With bare potatoes alone for food.
Ere cultivation is seen rejoicing
O’er all the land and the trees are cleared,
My strength will fail in an arm exhausted
While yet the children are left unreared.
MacLean is one of the last of the old order of bards. His poetry shows little or no trace of English reading; and the theme of the majority of his poems is the praise of the Laird of Coll or some kindred chieftain. Very appropriately might the happy couplet of Sir Walter Scott describing the old and infirm minstrels of other days be applied to MacLean—
“A simple race! they waste their toil,
For the vain tribute of a smile.”
It ought to be mentioned, however, that the Laird of Coll showed on more than one occasion that he did not forget his enthusiastic senachie.
