no interest except to the professed genealogist. In one singular poem, half in joke we imagine, the writer washes himself free from the stain of bastardy by the detailed enumeration of all the noble races whose blood had mingled in the rich veins of his ancestry :

"Men make boast of noble blood:
Though money has its praises,
I'd much liefer be well born

Than count the wealth of Croesus.
Hear me, gentles and commons all,
Cease your blame and banter;
When I my pedigree rehearse,
You'll find I am no vaunter.
From great Clan Dougall I descend;
No better blood is flowing,

But richer made in me from founts
That I will soon be showing.
From the Mac Chailein a good part
Of my life's blood I borrow,
Mac Chailein, bountiful to bards,
Then how should I find sorrow?

In Earla I was born and bred,

I tell you true the story,

A very noble place it is

'Twixt Aros and Tobermory.
Macdonald lies off to the west;

I dwell with good Clan Gillean,
Brave men who stood in battle's breast
A hundred 'gainst a million.
MacNeil of Barra, too, most sure,
Gives gentle blood to me, sir;

And Colonsay doth make her boast
I'm kin to the MacFie, sir.

The mighty masterful MacSween,
Clan Ranald and Macleod, sir,

The stoutest chiefs e'er tramped on green,
Give substance to my blood, sir.
The Cattanachs and the MacIntoshes
Both make a goodly figure

In my proud line; and linked with them,
Clan Cameron and Macgregor :

And Stewart's seed, though sown on earth More wide than any other,

The tale is true that one of them

Was my grandsire's grandmother;
And if you will to do me harm,
I rede you well consider
That I have cousins stout of arm

In Breadalbane and Balquhidder.
Clan Lauchlan and Clan Lamond, too,
Are numbered with my kin, sir;

I really see no end in view

When once that I begin, sir;
For in my veins of noble blood
Dame Nature was so lavish,
She added some drops from the flood
Of thy pure fount, Clan Tavish,
Lads that do plenish our green hills
With virtue and with vigour,
Tight little men, but with more pith
Than many who are bigger.
I visit MacDougall of Craignish,

And from the good MacIvor
I get my dinner full and free,
And never pay a stiver.

And now my race and lineage rare

When you have bravely mastered,

You'll find the best of all your bloods
Flows in my veins—the bastard!”

So much for the professional Celtic bards of the middle ages; ages full of rich gleaming veins of stout humanity, profitable to the wise digger, but which in their totality no wise man would wish to recall.

CHAPTER III.

FROM THE REFORMATION TO MACPHERSON.

̓Αναξιφόρμιγγες ὕμνοι,

Τίνα θεὸν, τίν ̓ ἥρωα,

Τίνα δ ̓ ἄνδρα κελαδήσομεν ;-PINDAR.

BETWEEN the poetry of the Dean of Lismore's Book and that which we are now about to consider there is a wide gap. I cannot tell how it is,-perhaps it is not wise always to demand reasons for the sudden rise of poetical or artistic schools,—but somehow or other, even in the furthest west and most thoroughly Popish of the Western Highlands, the spirit of intellectual individualism seems to have infected the atmosphere; and an army of Celtic poets comes into view, in whom the elements of family-genealogy and clan-eulogy, though in no wise extinct, are subordinated to the personal character and genius of the bard. This is a thoroughly modern element; an element, however, which in the Highland poets never thrusts the workman with undue prominence—as in the case of Lord Byron-into the foreground of his work. The Celtic bard of this epoch, though no longer the mere spokesman of the clans, is thoroughly popular not only in the character of his environment and in the tone of his treatment, but generally in the choice of his subject. He does not compass heaven and earth, like some of our modern poets, to find a subject, and find a bad one after all. If he does not find it in his own

G

bosom, he will certainly find it among his own hills. Among the most ancient of these poems-no person seems to know the date exactly-is one made known to the general British public three-quarters of a century ago by the accomplished Highland lady, Mrs. Grant of Laggan.1 The name in Gaelic is, Miann'a bhaird aosda, that is, "The Aged Bard's Wish." It is the third in Mackenzie's collection, and starts thus:

O càiraibh mi ri taobh nan allt
A shiubhlas mall le ceumaibh ciùin
Fo sgàil a bharraich leag mo cheann,
'S bithus' a ghrian ro-chàirdeil rium.
“O place me by the purling brook,
That wimples gently down the lea,
Under the old trees' branchy shade,
And thou, bright sun, be kind to me!"

And again :

O cuir mo chluas ri fuaim Eas-mòr
Le 'chrònan a' tearnadh o'n chreig.
Bidh cruit agus slige ri 'm thaobh

'S an sgiath a dhiòn mo shinnsir 's a' chath..

"Where I may hear the waterfall,

And the hum of its falling wave,

And give me the harp, and the shell, and the shield
Of my sires in the strife of the brave!"

This poem, by whomsoever written, is extremely beautiful, melodious in language, polished and graceful in execution, so as not undeservedly to claim a place in the great echo chamber of Highland poetry, very similar to that occupied by Gray's Elegy among ourselves. But more noteworthy,

1 Poems by Mrs. Grant of Laggan. Edinburgh, 1803.