At the same time we have no wish to preserve Gaelic, as Professor Blackie has said, in any artificial or galvanised existence. We merely ask fair-play for it on the scene of linguistic competition.
And this fair-play it is now more than ever likely to receive, the Highlanders having their own representatives now in Parliament and in the county and parochial councils. As long as bards continue to arise—and there is no sign that the supply will be readily exhausted—and the people love to rehearse their strains, so long will the Gaelic remain a living factor in the land. In these pages it is attempted to show the extent and nature of this sort of literature of the people; but as Highlanders we do not wish, in attempting to bring the literature of our language before the world, to challenge comparison with other bodies of literature. Our main purpose is served if we succeed in showing to our fellow-countrymen, Highland and Lowland, that there are national literary treasures which have been hitherto comparatively overlooked, and which ought in an important degree to add to the already high fame of bonnie Scotland as a land whose glens and bens, whose rivers and lakes are everywhere vocal with songs of love and patriotism.
CHAPTER XV.
BARDS OF THE CELTIC RENAISSANCE.
“That poet turned him first to pray
In silence; and God heard the rest,
’Twixt the sun’s footsteps down the west.”
—E. B. Browning.