The Psalms are pleasant and profitable. A church resounding with sacred melody is almost a little Heaven full of angels. As the Garden of Eden, replenished with trees of life of potent efficacy and with medicinal plants, so is this Book of Psalms of David, which contains a remedy of all the diseases of the soul. The world and every living creature it contains are the Harp; Man is the Harper and Poet, who sings the praise of the great wonder-working God; and David is ever one of the company who are thus employed in sweetly and tunefully discoursing about the Almighty King.
The Highland clergy at this time were, as a class, fairly well-educated. This will be seen in the accounts of English travellers who now began to take tours to the Celtic north-west. In earlier times the intercourse between the Highlands and the great world beyond was greater than in the seventeenth century. Before the seats of government were all removed from the districts of the Gael further south, the communication with Ireland and the Continent of Europe in the north and in France was considerable. Till the days of Queen Elizabeth relations were fitfully sustained between the insular court of the Princedom of the Isles and the English Court. It was during the seventeenth century that the Gaelic regions became a very terra incognita to South Britain. Now a learned and sympathetic visitor arrived, from whose pages we get glimpses of the state of learning and culture among the Gaels.
It is a Welshman, Professor Rhys of Oxford, that has given us the best work on Celtic philology and Celtic paganism, in the present day; and it was a Welshman that wrote the best book on the same subjects upwards of 200 years ago. Edward Lhuyd’s great work on Celtic scholarship appeared in 1707. The title runs thus:—“Archæologica Britannica, giving some account, additional to what has been hitherto published, of the Languages, Histories, and Customs of the Original Inhabitants of Great Britain, from collections and observations in travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland, and Scotland. By Edward Lhuyd, M.A. of Jesus College, keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Oxford: Printed at the Theater for the author, MDCCVII.” Were the matter within the bounds of the 460 folio pages of this handsome volume printed in the style in which books are now generally published it would make three or four very considerable volumes. At the beginning of an appendix the following note occurs: “Having since the printing this Irish dictionary sent copies to Ireland and Scotland in order to have it improved, the following supplement consists chiefly of some notes returned thence by two gentlemen well known to be able scholars and masters of that language.” It is in connection with these “copies,” I suppose, that the poetical complimentary verses inserted at the beginning of the volume were sent to the author. These verses were written in Latin, Gaelic, and Welsh. Two or three Latin ones and four in Gaelic are sent from the Highlands. The character of this great work may be gathered from the titles of the several departments: Comparative Etymology, 40 pp.; A Comparative Vocabulary [of the Original] Languages of Britain and Ireland, 130 pp.; An Armoric Grammar and Vocabulary, 33 pp.; Some Welsh Words, A Cornish Grammar, British MSS., and a British Etymologican, 86 pp.; A Brief Introduction to the Irish or Ancient Scottish Language, and Foclair Gaoidheilge-Shasonach no Bearladoir Scot-Sagsamhuil; An Irish-English Dictionary, 136 pp.; two pp. describing Gaelic MSS., and An Index. In the preface he proceeds to explain what induced him “to an undertaking so laborious, so little diverting, and so much out of the common road.”
It is interesting to note how this laborious Oxford student met the prejudices of the day. The undertaking “proceeded not from any conceited opinion, as some might be apt to imagine, of the plausibleness of these languages. Most of us commonly hear or read too much to be ignorant that the generality of people are rather disposed to a ridiculing than a favourable reception of anything in that kind. This did not, I own, in the least discourage me, as well knowing that the same prejudice in the like case prevails in all other great governments, and that in any uncommon undertaking the judgment of men of distinction (or at least particular experience in the subject proposed), is to be only regarded. The inducement I had was no other than a seeming probability that such an essay might in this curious age contribute not a little towards a clearer notion of the first planters of the three kingdoms, and a better understanding of our ancient names of persons and places.” No grammar of the Scottish Gaelic appeared up to the time of Lhuyd; but he speaks of “a Scotish gentleman who had some thoughts of publishing” one. It would be interesting to know who this gentleman was; perhaps he was one of those who sent the poetical addresses to Lhuyd.
In connection with this great work Lhuyd experienced the same discouragements which often beset similar works of learning. He was told by some considerate critic that his volume would meet with but a cold reception; for it consisted “only of etymology and Welsh and Irish vocabularies.” The critic exclaims, “Now there are not half a dozen or half a score in the kingdom that are curious in that way. The world expected, according to his promise and undertaking, a natural history, which is a study of established request, and that a great many are curious in.” But Lhuyd has in the published list the names of two hundred lords, knights, and gentlemen of learning and distinction belonging to England alone. This was something to begin with for such a work, and must have been rather a disconcerting refutation of the critic’s remark about “half a dozen” readers. It is quite possible that this complaining critic looked forward to an interesting dissertation on the strange human animals that inhabited in those days Lorn, Mull, and Islay, and other Celtic parts. He and others could scarcely realise to themselves that the Celtic barbarians who dwelt in those distant regions could write and talk good English; and in their leisure hours exercised themselves in the composition of Latin verse or Gaelic poetry.
Lhuyd was accompanied everywhere on his travels by David Parry, A.B. of Jesus College, Oxford, who wrote a small section of the work. It is a very interesting picture that the travels of these learned Oxonians in the Highlands suggest seventy or eighty years before the mighty Johnson visited the Western Isles, which in earlier ages were so well known throughout the ecclesiastical world. Here is a specimen of Latin verse from the pen of a Highland minister two hundred years ago:—
IN EDV. LUIDI GLOSSOGRAPHIAM.
Quid si reversus spiritus afforet
Jam Buchanani, nobile callidi
Tentare plectrum, pristinumque