Man at first, I have not heard
Of a mendicant like Lachlan,
Whose decease our grief has stirred.
Without father, without mother,
Beggary grows weak and poor;
For none e’er could beg like Lachlan:
How can I my loss endure!
Duncan Macpherson is thought to have been an ecclesiastic, a class, notwithstanding Professor Blackie’s genial sneer about the “solemn sepulchral piety of certain North-Western Gospellers,” who have been the authors and media of the most of what the literary Highlander can refer to with national pride. The “sombre nationality” of the old Ossianic bards is discernible in the following lines:—
Alastair, art still in sorrow?
Or canst cast it to the ground?