LATER SCOTO-CELTIC
THE PROLOGUE TO GAUL.
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Comes from the Sean Dana: vide Dr John Smith’s Collection of Ancient Poems (1780), (vide Note to page 13 supra, and also Introduction).
IN HEBRID SEAS.
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This stirring Hebridean poem is given as from the ancient Gaelic. Probably by this is meant merely old Gaelic, mediæval or even later. The translation is by Mr Thomas Pattison, and is included in his Gaelic Bards. He has the following note upon it: “This effusion, although in its original form it is only a kind of wild chant—almost indeed half prose—yet it is the germ of the ballad. It occurs in many of the tales contained in that collection, the repository of old Gaelic lore, the Popular Tales of the West Highlands, sometimes more and sometimes less perfect. The original will be found in the second volume of the Tales.... The vigorous and elastic spirit that pervades these verses must have strung the heart of many a hardy mariner who loved to feel the fresh and briny breeze drive his snoring birlinn bounding like a living creature over the tumbling billows of the inland loch or the huge swell of the majestic main.”
LULLABY.
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Supposed to be the composition of the wife of Gregor MacGregor after the judicial murder of her husband.
DROWNED.
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This folk-poem, the antiquity of which may be anywhere from a hundred to two hundred years or more, is given in the translation of the Rev. Dr Stewart of Nether Lochaber.
ALEXANDER MACDONALD.
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This celebrated Gaelic poet was born in the first half of the 17th century. In the Highlands and Western Isles he is invariably styled Mac Mhaighstir Alastair—i.e. the son of Mr Alexander. Alastair the Elder resided at Dalilea in Moydart of Argyll, and was both Episcopal clergyman and official tacksman. He was a man of immense strength and vigour, and his muscular Christianity may be inferred from the saying current in Moydart that “his hand was heavier on the men of Suainart than on the men of Moydart.” Alexander Macdonald had a good education for his time—first under his father, and later, for a year or so, at Glasgow University. Poverty, however, compelled him to leave Glasgow and retire to Ardnamurchan, where, as his biographer, Mr Pattison, says, he lived, teaching and farming, and composing poetry, until the advent of the year 1745. In this momentous year he left not only his farm and his teaching, but even his eldership in the Established Church, and forsook all to join Prince Charlie, and to take upon him the onus of a change to the detested Roman Catholic faith. He was a Jacobite of the Jacobites, and his fiery and warlike songs were repeated from mouth to mouth throughout Celtic Scotland. It is supposed that he had a commission in the Highland army of the Prince, though whether he served as an officer is uncertain; at any rate, after the battle of Culloden he had to share the privations of his leaders, and he lived in hiding in the woods and caves of the district of Arisaig. On one occasion, when lurking among these caves with his brother Angus, the cold was so intense that the side of Macdonald’s head which rested on the ground became quite grey in a single night. When the troubles were over he went to Edinburgh, where he taught the children of a staunch Jacobite, but soon returned to his beloved West, where he remained till his death. Macdonald’s first published book was a Gaelic and English Vocabulary (1741), nor was it till ten years later that his poems were published in Edinburgh—said to be one of the earliest volumes of original poems ever published in Gaelic. Pattison declares that he is the most warlike, and much the fiercest of the Highland poets; and altogether ranks him as, if not the foremost, certainly second only to the famous Duncan Bàn MacIntyre. His poem called “The Birlinn of the Clan-Ranald” is by this critic, and most others, ranked as the finest composition in Modern Gaelic; certainly many Highlanders prefer it even to the “Coire Cheathaich,” or the still more famous “Ben Dorain” of Duncan Bàn. Assuredly no one could read this poem “Of the hurling of the birlinn through the cold glens of the sea, loudly snoring,” without being stirred by its vigour and power. The portion here given is merely a fragment, for the original is much too long for quotation—indeed, it is said to be the longest poem in Gaelic, except such as are Ossianic. For a full account of Macdonald and his poems, including the translation of the greater part of “The Manning of the Birlinn,” see Pattison’s Gaelic Bards.
ANGUS MACKENZIE.
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“The Lament of the Deer” is the work of a favourite Highland poet whose name is particularly familiar in the Northern Highlands. Angus Mackenzie was head forester of Lord Lovat, and most of his poems have the impress of his well-loved profession. “The Cumha nam Fiadh” was composed during the recovery from a severe illness, when the poet’s chief regret was his inability to be with Lovat and his Frasers at the hunting of the stag. The translation here given was made by Charles Edward and John Sobieski Stuart, and is to be found in their Lays of the Deer Forest (Blackwood, 1848).
DUNCAN BÀN MACINTYRE.
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A name loved throughout the Highlands and Islands. Even the most illiterate crofters are familiar with Duncan Bàn and much of his poetry, and there are few who could not repeat at least some lines of “Ben Dorain.” The Hunter Bard of Glenorchy, as he is often called—though his best title is the affectionate Gaelic “Duncan of the Songs”—was born on the 20th of March 1724, at Druimliaghart in Glenorchy, Argyll. His first song was composed on a sword with which he was armed at the battle of Falkirk—where he served on the Royalist side as substitute for a gentleman of the neighbourhood. “This sword,” says his biographer, Thomas Pattison, “the poet lost or threw away in the retreat. On his return home therefore, the gentleman to whom it belonged, and whose substitute he had been, refused to pay the sum for which he had engaged Duncan Bàn to serve in his stead. Duncan consequently composed his song on ‘The Battle of the Speckled Kirk’—as Falkirk is called in Gaelic—in which he good-humouredly satirised the gentleman who had sent him to the war, and gave a woful description of ‘the black sword that worked the turmoil,’ and whose loss, he says, made its owner ‘as fierce and furious as a grey brock in his den.’ The song immediately became popular, and incensed his employer so much that he suddenly fell upon the poor poet one day with his walking-stick, and, striking him on the back, bade him ‘go and make a song about that.’ He was, however, afterward compelled by the Earl of Breadalbane to pay the bard the sum of 300 merks Scots (£16, 17s. 6d.), which was his legal due.” Although in his later years he was for a time one of the Duke of Argyll’s foresters, most of his later life was spent in Edinburgh, where he was one of the City Guard. In that city he died in 1812, in his eighty-ninth year, and lies in Greyfriars Churchyard. In all there have been seven editions of his Gaelic Songs. “Ben Dorain” has been translated several times, most successfully by Thomas Pattison and the late Professor Blackie. The version here given is that of the former; while the following poem (“The Hill Water,” page 208) is that of Professor Blackie.
Translations of both “Ben Dorain” (in full) and of “Coire Cheathaich” (The Misty Corrie) are included in Pattison’s Gaelic Bards. Professor Blackie’s version of “Ben Dorain” is in his well-known book, Altavona.
MARY MACLEOD.
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The most famous of Hebridean poets was born in Harris of the Outer Hebrides in 1569. She may be regarded either as the last of the poets of the Middle Scoto-Celtic period, or, more properly, as the first of the moderns. She is generally spoken of in the Western Isles as Màiri nighean Alastair Ruaidh (Mary, daughter of Alexander the Red). “Although she could never either read or write, her poetry is pure and chaste in its diction, melodious, though complicated, in its metre, clear and graceful, and frequently pathetic” (Pattison). She died at Dunvegan, in the Isle of Skye, in 1674, at the great age of 105. For some reason, Mary Macleod was banished from Dunvegan by Macleod of Macleod, but his heart was melted by the song here given, and the exile was recalled, and that, too, with honour, and enabled to live in Macleod’s country thenceforth in prosperity and happiness.