As I awake it is not sleep
That strives with me in troubles deep;
My bed beneath the tears I weep
Is in disquiet;
My bed beneath, etc.
Of him, my patron bright, bereft,
I have no fair possession left;
While pain of loss my soul has cleft
In sight and hearing;
While pain of loss, etc.
Sore tears are ours; joy is no more,
No hope of smiles; no cheer in store;
We seem like the brave Fianns of yore
And Finn forsaken;
We seem like the brave Fianns, etc.
Ah! true it seems the tale to tell;
Our cup is filled with doings fell;
Provoking in a rage of hell
Bless’d God the Highest;
Provoking in a rage, etc.
Blest One, from Thee let us not swerve;
Above with Thee he goes to serve;
O Christ! do Thou for us preserve
Our loving brothers;
O Christ! do thou for us preserve, etc.

Maccodrum was deemed a witness of no mean weight in the Ossianic controversy, on the strength of the following statement by Sir James Macdonald, in a letter dated from Skye, October 10th, 1763. Addressing Dr. Blair, on that occasion he writes: “The few bards that are left among us repeat only detached pieces of the Ossianic poems. I have often heard them and understood them, particularly from one man, called John Maccodrum, who lives on my estate in North Uist. I have heard him repeat for hours together poems which seemed to me to be the same with Macpherson’s translations.”

The bard once met the hero of Ossianic fame when the latter had gone to the Outer Hebrides to collect fragments of ancient poetry. From Lochmaddy, Macpherson happened to be travelling across the moor towards the seat of the younger Clanranald of Benbencula, and falling in with a native, he took occasion to ask him if he had anything on the Feinn. This man, who was none other than the quick-witted and sarcastic Maccodrum, taking advantage of Macpherson’s badly expressed and ambiguous Gaelic, retorted literally to the effect that the Feinn did not owe him anything, and even if they did, it were vain to ask for payment now. Unaware of the personality of the bard, and direly offended at the character of the reply, which reflected on his own knowledge of the language, the proud collector passed on his way without more ado. Both men thus met and parted as ignorant of each other as ships that pass in the night.

Maccodrum’s poems have never been published separately. A few appeared in Alexander Macdonald’s collection. Many of the rest, entrusted to memory, are now merged in oblivion. He had not the versatility either of Mary Macleod or of Alexander Macdonald, for he sometimes imitates the poems of bards more original than himself, yet in purity and elegance of language he frequently approaches Macdonald. His satire on “Donald Bain’s Bagpipe,” and his poems on “Old Age” and “Whisky,” are considered excellent, witty, ingenious, and original. And “Smeorach Chlann-Domhnuill,” or “The Mavis of Clan Donald,” which has been rendered into English verse by Professor Blackie, is a delightful pæan in praise of his own native Uist.

The Mavis of Pabal am I; in my nest
I lay long time with my head on my breast,
Dozing away the dreary hour,
In the day that was dark, and the time that was sour.
But now I soar to the mountain’s crest,
For the chief is returned whom I love best;
In the face of the sun, on the fringe of the wood,
Feeding myself with wealth of good.
On the tip of the twigs I sit and sing,
And greet the morn on dewy wing,
And fling to the breeze my dewy note,
With no ban to my breath, and no dust in my throat.
Every bird will praise its own nest,
And why shall not I think mine the best?
Land of strong men and healthy food,
And kindly cheer, and manners good.
A land that faces the ocean wild,
But with summer sweetness, mellow and mild,
Calves, lambs, and kids, full many a score,
Bread, milk, and honey piled in the store.
A dappled land full sunny and warm,
Secure and sheltered from the storm,
With ducks and geese and ponds not scanted,
And food for all that live to want it, etc.

The poet, apparently, made the most of his own rugged island, and now lies buried in an old churchyard not far from the village of Houghary, where a rough boulder of gneiss, of uneven, battered surface, spotted with nodules, but without any inscription, marks his grave. He himself, while living, had picked it out from the beach and destined it for this purpose.

The Highland bards before the Forty-five were thus a goodly company, and they had this in common, that they were independent for the most part of writing, in some cases even of education; yet they had a wonderful command of their native Gaelic, and an extraordinary ear for the beauties of sound that may be expressed through the medium of language. They were all more or less attached to chiefs, whose praises they sang, and almost without exception these early bards lived into an extreme old age, and died in the land they had never left, and among the friends they had never forsaken.