The literature of the highlanders

Who is now the chief of beggars

Since the best of them is gone?

Sorely down our tears are streaming

Since his begging face has flown.

Piteous is the orphan’s case;

Death to begging ill has brought;

In each homestead there is sorrow,

As the begging can’t be taught.

Ever since our God created

Man at first, I have not heard

Of a mendicant like Lachlan,

Whose decease our grief has stirred.

Without father, without mother,

Beggary grows weak and poor;

For none e’er could beg like Lachlan:

How can I my loss endure!

Duncan Macpherson is thought to have been an ecclesiastic, a class, notwithstanding Professor Blackie’s genial sneer about the “solemn sepulchral piety of certain North-Western Gospellers,” who have been the authors and media of the most of what the literary Highlander can refer to with national pride. The “sombre nationality” of the old Ossianic bards is discernible in the following lines:—

Alastair, art still in sorrow?

Or canst cast it to the ground?

The old year is swiftly passing,

And yet godless art thou found?

Now while thou art grey and aged,

Hast thou not the grace of heaven?

If there be aught good in sorrow,

God to thee rich gifts has given.

John MacVurich.—This writer was likely a member of the famous family who were so long hereditary bards to Clanranald. Their ancestor was the famous Muireadhach Albannach of the thirteenth century. I give a metrical rendering of some verses:—

O, sorry is the fate

I find mine own to-day!

Have pity kindly heav’n;

Save from this pain, I pray.

The misery I feel

Is threefold here alone;

And my misfortune black

Comes weighted with a stone.

My rage and wrath are great

For how she’s grieving me.

I see her sweet soft skin

Like white foam on the sea.

So rosy is her hand;

Her lips like berries red;

My soul she holds while sleep

At night flies from my bed.

I fancied she was nigh,

And that she smiled on me;

But since my grief began

The maid I can not see.

Her raven curly locks

Are prettily arrayed;

Five lovers there are knit

To th’ name of the fair maid.

O that she were my own:

Then I should be so blest;

My love for evermore

To press her to my breast!

Many of the authors whose compositions appear in the Dean’s Book were evidently professional men, either clerical or medical. It was among these two classes that the lamp of literature was kept burning. Many of the names are indeed suggestive of professional connections, such as Mac-an-Olave, MacNab, Macpherson, Maol Domhnuich, &c.

It has been held that the Romish system of the celibacy of the clergy was not introduced or acted upon till a century or two before the Reformation. Whether or not this is true we have at all events quite a crop of clans whose progenitors must have been the sons of ecclesiastical persons. We have Mac-an-Aba, MacNab, from the son of the Abbot; MacVicar, from the son of the Vicar: MacPherson, from the son of the Parson, or Persona; MacTaggart, from the son of the Priest; MacMaster, from the son of the Maighstir or Minister. Other names come to us through those who devoted themselves to be the servants or gillies of God or of some saints. Mac-gille-Chriost is Gilchrist, or the son of Gilchrist, or the servant of Christ. Mac-gill’-Iosa, is Gillies, or the son of the servant of Jesus; Mac-gill’-Iain, or MacLean, is the son of the servant of Seathain, or John; Mac-gill’-Aindreais is the son of the servant of Andrew; Mac-gill’-Eóra (Gill’-an-Leabhair) is the son of the servant of the Book, Macindeor; Mac-gill’-Mhoire is Morrison, the servant of Mary, &c. The clerical element appears to have been a powerful interest at one time in the Highlands and Islands. Indeed, this may be said of Scotland as a whole, a characteristic which has not yet become invisible. The Dean’s book shows us the Highlands under the old order of things. A vast change was impending. The Catholic ecclesiastical dispensation was drawing to a close. The Church of Rome never gained a powerful hold of the people; so in general they contemplated its downfall with indifference. The intelligent of them who were interested in religion had more sympathy with the old native Church—the Celtic—which Rome supplanted or were ready to embrace the new faith of awakening Christendom.

Gillicalum Mac-an-Olave.—This bard is the author of several pieces of fair merit in the Dean’s Book. He appears to have been one of the famous Beatons, Clann-an-Leigh, of Islay, Mull, and Skye. Of him and of several others in the Dean’s MS. we know little more than their names, some of which I now give:—John of Knoydart, who poetises on the murder of the young Lord of the Isles by the Irish harper, Dermid O’Cairbre, at Inverness in 1490; Duncan Mor, from Lennox; Gilchrist Taylor, Andrew Macintosh, the Bard Macintyre, John MacEwen MacEachern, Duncan MacCabe, Dougall MacGille Glas, Maol Domhnuich (Servus Domini), Baron Ewen MacOmie, MacEachag, and Duncan, brother of the Dean, Sir James Macgregor, who transcribed the most of the manuscript so famous under his brother’s name.

There are a good few verses of a satiric character to be found in the Dean’s collection. The reader is rather surprised to find the religious Dean admitting such an estimate as the following of monks and monasteries into his collection:—

I, Robert, went yesterday

A monastery for to see;

But to my wishing they said nay,

Because my wife was not with me!

Among the Irish pieces there are several satirical productions by an Irish Earl Gerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond, directed against the fair sex.

The ruthless and vindictive spirit which at this time prevailed in Scotland may be gathered from the following verses of a battle-incitement on the eve of the invasion of the English, which ended on the fatal field of Flodden:—

Burn their women, lean and ugly!

Burn their children, great and small!

In the hut and in the palace,

Prince and peasant, burn them all!

Plunge them in the swelling rivers,

With their gear, and with their goods;

Spare, while breath remains, no Saxon;

Drown them in the roaring floods!

These lines have been translated by Professor Blackie, as well as the next piece of banter.

Black John Macgregor of Glenstrae, who was buried at Dysart, in Glenorchy, May 26, 1519, was a kind patron to the red-haired bard Finlay MacNab, who begins his praises as follows:—

I’ve been a stranger long

To pleasant-flowing matter;

I’m tired of lashing fools

With unproductive satire.

I’ve dwarfed my Muse for nought,

But now she shall grow bigger

By chant of lofty theme—

The praise of the Macgregor.

A prince indeed is he,

Who knows the craft of ruling;

Well taught in each degree

Of proper princely schooling.

Men make boast of noble blood:

Though money has its praises,

I’d much liefer be well-born

Than count the wealth of Crœsus.

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 MacCailein a good part

Of my life’s blood I borrow,

MacCailein 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.

MacNeill 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 will consider

That I have cousins stout of arm

In Breadalbane and Balquhidder;

Clan Lauchlan and Clan Lamond, too,

All 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 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 blood

Flows in my veins—the bastard!

The following poem is by a Phelim Macdougall. The power of his muse cannot be said to be of so high an order as his moral suggestions. But poetry and severe ethics do not always go together. So we can afford some literary and religious sympathies to poor Phelim in his fifteenth century gropings after light:—

’Tis not good to travel on Sunday,

Whoever the Sabbath would keep;

Not good to be of ill-famed race;

Not good is a dirty woman;

Not good to write without learning;

Not good are grapes when sour;

Not good is an Earl without English;

Not good is a sailor, if old;

Not good is a bishop without warrant;

Not good is a blemish on an elder;

Not good a priest with but one eye;

Not good a parson if a beggar;

Not good is a palace without pay;

Not good is a handmaid if she’s slow;

Not good is a lord without a dwelling, &c.

The author of the following verses was neither the first nor the last that fathered their petty productions on poor Ossian.

The Author of This is Ossian, the Son of Finn.

Long are the clouds this night above me;

The last was a long night to me.

This day that drags its weary way

Came from a wearier yesterday.

Each day that comes is long to me:

Such was not my wont to be.

Now there is no fine delight

In battle-field, and fence of fight;

No training now to feats of arms,

Nor song, nor harp, nor maiden’s charms,

Nor blazing hearth, nor well-heaped board,

Nor banquet spread by liberal lord,

Nor stag pursuing, nor gentle wooing,

The dearest of dear trades to me.

Alas! that I should live to see

Days without mirth in hut or hall

Without the hunter’s wakeful call,

Or bay of hounds, or hounds at all,

Without light jest, or sportive whim

Or lads with mounting breast to swim

Across the long arms of the sea—

Long are the clouds this night above me.

In the big world there lives no wight

More sad than I this night.

A poor old man with no pith in my bones,

Fit for nothing but gathering stones.

The last of the Finn, the noble race,

Ossian, the son of Finn am I,

Standing beneath the cold grey sky,

Listening to the sound of bells.

Long are the clouds this night above me!

One of the chief characteristics of the poetry of this period is the clearness or distinctness of the ideas. The authors seize at once their subject and straightway sing what they have to utter. They also appear to have a definite object in view when they invoke the muse, and they carry it out in a clear, direct, and unhesitating fashion. The vagueness and mistiness of Macpherson’s Ossianic poems have been much commented upon, and sometimes with good reason. Nothing like mistiness can be affirmed of the Ossianic poems which were composed or transcribed and were popular at this period. The ideas of the authors stand out in brilliant distinctness, like stars looking forth beneath the brows of a frosty night.

The Lismore collection of songs and poems is not the only manuscript of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that received but scant attention from our forefathers. Many ancient Gaelic manuscripts carried by Christian missionaries to the Continent have never returned. More than two hundred, once in the possession of Gaelic scribes, may still be met with in the various European libraries. Drs Laing and Skene, especially the latter, have done good service to Scotland in this field. The admirable collection of Gaelic MSS. in Edinburgh, some of which, it is hoped will yet be published, is the result of the energetic efforts of Dr Skene. The Fernaig manuscript which he has put in the hands of Professor Mackinnon, contains according to the latter, some 4000 lines of Gaelic poetry of the seventeenth century. It is hoped that Mr Mackinnon will lend his ability and scholarship to the early publication of this work. Judging by a published article of the Professor of Celtic in Edinburgh, at the present date (November, 1889), he seems to be unaware that the “Red Book” of Clanranald is not lost. He will be glad to know that it is in the possession of Admiral Reginald Macdonald. Mr Campbell of Islay, informed the writer once that he and Mr O’Grady had read the “Red Book.”

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