The fish referred to by our correspondent is also called the Spanish mackerel, it being very common on some parts of the Spanish coast. It belongs to the order Scomberidæ, and is a cousin of our own better known mackerel proper, though a considerably larger fish, and not nearly so good for the table as its beautiful congener. The Spanish differs from the mackerel proper in one very remarkable particular; it has an air bladder which the true mackerel of our shores has not, and yet the latter is one of the readiest and swiftest swimmers, and at all depths, of any fish in the sea. The fact is that the real use of the air bladder in the economy of fish still continues an unresolved and seemingly an unresolvable puzzle.
Lovers of living, healthy poetry—healthy as the mountain breeze, and free and sparkling as the mountain stream, and more especially our Celtic friends who have been taught to honour and reverence the “kilted” muse—will be glad to know that Professor Blackie has in preparation the materials of what cannot fail to prove a very interesting volume, consisting of translations of some of the most admired compositions of our modern Gaelic bards. Macintyre’s Ben. Dorain, Alasdair Macdonald’s Berliun, with many of such lesser popular lyrics, as Am Breacan Wallach, Failte na Mor-Thir, A Bhanarach Dhoun a Cruidh, &c., will thus appear for the first time in a becoming Saxon garb; not—to use the milliner’s phrase—too tight a fit, observe, but natural and easy, though “made to measure,” and we venture to predict that our English readers, who as yet know them not at all, and our Gaelic friends, who know them well and have long known them, will alike be pleased with the results of the learned Professor’s gallant raid into bard-land. The Professor has been visiting us here lately, and we can honestly say that such specimens of his work as he was good enough to read to us—and there are few better readers than Professor Blackie—seemed to us admirably done. His version of Ben. Dorain particularly, which we had an opportunity of hearing twice, and of which we can thus speak most positively, is thoroughly well done; so well, so faithfully, and with such spirit and verve as must delight not only the ordinary reader, but the very “ghost” of the original author—Macintyre himself—if, like the Ossianic departed heroes, he is permitted to know and appreciate sublunary affairs from out the bosom of “his cloud.” The Professor translates these Gaelic poems into English verse just as, in our opinion, they should be translated; not too literally, but with all necessary freedom and elbow room, and yet so literally that any one knowing the English version may rest assured that he knows also the original quite as intimately and correctly as it is possible in the circumstances for any mere outsider to know it. Johnson, in his Life of Dryden, referring to the latter’s version of the Æneid, &c., has a paragraph which is worth quoting in this connection:—“When languages are formed upon different principles, it is impossible that the same modes of expression should always be elegant in both. While they run on together, the closest translation may be considered the best; but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course. Where correspondence cannot be obtained, it is necessary to be content with something equivalent. ‘Translation, therefore,’ says Dryden, ‘is not so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase.’ ” With all this we entirely concur, more especially when such widely different languages as the English and Gaelic have to be dealt with. We do not know that Professor Blackie ever read the paragraph quoted, or, even if he did read it, that he now remembers it; but to his translations from the Gaelic, to so much of them, at all events, as were submitted to our notice, Dryden’s dictum is entirely applicable—they are not so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase. They strike a golden mean very difficult of attainment in such efforts; and on the appearance of the volume itself, we shall be disappointed if nine-tenths at least of the many readers it is sure to command do not entirely agree with us. But nous verrons, if we live we shall see.
The Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness for 1873–4 and 1874–5, have reached us. The Secretary’s paper on “Coinneach Odhar,” the Brahan seer, is most interesting, containing as it does the best account that we have met with of that uncanny Ross-shire worthy. That he was an impostor, and a vulgar impostor too, there can be no doubt; but the story of a man—clever, shrewd rascal as he was—in whom the people so thoroughly believed, is worth the telling, and Mr. Mackenzie tells it very well. He should, we think, give us, if possible, a second paper, containing the many other wonderful vaticinations attributed to his hero, who seems to have latterly been too clever by half; for he who could foresee the misfortunes of others—the death even of a cow—couldn’t evidently foresee the well-merited fate that awaited himself; for he was hanged, and we have no doubt at all that he richly deserved that species of exaltation. What Thomas the Rhymer—him of Ercildoune—was in the south of Scotland at a much earlier period, this Coinneach Odhar, comparing small things with great, seems to have been in the North-West Highlands during the latter half of the seventeenth century. “True Thomas,” however, was a gentleman and a scholar; whereas Coinneach was, of course, utterly illiterate, conducting his scheme of imposture solely by the aid of natural talents, which must have been considerable, and a large and ever-ready stock of impudence and cunning, nicely calculated to impose upon the vulgar. He made his grand mistake when he flew at such high game as Lady Seaforth and her domestic affairs. She was too clever, too intelligent and well-educated to be imposed upon. She ordered him to be hanged, a doom to which many were led at that period who probably less richly deserved it than such a prying, meddling, mischief-maker as was Kenneth the Seer.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Crops—Potato Slug—Fern Slug—Brackens: How thoroughly to extirpate them—The Merlin—Falcon and Tringa.
We have had a full fortnight of magnificent summer weather [August 1875], a bright sun over-head from morning till night, with brisk breezes, a leanachd na gréine, following the sun; that is, beginning in the morning at east, and gradually wearing round pari passû with the solar march, till at sunset it is north-west, and so on round and round the compass day after day, a phenomenon usually attendant upon the very finest weather in our northern latitudes. Under these circumstances it will not surprise those who care for such matters to hear that our hay crop, about which we were in such anxiety, has been secured in splendid condition, in such condition, indeed, as we can rarely boast of in the West Highlands. Our meadow hay crop, too, is this year unusually heavy, and already, in obedience to the adage which teaches that it is well and wise to make one’s hay while the sun shines, we are all busy getting it cut down and secured, although the old, orthodox season is not yet for a fortnight to come—about old Lammastide. Oats with us here are generally a light crop, but it will as such be easier to secure in good condition than a heavier crop would be, and, upon the whole, may thus turn out quite as profitable. Potatoes are not so heavy haulmed as usual, but in other respects they promise well, and there is no appearance of our old enemy the “blight.” We hear, however, a good deal of complaint in some districts on account of the prevalence this year of yellow shaw, or bar-buidhe as our Highlanders term it, the work of a small grey slug that attacks the main-stem shaw just at its point of junction with the soil, and eating and tunnelling it through and through until the leaves first assume a yellow and withered appearance, and the whole shaw finally falls down paralysed, and practically useless and inoperative as to its proper functions, though not actually rotten or dead, as in the case of the “blight.” Many such shaws in a field give it an unsightly appearance, but beyond this there is no great harm done after all, for as the slug seldom begins its work until the plant is large and well forward, the tubers underground, though they may be of smaller size than their neighbours that have escaped the slug’s attentions, are yet sound and wholesome food enough either for man or beast. We have observed that this particular slug, or a closely allied species, is also much given to feeding on the stem of the common fern or bracken, dealing with it just as it does with the potato shaw, though, to be sure, it finds the fern a rather harder nut to crack; for the brave bracken, with its firmer contexture of stem, refuses to bend its head to the ground, no matter the number or direction of the slug’s insidious tunnellings and perforations. If you glance at a fern clump as you ride along the road or climb the mountain steep, the yellow, withered fronds of an occasional plant, here and there painfully conspicuous amid the rich, dark, emerald green of its healthy companions, tell you where the grey slug—and a nasty, slimy little wretch it is—is busy at its evil work, drinking up, like consumption among the human race, the very heart’s blood, so to speak, of the fairest and finest plants it can find. We have found in our own experience that the best protection of the potato from its ravages is to give the ground a sprinkling of lime just as the plants are appearing above ground, about the end of April or beginning of May. For the early varieties usually planted in our gardens, a sprinkling of soot is less unsightly and equally efficacious with lime.
And speaking of the bracken, let us observe that, while it is a magnificent and beautiful plant, it is, like everything else of beauty, most beautiful in its proper place. Meet it on mountain slope, in copsewood covert, or greenwood glade, and you cannot admire it sufficiently. In the end of autumn, particularly when its graceful fronds have assumed a certain indescribable tinge of mingled brown and ruby and gold, a bracken covert is beyond measure lovely. At such a stage, and in the warm and mellow light of the setting September sun, it is to ourselves all that an ocean of broom in flower was to the great Linnæus. If, however, you live in the near neighbourhood of brackens, you will find that it is apt to creep down from its proper wild and upland habitat, and to encroach unduly upon your old grass lands, wherever it can get an undisturbed footing. If you consult books on the subject, they will tell you that if you cut them down for a season or two running before they ripen, they will die away and disappear. With our large, soft-stemmed herbaceous plants, this method of eradication is sometimes effectual enough; with the bracken, as we know to our cost, it avails nothing. The roots are so curiously ramified and intertwined that they will live on and put forth a new growth year after year, no matter how constantly and closely you cut and crop them. We gave up trying a plan so futile, and only hit upon the right way of dealing with them by the merest accident. Walking along the edge of one of our old grass parks about mid-June some few years ago, we wished to get hold of a switch or something similar, wherewith to drive a fractious pony on before us to the park gate. There was no switch just then at hand, and, without thinking of it, we bent down, and with both hands pulled steadily and straight upwards at one of the largest of a luxuriant bracken patch that skirted the path beside us. To our surprise the plant came up easily and from the very root, or we should rather say with the very root attached, long, dark-brown, and something cigar-like in shape and size. That particular plant, a slight examination satisfied us, was fairly or literally and for ever eradicated, extirpated. When you get hold of plant and root, you get all; no other plant can grow in its stead; no plant, at all events, can honestly call it progenitor. The thing now was clear; we knew what we had to do, and how simple it was! One afternoon soon afterwards we called all our people into that field along with us. In all such cases best lead yourself, if you would have the thing done right. We pulled a bracken or two straight up and steadily in their presence, and showed them how it was extracted, even as a practised dentist, “deacon of his craft,” deals with an offending tooth—root and all complete. They then set to work along with us, and in an hour or so we had the whole field cleared of ferns—quite a large cart-load of them—each plant with its black root attached, all of which were afterwards found useful as bedding for the pony, and the largest and least broken for thatch. In that field no brackens have since shown themselves. So, if you are troubled with ferns, the proper way is not to cut them down, for they will grow again, but to deal with them as we did, and they will trouble you no more. There is some trouble about it, no doubt, though far less than you would suppose, and then, you see, we really know nothing at this moment worth the having to be had without trouble; so take the trouble and the good together, and be wise.
In your sea-shore wanderings, good reader, you must many a time and oft have witnessed the graceful flight of the tern or sea-swallow, the handsomest bird, perhaps, that ever saw its own image reflected in the glassy surface of a waveless sea; and you must have noticed its sudden dart and dip, now and again, after its prey into the bosom of the green, unbroken waves. This, of course, you have seen and admired a thousand times. But have you ever seen the merlin or merlin falcon (Falco æsalon), perform the same feat? No! Well, we did a few evenings ago; albeit the momentary immersion in the briny blue was probably, nay certainly, what the merlin would have avoided if it could. It happened in this wise: We were engaged on the beach painting our boat—there are few things but we can put our hand to with more or less success, always barring shooting, of our deficiency in which we recently made full and honest confession—when we suddenly heard that curious and indescribable half-scream, half-cheep, so well-known to the ornithologist, and which tells him so plainly that the utterer is a bird—usually a small bird—in dire distress, in constant fear and danger of its life. Looking round, we saw a merlin in hot chase of a sandpiper (Tringa hypoleucus), pursuer and pursued circling and wheeling in their arrow-like flight over the bent some hundred yards from the margin of the sea. Were it not for the manifest distress of the poor sandpiper, evidenced by its frequent scream, as if invoking all the kindly powers of heaven and earth to its aid, we should have considered it a most beautiful and interesting sight. The merlin was evidently hungry and in earnest, and we made no doubt at all, for there was no possible way that we could aid it, that the sandpiper was distined to be the fiery little falcon’s evening meal. But Diis aliter visum—the gods had otherwise ordered it. All of a sudden it seemed to occur to the Tringa that if there was the slightest chance of escape for it, it must be in closer relationship with its favourite and familiar element, the sea; and to the sea accordingly in one rapid dart the poor bird betook itself. The merlin, as if aware that there was now at least a possibility that its prey might after all escape its clutches, made a magnificent dash after, and just as the sandpiper was over the sea, reached it, and pounced to strike, but missed; by the smallest fraction of a single second, a sharp zig-zag in the Tringa’s flight kept it clear of the stroke, and the merlin, by the force and impetus of its flight, plunged head over ears into the sea, whence, with draggled plumage and brine-blinded eyes, it arose with difficulty, and betook itself to a rock ledge at hand to preen and dry itself, with no other consolation in its disappointment, probably, than a sotto voce merlin-wise muttering of the adage, “Better luck next time.” The sandpiper, it is needless to say, was soon a mile away, winging its terrified flight to the opposite Appin shore. We were glad that the sandpiper had escaped, that the merlin was disappointed. It is always pleasant to see an evil-doer baulked in the accomplishment of his evil intentions. And yet we don’t know either. We have called the merlin an evil-doer: are we entitled so to call him? Was he not as much entitled, could he have secured it, to have that Tringa for his evening meal, as we the delicious red rock cod that in an hour or two afterwards we enjoyed so heartily to our own supper? Let the reader think it over, and answer the question to himself at his leisure.