The winter darkens in the vale:
The branches bloom with leaves no more;
The spring their beauty will bring back,
But ah! my strength nought can restore.
The host of Alva has decayed
Like smoke from a cold house of gloom;
This night I grieve for there are left
Finan and Lorma in the tomb.
The above Albha, Alva, is Allen in Ireland, and has no connection with Alban, with which, however, it has been often confounded in the old ballads. Ultra patriotic Scotchmen have frequently, likely in ignorance, rendered the Irish Almhuin into Albin. This mistake occurs in Mr Pattison’s Gaelic Bards. “Once, when the kingly feast was spread on Albin’s golden slope,” p. 148.
The titles of the others in order are: The War of Linne; Cathula; The War of Manus, which includes the highly popular Lay of the Great Fool; Trahul, at the beginning of which there appears the beautiful address to the Rising Sun—