But when the face of Christ she saw
Her heart turned from the guilty road.
A drink before that spring supernal
She sought with lips all parched and sore;
He gave her of the life eternal,
Which slaked her thirst for evermore.
Though MacLauchlan has not left much to prove that he possessed the gift of satire, yet it seems that some of his poems helped his preaching considerably in extirpating the habit of card-playing once so universal in the Highlands—it used to be carried on at baptisms, weddings, and even late wakes. Highlanders have had a terrible dread of being satirised by the bards. To have come under the satiric tongue of the poet acted like a social excommunication; and bards frequently availed themselves of this power to accomplish ends different from that to which MacLauchlan had set himself in the following verses:—
CARD-PLAYING.
Oft I gazed with saddened feeling
On the weak that went astray;