IAN CAMERON (“IAN MOR”).
[PAGE 242]
Translated from the Gaelic by Miss Fiona Macleod.
JOHN DAVIDSON.
[PAGE 243]
Mr Davidson was born at Barrhead, near Paisley, on April 11th, 1857. After his preliminary education at the Highlanders’ Academy, Greenock, he went to Edinburgh University. For a time he taught in Greenock, and also gained a certain amount of literary experience in occasional contributions to the Glasgow Herald and other papers. In 1886 he published Bruce: a Drama, followed by Smith: a Tragedy (1888), Scaramouch in Naxos: and other Places (1889), In a Music Hall, and other Poems (1891), Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), Ballads and Songs (1894), Second Series of Fleet Street Eclogues (1895), besides several volumes of prose papers and fiction. Although Bruce was Mr Davidson’s first published work, he had begun to write at a much earlier period: his An Historical Pastoral was composed in 1877; A Romantic Farce in 1878; while Bruce was written four years before its publication. Mr Davidson’s later poetical writings have been mainly in the form of songs and lyrical ballads, and these have placed him in the foremost rank of the younger poets of to-day. He has the widest range, the largest manner, and the intensest note of any of the later Victorians. The two poems by which he is represented here are eminently characteristic, and none the less Celtic in their essential quality from the fact that the one deals with a loafer of the London streets and the other with a scenic rendering of an impression gained in Romney Marsh. Mr Davidson’s latest writings are “The Ballad of an Artist’s Wife,” not as yet issued in book form, and the just published second series of the Fleet Street Eclogues (John Lane). Both “A Loafer” and “In Romney Marsh” are from Ballads and Songs.
JEAN GLOVER. (1758-1800.)
[PAGE 246]
The author of “O’er the Muir amang the Heather” was the daughter of a Highland weaver settled in Kilmarnock. She married a strolling actor, and her fugitive songs became familiar throughout the West of Scotland. “O’er the Muir amang the Heather” has become a classic.
GEORGE MACDONALD.
[PAGE 247]
This popular Scottish novelist and poet was born at Huntly, in Aberdeenshire, December 10, 1824. As a novelist he has almost as large an audience as have any of his contemporary romancists. His poems are less widely known, though in them he has expressed himself with great variety and subtlety. The Celtic element is not conspicuous in Dr Macdonald’s work either in prose or verse; but sometimes, as in the little song “Oimè,” quoted here, it finds adequate expression. This song is from his early volume Within and Without.
RONALD CAMPBELL MACFIE.
[PAGE 249]
The author of Granite Dust (Kegan Paul) is one of the most promising of the younger Celtic Scots.