And king-bearing line!
And in Erin they know it
Far over the brine;
No Earl would in Albin
Thy friendship decline.”
The matter of religion is, no doubt, an important factor in the later difference; but the sturdier Norse element in the Highlander’s constitution may account for much. In reading the literature of the two countries, we are at once struck with the different keys to which the bards attune their harps. An Irish bard, in English, sings thus of his country:—
“She sits alone on the cold gravestone,
And only the dead are nigh her;
In the tongue of the Gael she makes her wail;