is deeply absorbing. Natural scenes in the West Highlands he describes with vigour and striking effect. Sometimes he becomes quite majestic, as when he sings of “rain-charged clouds on thick squalls wandering loomed and towered.” Some of the parts of his principal poem, The Birlin, a boat voyage in the Hebrides, are very powerful and sometimes sublime. The unrestrained vehemence and gorgeousness of The Birlin give place to simpler delineations in The Sugar Brook. There is much delicious portraiture in this last poem.

The Praise of the Lion is a fiery appeal to the Scottish nationality. The Jacobite cause is the theme of many of his songs, Prince Charles being sometimes personified under female names, such as “Morag.” In his love songs Macdonald is sweet, tender, and musical, rough though his muse is at other times. His “Praise of Morag,” in a sort of piobrachd measure, is powerful; but composed under such conditions as Burns wrote “Mary in Heaven,” Macdonald’s lawful spouse became alarmed and jealous. At once he turns to “Dispraising Morag,” which he works out elaborately with Mephistophelian ardour and spirit, regardless of all poetic justice and decency. “The Resurrection of the Gaelic Tongue” is a powerful poem, celebrating the antiquity and supreme excellence of the language of the Gael.

As specimens of the sweet and tender in Macdonald’s poetry, let us take a verse or two from his fine piece, The Sugar Brook. He has done for this insignificant burn what Burns has done for the Doon and Gray for the Luggie. He describes the different birds tuning their little throats in the morning to take up the several parts assigned to them in the great harmonic chorus of nature. He hears the rich treble of Robin, the deep bass of Richard, the “goo-goo” of the cuckoo; while on a stake apart from the rest the thrush sings lustily, and the blythesome brown wren and the vieing linnet tune up their choicest strings. The blackcock croaks, and the hen sings her hoarse response. Then come the fishes, the bees, and the frisking calves, the milkmaid and the herdsman, to fill up a scene already sufficiently gorgeous. There also—

The following two stanzas are very fine in the original, and Pattison has very successfully rendered them into English:—

The Birlin has been translated by Sheriff Nicolson, and a part by Professor Blackie. The complete translation of Pattison was the first and is still the best. This poem is a master-piece of Gaelic poetry, and presents peculiar difficulties to the translator. After this “Blessing of the Ship,” the “Blessing of the Arms,” we have in the third part an incitement for rowing to a sailing place. The rowers are asked with a powerful sweep to

In this spirit the poem extends to more than 500 lines, divided into 16 parts, until finally the voyage of the Birlin ends somewhat like that of St. Paul.

Till within recent years the practice of walking cloth in peasant homes was a general thing. The writer has often witnessed it in the north as well as in the south Highlands, in places where walking mills did not extinguish the ancient ways of Highland women. The “Morag” of Macdonald was a “Walking Refrain,” or song for a young woman of fair bewitching tresses. In history her alias is Prince Charlie whose adventures touched the hearts of women, bards and weak-minded statesmen. “Ho Morag” in other words is a treasonable prayer, adoration, or incitement for Jacobitically-minded Highlanders and others. The bard’s heart was evidently in this wretched and ill-starred rebellion; but it ought not to be forgotten that if the poet’s heart tended to disloyalty he had thousands of titled traitors and sympathisers close to the Hanoverian throne. The Jacobite bard rushes with inexhaustible enthusiasm into the “walking” labours of the Highland women as their thoughts travel after the fair adventurer:

Further on the bard is “enthused” over the deeds of Montrose and Alastair Mac Colla, the brave Sir Alexander Macdonald of Antrim, whose heroism has not yet received its due reward:

The close of this stirring lyric gives us the warrior-bard, after the ancient manner: