A Lullaby.
“Hush thee, my baby-boy, hush thee to sleep,
Soft in my bosom laid, why should’st thou weep;
Hush thee, my pretty babe, why should’st thou fear,
Well can thy father wield broadsword and spear.
“Lullaby, lullaby, hush thee to rest,
Snug in my arms as a bird in its nest;
Sweet be thy slumbers, boy, dreaming the while
A dream that shall dimple thy cheek with a smile.
“Helpless and weak as thou ’rt now on my knee,
My eaglet shall yet spread his wings and be free—
Free on the mountain side, free in the glen,
Strong-handed, swift-footed, a man among men!
“Then shall my dalt’ bring his muim’ a good store
Of game from the mountain and fish from the shore;
Cattle, and sheep, and goats—graze where they may—
My dalta will find ere the dawn of the day.
“Thy father and uncles, with target and sword,
Will back each bold venture by ferry and ford;
From thy hand I shall yet drain a beaker of wine,
And the toast shall be—Health and the lowing of kine!
“Then rest thee, my foster-son, sleep and be still,
The first star of night twinkles bright on the hill;
My brave boy is sleeping—kind angels watch o’er him,
And safe to the light of the morning restore him.
Lullaby, lullaby, what should he fear,
Well can his father wield broadsword and spear!”
To the proper understanding of this curious composition, a few words of comment and elucidation may be necessary. The lullaby must be understood as sung by a foster-mother to her foster-son, the Gaelic words from which the exigencies of verse oblige us to retain in our paraphrase. In lulling her charge to sleep, the foster-mother fondly anticipates the time when the boy on her knee shall have become a full-grown and perfect man; her beau-ideal of a perfect man, observe, being that, like the heroes of ancient song, he should be brawny limbed, strong of hand, and swift of foot, able and willing at all risks to seize and appropriate his neighbour’s goods, especially his cattle, whenever necessity—an empty larder—or honour urged him to the adventure. The coolness with which the old lady commits her foster-son to the immediate care and guardianship of the heavenly powers, in the self-same breath in which she hopes and believes that he will, when he becomes a man, prove an active and expert thief—a stealer of beeves from the pastures of neighbouring tribes, in utter defiance of the decalogue—is ludicrous in the extreme. To understand it aright, we must recollect that in former times it was accounted not only lawful but honourable among hostile tribes to commit depredations on one another; and as hostility among the clans was the rule rather than the exception, every species of depredation was practised,—cattle-lifting raids, however, being accounted the most honourable of all, and in the conduct of which the best gentlemen of the clan might without a blush take an active part. The “lowing of kine,” geùmnaich bhà, occurring in this lullaby, was an old toast of the cattle-lifting times, that the late Dr. Macfarlane of Arrochar told us, he himself had often heard when a young man at baptismal feasts and bridals on Loch Lomond side. The secret of it is this: The geùmnaich, or “lowing,” implied that the cattle were strangers to the glen, whilst those that belonged to the glen itself, and were the bona fide property of the clan, if such there were, were quiet and staid and well-behaved, as decent cattle should be. The cattle “stolen or strayed,” as the advertisements have it, “lowed,” and were troublesome; while those born and bred in the glen were content to graze in peace, and to “low” only when they deemed it absolutely necessary. “The lowing of kine,” therefore, was a toast that meant neither more nor less than success to the cattle-lifting trade! As ancient Pistol says—
“ ‘Convey,’ the wise it call. ‘Steal!’ foh, a fico for the phrase.”