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.
Mackay was happily married, and brought up a large family in habits and sentiments of piety; a fact which his reverend biographer connects very touchingly with the stated solemnities of the "Saturday night," when the lighter chants of the week were exchanged at the worthy drover's fireside for the purer and holier melodies of another inspiration.[87] As a pendant to this creditable account of the bard's principles, we are informed that he was a frequent guest at the presbytery dinner-table; a circumstance which some may be so malicious as to surmise amounted to nothing more than a purpose to enhance the festive recreations of the reverend body—a suspicion, we believe, in this particular instance, totally unfounded. He died in 1778; and he has succeeded to some rather peculiar honours for a person in his position, or even of his mark. He has had a reverend doctor for his editorial biographer,[88] and no less than Sir Walter Scott for his reviewer.[89]
The passages which Sir Walter has culled from some literal translations that were submitted to him, are certainly the most favourable specimens of the bard that we have been able to discover in his volume. The rest are generally either satiric rants too rough or too local for transfusion, or panegyrics on the living and the dead, in the usual extravagant style of such compositions, according to the taste of the Highlanders and the usage of their bards; or they are love-lays, of which the language is more copious and diversified than the sentiment. In the gleanings on which we have ventured, after the illustrious person who has done so much honour to the bard by his comments and selections, we have attempted to draw out a little more of the peculiar character of the poet's genius.
THE SONG OF WINTER.
This is selected as a specimen of Mackay's descriptive poetry. It is in a style peculiar to the Highlands, where description runs so entirely into epithets and adjectives, as to render recitation breathless, and translation hopeless. Here, while we have retained the imagery, we have been unable to find room, or rather rhyme, for one half of the epithets in the original. The power of alliterative harmony in the original song is extraordinary.