PREFACE.

THIS book is an humble attempt to break down the middle wall of partition which I have found to exist fencing off the most cultivated minds in England and in the Lowlands of Scotland from the intellectual life and moral aspirations of the Scottish Highlanders. This partition, so unnatural between kindred races, appears to me to have grown up from a combination of unhappy circumstances, which has rudely torn away one remote limb of the empire from the sympathy of the rest, but is kept up mainly now by the neglect with which all classes have conspired to treat the Caledonian branch of the great Celtic family of languages. For this neglect our Scottish philologers, who ought to have seen more sharply, and our Highland upper and middle classes, who ought to have felt more truly, are chiefly responsible. From a residence of some years in the Western Highlands, and a habit of feeling the

pulse of various persons and classes in reference to Celtic matters, I became deeply convinced that some attempt should be made to remedy a state of things so disgraceful to our character as an educated people; but I certainly should never have presumed to take this office upon myself, had I not seemed to recognise certain advantages in my position at the present juncture which might give my advocacy greater weight than would justly belong to many a more competent champion. How far I have succeeded in the attempt those who know may judge; in the meantime, I only wish to return special thanks to those gentlemen learned in Celtic lore, without whose aid I should never have succeeded in working my way through the difficulties which a poetical translator from the great Gaelic classics at this time of day cannot fail to encounter. The names of the Rev. Dr. Clerk of Kilmallie, the Rev. Alexander Stewart of North Ballachulish, the Rev. Duncan M'Innes, Oban, and Duncan Clerk, Esq., Oban, not to mention the assistance derived in some cases from Pattison and other previous labourers in the same field, will serve as a sufficient guarantee to the public that I have in no case planted my foot within the prickly preserves of the old Gaelic Muse without good guidance. As to the general style of