson, denounced the Ossian poems as forgeries and campaigned vigorously against Macpherson.

Back to Dr Hogg, who explained how in 1925 the NLS had received the Gaelic documents from the Advocates Library. It had been founded in 1689, and its acquisition of Gaelic manuscripts was initially a slow affair, although the first Gaelic manuscript was presented to it as early as 1696.

In 1850, however, it received the Gaelic collection of an organisation called Highland Society of Scotland and the collection of the Highland Society of London. These were of major significance, brought together in the wake of James Macpherson. The controversy around the authenticity of what Macpherson claimed to have translated had given rise to an investigation, led by the Highland Society of Scotland's "Ossian Committee".

During this investigation, the Society's public appeals for evidence resulted in a large collection of Gaelic material being brought together. This included older manuscripts surviving in private hands, the holdings of the Highland Society of London, and contemporary fieldwork collections of poetry taken down from recitation.

Dr Hogg said the findings of the Ossian Committee were summarised by Henry Mackenzie in the Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland, appointed to inquire into the nature and authenticity of the poems of Ossian, published in 1805.

Incidentally the committee was unambiguous: "The state of the question is very much altered since the days of Maccpherson's first publication; and we believe that no well informed person will now pretend that Ossian is to be quoted as historical authority, or that a collection of Gaelic poems does any where exist of which Macpherson's version can be regarded as a faithful, or even loose translation loose translation..."

However, the Society continued to collect manuscripts and material for its next Gaelic project, the Gaelic dictionary published in 1828. By 1850, the Highland Society's involvement in Gaelic studies had somewhat ground to a halt, and their Gaelic material was transferred to the Advocates Library.

Dr Hogg said highlights included the Book of the Dean of Lismore, which is regarded as one of the greatest treasures among the NLS's early Gaelic collections.

It is a compilation of poetry made by James MacGregor (circa 1480-1551), Dean of Lismore and notary public working in Fortingall, Perthshire. The volume contains mostly Gaelic poetry, besides some miscellaneous items in Scots, Latin and English.

The poems are said to have been taken down from the repertoire of 'strolling bards', and are now a main source for early Gaelic poetry.

There is also the Glenmasan Manuscript, the "1467 Manuscript" with its clan genealogies, poetry of Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair and William MacMurchy in the poets' own hands, a 15th-century girdle book, and a sizeable collection of medical manuscripts from the Beaton family who were legendary healers in Gaelic Scotland.

Two major additions followed in the later nineteenth century: the collection of John Francis Campbell of Islay, and the papers of the Gaelic scholar William Forbes Skene.

So in the end perhaps some good did come out of Macpherson's Ossian con/fraud, in that important Gaelic manuscripts ended up in the safe keeping of the National Library of Scotland.

It certainly did Macpherson some good. He became very rich indeed. He bought land in the Highlands where he built a massive house. This Balavil Estate near Kingussie came on the market last December with an asking price of £7m.

Macpherson had been born in the area at Ruthven and died at Balavil in 1796. But he was buried in Westminster Abbey, possibly with a smile on his face.