CHAPTER X.

MODERN GAELIC BARDS AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE.

To those who feel that poetry is a thing older than all manuscripts and books, and that in its essence it is independent of these, it is I know not how refreshing to turn from the poetry that is confined to books to the song-lore of the Gael. They find there a poetry 'which, both in its ancient and in its modern forms, was the creation of men who were taught in no school but that of nature; who could neither read nor write their native Gaelic; who, many of them, never saw a book or a manuscript; who had no other model than the old primeval Ossianic strains which they had heard from childhood; and who, when inborn passion prompted, sang songs of natural and genuine inspiration. What they composed they never thought of committing to writing, for writing was to them an art unknown. The great body of Highland poetry, both in old and in modern times, has come down to us preserved mainly by oral tradition. This is a fact which can be proved, let learned criticism say what it will. I have already spoken of that great primitive background of heroic songs and ballads, known as the Ossianic poetry, which had lived for centuries only on the lips of men, before it was committed to writing. That was the nurse and school by which all after Gaelic poets were formed. To-day let us turn to the post-Ossianic, or modern

poetry of the Gael, which reaches from the middle age almost down to our own time.

“In a land of song like the Highlands," says one who knew well what he spoke of, "every strath, glen, and hamlet had its bard. In the morning of my days," he goes on to say, writing in 1841, "it was my happy lot to inhale the mountain air of a sequestered spot, whose inhabitants may be designated children of song, in a state of society whose manners were little removed from that of primitive simplicity. I had many opportunities of witnessing the influence of poetry over the mind, and I found that cheerfulness and song, music and morality, walked almost always hand in hand." Making allowance for the warmth of feeling with which a man looks back on a childhood spent among the mountains, these words are, I believe, true. One may be forgiven if one doubts, whether School Boards and the Code with its six Standards, which have superseded this state of things, and are doing their best to stamp out the small remains of Gaelic poetry, are wholly a gain.

The writer from whom I have quoted, Mr. John Mackenzie, was a native of the west coast of Ross, to whom those who still cherish Gaelic poetry owe a great debt; for in 1841 he published his Beauties of Gaelic Poetry, which is a collection of the best pieces of the best modern Gaelic bards. They are but a sample of what might have been dug from a vast quarry, but they are a good sample. In many cases he had to gather the poems of some of the best bards, not from any edition of their works, or even from manuscripts, but from the recitation of old people, who preserved them in memory. Mackenzie's book contains more than thirty thousand lines of poetry on all kinds of subjects, from the long heroic chant about

down to the

"Old unhappy far off things,

And battles long ago!"

"More humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day."

To this book and its contents I shall confine myself, while speaking of the modern poetry of the Gael.

The book is divided into three parts. First, a few poems of the mediæval time, which form a sort of link between the Ossianic and the modern poetry. The second, and by far the largest part, consists of the poems of well-known bards from the Reformation down to the present century. The names of these are given with their works, and with some account of their lives. The third portion consists of short popular songs well known among the people, but without the name of the authors attached to them.

Of the early or pre-Reformation poems given by Mackenzie, two only seem to be of undoubted antiquity, one a poem called The Owl, and another, The Aged Bard's Wish. In the former, an old hunter, who is illtreated by his young wife, and is turned by her out of doors at night, tells all his grievances to an owl. The most interesting thing about it is the mention he makes of all the mountain places, where he used in happier days to hunt the wolf or the deer. Singing four hundred years ago, he mentions the mountains that cluster round Ben Nevis, and the waterfalls by Loch Treig, by the same names which they bear to-day. The other ancient poem, called The Aged Bard's Wish, is of unknown date, but certainly belongs to the pre-Reformation period. It is beautiful in its composition, melodious in its language, and pervaded not at all by the spirit of the warrior, and only in a slight degree by that of the

hunter, but rather by the pastoral sentiment. This is a distinct advance on the poems of the Ossianic era. Here are some stanzas from Mackenzie's literal prose translation, and these will show its tone:

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"Oh, lay me near the brooks, which slowly move with gentle steps; under the shade of the budding branches lay my head, and be thou, O sun, in kindness with me. . . .

"I see Ben-Aid of beautiful curve, chief of a thousand hills; the dreams of stags are in his locks, his head in the bed of clouds.

"I seen Scorn-eilt on the brow of the glen, where the cuckoo first raises her tuneful voice; and the beautiful green hill of the thousand pines, of herds, of roes, and of elks.

"Let joyous ducklings swim swiftly on the pool of tall pines. A strath of green firs is at its head, bending the red rowans over its banks.

"Let the swan of the snowy bosom glide on the top of the waves. When she soars on high among the clouds she will be unencumbered. "She travels oft over the sea to the cold region of foaming billows; where never shall sail be spread out to a mast, nor an oaken prow divide the wave. . . .

"Farewell, lovely company of youth! and you, O beautiful maiden, farewell. I cannot see you. Yours is the joy of summer; my winter is everlasting.

"Oh, place me within hearing of the great waterfall, where it descends from the rock; let a harp and a shell be by my side, and the shield that defended my forefathers in battle.

"Come friendlily over the sea, O soft breeze, that movest slowly, bear my shade on the wind of thy swiftness, and travel quickly to the Isle of Heroes,

"Where those who went of old are in deep slumber, deaf to the sound of music. Open the hall where dwell Ossian and Daol. The night shall come, and the Bard shall not be found."

Several things about this poem are noteworthy. Here you have a vein of fine and delicate sentiment in a Gaelic poem composed centuries before MacPherson appeared. Then observe that, though pastoral life has come in, Christianity is yet unknown, or, at least, unbelieved by this dweller beside Loch Treig. His desire is that his harp, a shell full of wine, and his ancestral

shield should be laid by his side; and then that his soul, which he believed to be of the nature of wind, should be borne by its kindred winds, not to heaven, but to Flath-Innis, the Isle of the Brave, the Celtic Paradise, where Ossian and Daol are. Lastly, note the peculiar love of nature, and that magical charm with which it is touched.

Of those thirty bards, whose poems Mackenzie has preserved, I might give the names and a few facts about the lives and compositions of each; but this, which is all I could do within my prescribed space, would not greatly edify any one. I might tell you of Mary MacLeod, the nurse of five chiefs of MacLeod, and the poetess of her clan; of Ian Lom MacDonald, the first Jacobite bard, who led Montrose and his army to Inverlochy, pointed out the camping ground of the Campbells, then mounted the ramparts, watched the battle, and sang a fiery pæan for the victory; of Alastair MacDonald, the second great Jacobite bard, who joined Prince Charlie's army, shared his disaster, and preserved the memory of that time in songs of fervid Jacobite devotion.

But I should do little good by giving you merely bare lists of names, facts, and a few notions, about Rob Donn, or Mackay, the poet of the Reay Country, a bitter and powerful satirist; about Dougal Buchanan, the earnest and solemn religious poet of Rannoch; and William Ross, the sweet lyrist of Gairloch in Ross, and

many more.

If any one desires to know further about these bards of the Gael, let me refer him to the brief biographies given of each of them, in the book I have already spoken of, Mackenzie's Beauties of Gaelic Poetry, and also to the very animated commentary on the contents