Though thy form, that was fashion'd as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round,
And thy glance, that was bright as a falcon's at gaze,
Looks soberly now on the ground—
Enough, after absence to meet me again,
Thy steps still with ecstacy move;
Enough, that those dear sober glances retain
For me the kind language of love.
METRICAL TRANSLATIONS
FROM
The Modern Gaelic Minstrelsy.
ROBERT MACKAY (ROB DONN).
Robert Mackay, called Donn, from the colour of his hair, which was brown or chestnut, was born in the Strathmore of Sutherlandshire, about the year 1714.
His calling, with the interval of a brief military service in the fencibles, was the tending of cattle, in the several gradations of herd, drover, and bo-man, or responsible cow-keeper—the last, in his pastoral county, a charge of trust and respectability. At one period he had an appointment in Lord Reay's forest; but some deviations into the "righteous theft"—so the Highlanders of those parts, it seems, call the appropriation of an occasional deer to their own use—forfeited his noble employer's confidence. Rob, however, does not appear to have suffered in his general character or reputation for an unconsidered trifle like this, nor otherwise to have declined in the favour of his chief, beyond the necessity of transporting himself to a situation somewhat nearer the verge of Cape Wrath than the bosom of the deer preserve.