Listening to the sound of bells.
Long are the clouds this night above me!
One of the chief characteristics of the poetry of this period is the clearness or distinctness of the ideas. The authors seize at once their subject and straightway sing what they have to utter. They also appear to have a definite object in view when they invoke the muse, and they carry it out in a clear, direct, and unhesitating fashion. The vagueness and mistiness of Macpherson’s Ossianic poems have been much commented upon, and sometimes with good reason. Nothing like mistiness can be affirmed of the Ossianic poems which were composed or transcribed and were popular at this period. The ideas of the authors stand out in brilliant distinctness, like stars looking forth beneath the brows of a frosty night.
The Lismore collection of songs and poems is not the only manuscript of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that received but scant attention from our forefathers. Many ancient Gaelic manuscripts carried by Christian missionaries to the Continent have never returned. More than two hundred, once in the possession of Gaelic scribes, may still be met with in the various European libraries. Drs Laing and Skene, especially the latter, have done good service to Scotland in this field. The admirable collection of Gaelic MSS. in Edinburgh, some of which, it is hoped will yet be published, is the result of the energetic efforts of Dr Skene. The Fernaig manuscript which he has put in the hands of Professor Mackinnon, contains according to the latter, some 4000 lines of Gaelic poetry of the seventeenth century. It is hoped that Mr Mackinnon will lend his ability and scholarship to the early publication of this work. Judging by a published article of the Professor of Celtic in Edinburgh, at the present date (November, 1889), he seems to be unaware that the “Red Book” of Clanranald is not lost. He will be glad to know that it is in the possession of Admiral Reginald Macdonald. Mr Campbell of Islay, informed the writer once that he and Mr [O’Grady] had read the “Red Book.”
CHAPTER VIII.
JACOBITE BARDS.
“A field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.”—Campbell.
A retrospect of the remains of ancient Gaelic Literature establishes the following among other facts:—1. That the Scottish Gael of the first centuries of the Christian era was not a barbarian. 2. That a considerable body of oral or traditional literature was then extant among the people. 3. That there is no evidence that writing was known in the British Islands before the Christian era. 4. That relics of the writings of Churchmen from the fifth century downwards still exist in manuscript. 5. That the literature of the Irish and Scottish Gael, till the period of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, had much in common, the language used in the north-west of Ireland and in the north-west of Scotland being the same.