With shoulders knotty, nervy, hairy,
Hard with strength;
See you raise and drop together
With one motion.
Your grey and beamy shafts well ordered,
Sweeping ocean.
In this spirit the poem extends to more than 500 lines, divided into 16 parts, until finally the voyage of the Birlin ends somewhat like that of St. Paul.
Till within recent years the practice of walking cloth in peasant homes was a general thing. The writer has often witnessed it in the north as well as in the south Highlands, in places where walking mills did not extinguish the ancient ways of Highland women. The “Morag” of Macdonald was a “Walking Refrain,” or song for a young woman of fair bewitching tresses. In history her alias is Prince Charlie whose adventures touched the hearts of women, bards and weak-minded statesmen. “Ho Morag” in other words is a treasonable prayer, adoration, or incitement for Jacobitically-minded Highlanders and others. The bard’s heart was evidently in this wretched and ill-starred rebellion; but it ought not to be forgotten that if the poet’s heart tended to disloyalty he had thousands of titled traitors and sympathisers close to the Hanoverian throne. The Jacobite bard rushes with inexhaustible enthusiasm into the “walking” labours of the Highland women as their thoughts travel after the fair adventurer:
Bright Morag of my heart’s emotion
I long to see thy yellow tresses.