We have received the following note from “A Constant Reader:”—
“Nether Lochaber.
“Sir—Would you kindly let us know, through the columns of the Inverness Courier, the proper name of the accompanying little bird, and what part of this country it is properly a native of. It is never seen in Ross-shire but during very heavy snow, and then they fly about in large flocks, and disappear again as soon as the snow is gone.—I am, yours respectfully,
“A Constant Reader.”
Neatly packed in a couple of lucifer match-boxes ingeniously conjoined, the bird reached us, and the locale of its being shot or captured we can only approximately indicate by the fact that the package bore the post-mark “Garve.” There was no difficulty in at once recognising the bird as the snow-fleck or snow bunting, the Emberiza nivalis of Linnæus, a common enough bird in early winter over the whole of Scotland. Although it has been known to breed in Scotland, a few being found all the year round along the summits of the Grampians, and other mountain ranges to the north and north-west, it is probably a bird of considerably higher latitudes than ours; visiting our shores as a migrant in October or November, according as the winter is early and severe or otherwise, and leaving us again in March or April. It is a hardy little bird, of plain and rather sombre plumage, prettiest in the act of flight, when the white on the edges and tips of the tail-feathers, and quills, and secondaries, comes out in pretty bars, contrasting pleasantly with the dark and chestnut brown, which may be said to be the prevailing colour. The snow-fleck has hardly any song beyond a tremulous twittering, and a few call-notes so loud and shrill that in the strange and solemn calm that sometimes precedes a snow-storm, they may be heard at a great distance. Our correspondent should have stated where, when, and how the bird was got, a knowledge of such matters vastly enhancing the interest and value of a specimen, especially if it has any claims to be accounted a rara avis.
We are indebted to our excellent Celtic friend, Mr. William Mackay, Inverness, for a copy of his exceedingly interesting monograph on The Glen and Castle of Urquhart, one of the most interesting spots in the Highlands. Mr. Mackay attempts to make Glen Urquhart classic ground by associating the story of Dearduil and Clann-Uisneachean, as related in the mediæval Gaelic ballads, with the locality, by pointing out that there is a Dun Dearduil in the neighbourhood—a place so called after the hapless heroine of the ballad story. But in the old and unquestionably authentic ballads her name is not Dearduil but Deirdri; Deirdir and Daordir. Dearduil is a much later form of the name, not older, Mr. J. F. Campbell hints, than the Darthula of “Ossian” Macpherson. But there are other Dun Dearduils besides that referred to by Mr. Mackay; one, for instance, near us in Glenevis; and it is to be observed that all the places so called are vitrified forts. An old man in our neighbourhood, one of our best seannachies, always speaks of the Glenevis vitrified fort as Dun Dearsail or Dearsuil, and this is probably the correct form of the term, closely connecting it with dears and dearsadh, to shine, a shining; to beam and be effulgently aglow like flame of fire. Remembering that all the places so called present more or less marked traces of vitrifaction, in the formation of which fire and flame, on a large scale, must have been the chief and most remarkable agents, the name comes to have a fitting and appropriate enough meeting, without the necessity of taking in the name of Deirdri or Dearduil at all. Mr. Mackay next gives a translation of a couple of quatrains from the oldest known version of the Clann-Uisneachan ballad; that, namely, of the vellum manuscript in the Advocates’ Library, bearing the date 1238, and quoted in the Highland Society’s Report on Ossian:—
“Beloved land, that eastern land,
Alba, with its lakes;
Oh, that I might not depart from it;
But I go with Naois.
Glen Urchain, O Glen Urchain,
It was the straight glen of smooth ridges: