While here alone I sit and sigh
In sorrow and in sadness.
Her hair around her shoulders flows
With graceful waving motion,
Her snow-white bosom heaving goes
Like sea-gull on the ocean.
One of the popular songs and airs among Highlanders is that of “Finary.” The verses that have become so well-known in connection with this song are not those to which the air was attached originally. The original song was “Irinn àrinn u horo,” by Allan Macdougall, a lyric of fair merit, but which has never attained to anything like the popularity of “Finary.” The author of “Finary” appropriated an air already popular, like the author of “Màiri Laghach.” The reputed author of “Finary” is the elder Dr Norman Macleod, and certainly the theme of the song is founded on an event in his personal history. It is a farewell to Finary, where the manse of his father was situated, in Morven, on the occasion of Norman leaving home to attend the first session at Glasgow University. The sentiment is very pathetic and natural, and very readily lays hold of the tenderest chords of the heart of the home-loving Highlander. There is something about it, the antiquarian reference to the past, and its touches descriptive of natural scenery, which remind us of the genius of Macleod. Yet it has been doubted whether he was the author of the original English version—the English one being regarded as the original. Mr Neil Campbell, of County Down, now of Glasgow, a man who knows a good deal of generally unknown facts relating to the Gaelic literature of this century, once told the writer that the Rev. Mr Kelly, of Campbeltown, once Dr Macleod’s friend and colleague in that town, was the author of the English version, which, apart from the home-loving sentiment and air, is rather poor poetry. The following is the first verse, which shows reason but the veriest imperfection of rhyme:—
The wind is fair, the day is fine;
Swiftly, swiftly runs the time;
The boat is floating on the tide.