Cabinet in Advocates’ Library—Curious assortment of vernacular literature—Number and character—Origin of the collection—Highland Society and Kilbride MSS.—Subsidiary additions—Work for the expert—Fate of some luckless documents—Value of MSS. XL., LIII., and LVI.—Three literary monuments of the Western Highlands: (1) The Book of the Dean of Lismore—History, description, value, contents, extracts, names of contributors; (2) The Fernaig MS.—Characteristics—Interesting details of supposed author; (3) The Book of Clanranald—Quaint relic—Two MSS., the Red and the Black—History and contents, with specimen prose-poem and elegy.

In a cabinet in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, may be seen what looks like the decayed and mouldering remains of some obsolete literature. Very rarely is the case opened, and only once in a while does the casual observer show any more than a passing interest in these faded and tattered remnants. Why should he? In comparison with the vast variety of neatly printed and handsomely bound volumes around, their appearance is uninviting. Handwritten, many of them with frayed edges, leaves missing, ink faded, words illegible, it is only too apparent they have not escaped the marks of age, damp, soot, and moths.

Here is No. IX., for example, a portion of a single leaf of dirty paper—no more. And No. LII., loose leaves and scraps gathered together under one cover; XXXVII., one of the best known of all, with several of its leaves torn, and in many places quite illegible. No. XL., five layers of different origin stitched together in a vellum cover. And what shall we say of the curious little volume only two inches long and one and a half in breadth and thickness, bound together with thongs in quite primitive fashion? On a page in the middle is written: “Is e so leabhar Neil Oig” (“This is Neil the Younger’s book”). And here and there on some other musty records we find such entries as these: “Is mise Eoin o Albain” (“I am John from Scotland”), or “Is mise Domhnall a foghlumach Maigbeathadh” (“I am Donald Bethune the Scholar”).

All are not equally tattered and faded. The handwriting in several is fresh and clear as on the day of production. It varies from the coarse and careless to the highly finished and artistic, from the merest daubs to the richly coloured and ornamental.

Yet to the superficial observer with no antiquarian tastes, there is little here to attract, the more because most of these torn and dirty fragments exhibit a language and orthography hard to decipher, and much harder to read and understand. It took the late Dr. Maclauchlan of Edinburgh five years to decipher and copy a single MS.—No. XXXVII., and he tells us pathetically that it was the hardest piece of work he was ever engaged in.

The interested spectator, on the other hand, if his eye happens to be directed to the obscure and tattered miscellany, naturally inquires, and learns to his surprise that this is the Scottish collection of Gaelic MSS., all that could be gathered into one place in this country of the vernacular MS. literature of the past. A swift inspection shows upwards of threescore documents, of which thirty-six at least are parchments, the rest paper or paper and parchment combined. Alongside lie later volumes—transcripts of tales, ballads, and other lore. A few of the parchments hail from the fourteenth century, but the majority were written in the fifteenth and sixteenth. The paper MSS. were all produced within the last 350 years, mainly in the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, while the adjacent accretions of transcripts and books belonged to men who lived within the last 100 years.

It is easy to tell the tale of this assortment. Ireland, England, and the Continent had their rich collections long ago. With Scotland such a thing seems to have been an afterthought. Only in 1861 were these literary monuments of the past brought together and deposited as a kind of national treasury in the Advocates’ Library, and this laudable result is due mainly to the energy and interest of Dr. Skene, author of Celtic Scotland, and formerly Historiographer-Royal in Edinburgh.

He knew of two collections fairly large and representative that had been made earlier, and exerted himself to have them united and housed where they might be reasonably accessible. These belonged, one to the Highland Society, the other to the Kilbride family.

The former was made in the opening years of the nineteenth century, while the battle still raged over the authenticity of Macpherson’s Ossian. With Mr. Henry Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling, as their chairman, the Society instituted an inquiry into the whole question, and scoured the country far and near for Ossianic MS. literature. In this way they secured a good many documents, the greater number of which came from London through Macpherson’s literary executor. It was well known that in his lifetime Macpherson had carried away from the North-West Highlands and Islands some very old literary MSS., which he afterwards deposited with his London publishers for public inspection. But so few cared to see them that the originals thus exhibited cannot now be identified.

It is highly probable that some of those which the Highland Society received from the Metropolis were among the number. The rest came to them from other quarters. Some were purchased, and the whole reported on in the Proceedings of 1805.

The history of the Kilbride^[17] collection is even more fortuitous. A letter from Lord Bannatyne to the Chairman of the Society and Committee tells how it was first discovered. Acting on the suggestion of Lord Hailes, Bannatyne when Sheriff of Bute, and accustomed to attend the Circuit at Inverary, made inquiries among the Highland gentlemen he met there regarding any fugitive Gaelic MSS. they might happen to be cognisant of, and in this way there came into his hands one of the Kilbride collection, belonging to Major Maclachlan. It appears that from the time of the Reformation, the Kilbride family had cultivated a taste for Celtic antiquities, as a result of which they possessed a very large number of Celtic documents, gleaned partly in the Highlands and partly in Ireland. Following up the clue thus incidentally found, the enthusiastic Sheriff obtained permission for a delegate “to take inspection and bring an account of the MSS. in Major Maclachlan’s possession.” These were found to number twenty-two, exclusive of five that were lent. They are catalogued V. to XXXI. in the Edinburgh Cabinet.

We need not dwell upon the subsidiary additions to this original and double nucleus in the Advocates’ Library. But it may be noted, there are besides in the University Library of Edinburgh, a Gaelic medical MS.; one collection of poetry made in the middle of the eighteenth century, by Jerome Stone; another in the beginning of the nineteenth, by Irvine, and a fragment of a Gaelic grammar. The Library of Scottish Antiquaries also exhibits a Gaelic curio in the form of a translation of the “Lilium Medicinæ” of Bernardus Gordonus, a foreign physician. And counting the few extra productions in private hands, these comprehend all the MS. literature of the Gael now extant in Scotland, so far as known.

Not a satisfying sum-total by any means. The harvest truly was plentiful but the gleaners were few, and this forlorn remnant hardly does credit to our national prestige and veneration for the past. It cannot compare either in number, variety, antiquity, or content, with the rich assortments elsewhere, such as those in Ireland, England, and the Continent. Yet this collection, such as it is, has a value of its own, and in some important respects supplements the material of other more ancient and valued documents.

The wonder is that so many of these manuscripts have survived to tell their tale of dool, considering the haphazard way in which they have been preserved. There is something to be said for the apparent apathy and neglect, when we remember the stormy past, the national vicissitudes and convulsions that continued down almost to last century.

And how should our Scottish ancestors know that there was any purpose to be served in preserving books which nobody could read? The peculiar idiom and orthography had long since become obsolete. Until fifty years ago no scholar could interpret the scrolls, and the wiseacres of the past, no less than the multitude of illiterate clansmen, might well be pardoned if it never occurred to them that the brain of a modern critic would some day forge a key for these old-world hieroglyphics, and through the study of the derelict parchments, make a dead language speak.

Instances are on record of the fate of some luckless MSS., which serve to illustrate the doom of many more.

Before the Forty-five, for example, a valuable collection of old Gaelic poetry was made in Strathglass, which afterwards found its way to the Catholic College of Douay. The last heard of this vagrant volume was that the Principal, while yet a student there, saw the leaves of the mutilated document torn out to kindle the fire in their stove.

A similar vandalism overtook the library of the Macvurichs, seanachies of Clanranald, who had been accumulating material for seventeen generations, from the time of Muireach Albanach, about 1200. There were many parchments, according to the testimony of a recent illiterate descendant, and among them the Red Book made of paper, but none of these are now to be found, because, when deprived of their lands, his family lost their literary taste and zeal. He knew not what became of the parchments. Two or three he saw cut down by tailors to make measuring tapes, and although he himself fell heir to some after his father’s death, being without education, he set no value upon them and they disappeared.

Dr. Skene has prepared a general catalogue of the Scottish collection. But half of the documents have never been read or described. No Zeuss or Zimmer has yet arisen in Scotland with leisure or patience enough to decipher them.

Strange that the cry “Made in Germany” should apply even to the key to the ancient Gaelic, that the Continent had to come to our aid to interpret our own literature, and that now, the key having been handed over, these remaining relics should continue, hieroglyphically locked in the land of their nativity. Yet it is so. With the exception of a few specimens culled here and there, we have no English rendering of some of the finest pieces of this MS. literature.

Though poor in history and law, and destitute of dramatic writings, the collection is fairly rich in the poetic, the heroic, the legendary, and more wonderful still, the medical. The latter treatises have a quaint interest of their own, and offer a basis of comparison for measuring the progress in the medical department of science. What would our modern savants, for example, think of the “Notes according to Jacques de Forli”? Even the old-fashioned doctor himself might be puzzled to get at their meaning.

Jacques de Forli says that there are two ways of administering an electuary; according as it is intended for the vitals or the extremities. For the extremities there is tria sandaili for the side, and diamargariton for the head, and pliris for the brain, and sweet electuary to strengthen the parts of the bladder, and diacostum in the folds of the diaphragm, and each of these is to be given before food, that they may affect the part at a distance from the stomach; for the food prevents the moving of the electuary towards the parts which it is necessary to invigorate.

Dr. Kuno Meyer has described MS. XL. as one of the most important. Its principal claim on our attention lies in the fact that it contains a considerable number of old texts, of which no other versions or no other equally old and good versions are known to exist. The handwriting of the oldest part is of the fourteenth century. Initial letters are coloured, and the contents are seven Aideda or Death-tales of the heroic cycle of early Irish legend. It supplements the Book of Leinster by relating the death of Conchobar, who was hit in battle by a ball made of lime mixed with the brains of a slain foeman known as Mesgedra, and though the bullet could not be removed from his head, the wound was stitched with thread of gold to match his auburn hair. Afterwards when debarred from physical exertion, an awful trembling shook creation, and on inquiring, the king learned from his Druids that Christ was pitilessly crucified that day. Whereupon a great rage seized Conchobar for the iniquity thereof, and drawing his sword he rushed against a wood, attacking the trees till the wood was level. And with the fury the brains of Mesgedra started out of his head, his own brains following after, so that he fell dead.

From the versions in LIII, and LVI., much valued by scholars, Dr. Whitley Stokes has published the Tale of the Sons of Uisneach (Irische Texte: Stokes and Windisch, Leipzig, 1887).

Specially interesting, from the purely Scottish point of view, are the three well-known literary monuments hailing from the Western Highlands, and they deserve more than a passing reference.

The first figures in the Advocates’ Library as a MS. collection of Gaelic poetry taken down from oral recitation as early as 1512 to 1526. It is known as “The Book of the Dean of Lismore,” the accepted belief being that Sir James Macgregor, at that time Dean of Lismore in Argyllshire, and his brother Duncan were the compilers.

Originally it was brought into notice by John Mackenzie, Esq., of the Temple, London, literary executor of Macpherson, who gave it among the other documents to the Highland Society. How it came into his hands or where it lay for the 300 years that elapsed between the Dean’s time and the beginning of last century is not known.

The book, as it stands, consists of 311 quarto pages. Several are amissing at the beginning and at the end. Many of the leaves are stained and almost illegible from the effects of damp. Others are worn by use and exposure. But apart from these defects, which are common to other codexes, the MS. differs from all the MSS. in the Scottish collection in two essential features. It is written in the current Roman hand of the period, and the spelling is phonetic.

There are two distinct handwritings, and thus apparently two compilers. On the lower margin of the 27th page stands the inscription:—

the handwriting of which has a striking resemblance to that of the major part of the volume. And this is really all there is to show that the Dean was compiler.

The other Macgregor, whose name occurs on page 144, is for good reasons identified as his brother:—

The book is of great interest on account of its age, orthography, and contents. It has a double value, as Dr. Skene has pointed out—linguistic and literary. Linguistic, because its peculiar orthography presents the language at the time in its aspect and character as a spoken language, and enables us to ascertain whether many of the peculiarities which now distinguish the Gaelic were in existence 400 years ago. Literary, because it contains poems attributed to Ossian, and to other poets prior to the sixteenth century which are not to be found elsewhere; and thus presents to us specimens of the traditionary poetry current in the Highlands prior to that period, which are above suspicion, having been collected nearly 400 years ago, before any controversy on the subject had arisen.

In other words, we have here the oldest written Scottish Gaelic, except that in the Book of Deer, with numerous productions of the time antecedent to the Reformation, and some even of the fourteenth century, for comparison with our modern Gaelic. And we have the complete refutation of Dr. Johnson’s bold assertion that the language had nothing written. “The Erse never was a written language,” said that vigorous critic; “there is not in the world an Erse (that is, a Gaelic) MS. a hundred years old.” Into what strange neglect had our literature fallen when such an emphatic dictum could be made on the housetops.

This one was at that time over 200 years old, and could it have been resurrected from its nameless obscurity would surely have satisfied the unconvinced and sceptical Doctor.

Voluminous and various are its contents, culled from about sixty-six different authors, the whole extending to 11,000 lines of Gaelic poetry, with 800 in the genuine Ossianic style. The pieces vary from half-a-dozen to a hundred lines. And a peculiarity of the Ossianic fragments in this MS. is the frequent introduction of St. Patrick, who is represented as holding dialogues with the bard. Seeing that in the poems of Macpherson the saint never emerges, it is surmised that he regarded all references to him as unauthentic, interpolations of later times, when the Church ideas and dogmas crept into vogue. The Dean’s collection is divided naturally into two parts, one more ancient and untouched by Christian sentiment, the other more modern, and not free from ecclesiastical leaven. To the former category belong those poems superscribed “The author of this is Ossian,” and of these the finest is the bard’s eulogy of his father Finn. “The ideal here set forth is perfectly Homeric,” wrote Professor Blackie; “Achilles in his best moments and most favourable aspect might have stood for it.”

In its English rendering, which is poetically inferior to the original, it runs thus:—

and so on.

As it is quite impossible to produce in English the euphonious effect of the peculiar rhythm of the original Gaelic, with its alliteration and vocalic concords, here is an example from the above description:—

At page 87 there is a curious fragment on Tabblisk, supposed by some to be chess, by others backgammon:—

Here follows the description of this game.

They made much of blood in those days, even as we do of heredity now:—

It is quite interesting to note the names of some of the contributors to the Dean’s book. They are so various in rank and character.

Of these Duncan Mor O’Daly was Abbot of Boyle in 1244. Some of his pieces have reference to persons and events in Irish history. One of them, beginning, “Mayst thou enjoy thy belt, O Cathal,” gives a very full description of that ornamented article of attire and its adjuncts. There is another whose name has been preserved by tradition, namely, Muireach Albanach, and he has been claimed by Scottish Gaels as the first of the celebrated Macvurichs.

Four of the poems in the MS. are by Campbell, the Knight of Glenorchy, who fell in the battle of Flodden; three by the Earl of Argyll, and other three by the Countess Isabella.

The compositions generally are very difficult to read, yet the book is not lacking in colour. Here are aphorisms from Phelim Macdougall, reflecting, no doubt, the fashionable virtues and vices and partialities of the age:—

The Fernaig MS. is another Highland production that was not known in Johnson’s day. In 1807 it was in the west of Ross-shire, at the place whose name it bears, and afterwards came into the possession of Dr. Skene. This collection was made between the years 1688 and 1693, in the country of the Macraes, in far Kintail, and breathes the spirit of the times, politically and religiously, as then reflected in Highland Jacobite circles.

The MS. consists of two paper volumes in brown pasteboard cover, containing 4200 lines of poetry. There are several leaves loose, and others blank, a few half pages written upon, and one folded in. The second part was never finished. In one place six leaves closely written on both sides have been neatly removed.

Like the Dean of Lismore’s, the handwriting is in the current Roman character, and the spelling phonetic. The collection includes compositions by different authors within the area extending from South Argyll to the north of Sutherland, Bishop Carsewell being among the number. Some of the pieces date back to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Strange to say for a Highland gleaning, there is no love or drinking song. Wine and women have scant notice here. The Gaelic in great part is practically the dialect still spoken in Kintail and district.

Little is indicated of the history of the book or of the author in the text itself. But on the first page of volume I. occurs the significant and suggestive superscription:—

Professor Mackinnon, adopting this clue, made careful search, and is satisfied that the writer was Duncan Macrae of Inverinate, chief of that name. In the course of his investigation, the professor alighted upon some curious and interesting facts, full apparently of local colour.

It appears there were two Duncan Macraes of some note living on the shores of Loch Duich at that time. Big Duncan of Glenshiel, a warrior who fell at Sheriffmuir, and whose mighty claymore, said^[18] to be preserved in the Tower of London as “the great Highlander’s sword,” with one terrible stroke cut through trooper and steed, ere he succumbed himself in the onslaught. The other, Donnachadh nam Piòs, or Duncan of the silver plate, so called from the magnificence of his table service, was our author. Born about 1640, in early life he studied in the University of Edinburgh, and was known as a man of unique ingenuity and mechanical skill. As evidence thereof it is said he had something to do with bringing the water into Edinburgh, and it is related how, on one occasion, a foreign vessel having got dismasted in passing through Kyle Rhea, he made a new mast for the craft by splicing pieces of wood together. For this the captain, deeply grateful, gave him the famous silver herring, which remained in the family for generations, and was reputed to attract the herring from far and near into Loch Duich.

The oak trees now at Inverinate he reared from French acorns.

Like his brother John, who graduated at the University, King’s College, Aberdeen, on July 12th, 1660, Duncan possessed the bardic gift. Poems attributed in the MS. to “an certain harper” and “Tinkler” are, by good authorities, set down to his own Muse, these being simply noms de plume.

Cultured, liberal, and deeply religious, he was ecclesiastically an ardent Episcopalian, politically a vehement Jacobite. His wife, the heiress of Raasay, it appears, diddled him out of her property by conveying the title-deeds to a relative to keep the lands for her own clan. Blood was thicker than the marriage bond.

But in spite of this the Kintail chief prospered, and bought lands in Glen Affaric from the Chisholm. Like the passing of Arthur, his death was rather dramatic. He had gone to Strathglass, attended by a single follower, to settle about this new property, and was returning with the papers in his possession. On coming to Dorisduan he found the Connag River in high flood, but ventured to cross, only to be carried away in the attempt. Unfortunately for him, his companion possessed the fatal gift of or na h’Aoine, by which, according to local belief, he could cause the death, if he wished, of any one seen by him crossing the stream on a Friday. And at this juncture the unhappy man, seeing his master battling with the flood, and unable to keep from looking at him, much less to render assistance, in his distress exercised his sinister gift, thereby drowning the poetic Duncan, his own chief.

The Fernaig MS., apart from other considerations, is of great value as representing the literary output of the seventeenth-century period in the Highlands, and so helping to fill the gap between the Dean of Lismore’s time and the pregnant Forty-five.

One other very interesting relic of Highland MS. literature remains to be noticed. It is the Book of Clanranald, found in two MSS. known as the Red and the Black. The latter, a thick little paper codex strongly bound in black leather boards, is of the size of a New Testament and of the nature of a commonplace book, containing accounts of the families of the Macdonalds, and the exploits of the great Montrose, together with some of the poems of Ossian.

The history of the book is obscure. Many years ago Dr. Skene picked it up among some old Irish MSS. at a bookstall in Dublin, and, buying it, sent the fugitive back to the family of Clanranald, in whose possession it now is.

But of the two MSS. the Red is far and away the more famous, as it figured largely in the Ossianic controversy, and gives the Macdonald and Montrose histories fuller. On Macpherson’s visit to the West he received this MS., by consent of Clanranald, from Nial Macvurich, and it was only after Macpherson’s death that the present Red Book was restored. Authorities are not certain that this is the real original, but Clanranald believes that it is, and the editors of Reliquiæ Celticæ are of the same opinion.

Since its return it has been much consulted by Ossianic inquirers, as well as by the historians of the country. A transcript and translation, not very accurate, were made of the historical parts early in last century. Sir Walter Scott made use of these in his notes, Lord of the Isles, and Mark Napier in his Montrose, to throw light upon the obscurer points of Highland conduct in that great chief’s campaign. In later times a better rendering has been given by the great Irish scholar, O’Curry, who translated the history for Dr. Skene’s Celtic Scotland.

Both MSS., the Red and the Black, are closely allied and supplement each other. The only English in the former is a satire on Bishop Burnet, whereas nearly the whole of the last half of the latter is in that language. The writers were the Macvurichs, hereditary bards of the Clanranald chiefs, who traced their descent from Muireach Albanach. The early history of the Macdonalds, down to about 1600, was probably composed by successive members of this line, but the record of the Montrose wars and following events is evidently the work of Nial Macvurich, whose life extended from the reign of Charles the First beyond Sheriffmuir. It may have been written prior to 1700. Its chief purpose is to vindicate the Gael in his marvellous exploits under Montrose. Here Alasdair Macdonald and not the brilliant Lowland leader is hero.

Needless to say, besides Ossianic fragments, old as the Ages of the Feinn and Cnoc an Air, the MSS. contain genealogies, chronologies, history, poetry, geography, grammar, and various disconnected jottings.

A most curious production is the genealogy of Clanranald as far back as Adam, often with name and date, and some of the names are portentously long.

The Macdonald history begins with the superscription, “The age of the World at the time the sons of Milé came into Ireland 3500” (that is, 1700 B.C.), and in the opening sentence announces that Amergin Whiteknee was poet and historian and judge to them, and the first Gaelic author.

There is a wonderful prose poem on page 210 of the Red Book, on the “Army and Arming of the Last Lord of the Isles,” part of which is worth quoting for the way in which it hits off the characteristics of the clans, and the graphic description it gives of the armour of this supreme King of the Gael.

And they were in well arranged battalions, namely, the proud, luminous countenanced, finely-hued, bold, right-judging, goodly, gifting Clan Donald; the ready, prosperous, routing, very bold, right judging Clanranald; the attacking, gold shielded Clan Alister; the protecting, firm, hardy, well-enduring Macphees; the fierce, strong men, the Maclachlans; the lively, vigorous, liberally-bestowing, courageous, austere, brown-shielded Macdougalls; the cheerful, chief-renowned, battle-harnessed Camerons; the inimical, passionate, hardy Macneils; the manly, sanguinary, truly noble Mackinnons; the fierce, undaunted, great-feated Macquarries; the brave, defending, foraging, valiant, heroic, ale-abounding Mackenzies; the active, spirited, courteous, great-bestowing Clan Morgan (or Mackay) and the men of Sutherland came as a guard to the Royal Prince; and the powerful, lively, active, great-numbered, arrogant Mackintoshes in a very large powerful force around the Chief of Clan Chattan in active, hardy battalions with their champions. There came along with these warriors earls, princely high chiefs, knights, chiefs, lords, barons and yeomen, at one particular place, to the noble son of Alexander, and these numerous, rejoicing, heroes, and powerful, active, fierce, sounding hosts gathered together.

This is the manner in which they appointed the powerful, fierce, active, mighty-deeded, white-armoured, supreme King of the Gael, viz., the terror-striking, leopard-like, awful, sanguinary, opposing, sharp-armed, fierce, attacking, ready, dexterous, powerful, steady, illustrious, full-subduing, furious, well-prepared, right-judging Earl, as he received on him the armour of conflict and strife against every tumult, that is, his fine tunic, beautifully embroidered, of fine textured satin, ingeniously woven by ladies and their daughters; and that good tunic was put upon him.

A silk jerkin which was handsome, well-fitting, rich, highly-embroidered, beautiful, many-coloured, artfully-done, gusseted, corded, ornamented with the figures of foreign birds, with branches of burnished gold, with a multiplicity of all kinds of embroidery on the sides of the costly jerkin. That jerkin was put upon him to guard him against dangers.

A coat of mail which was wide, well-meshed, light, of substantial steel, beautifully-wrought, gold-ornamented, with brilliant Danish gems. Such a mail coat as that was possessed by the lithe Luga of Long Arms.

We may conclude this brief account of the Book of Clanranald by a specimen of its poetry—an elegy for Sir Norman Macleod, which Nial Macvurich made. It illustrates how to the Gael, when in grief, all nature seems to suffer and reciprocate his feelings; and the mighty portents associated in the olden days with the birth or demise of a chief.

Such is our heritage of Celtic MSS. in this country, and, in view of the paucity of these existing relics, may we not reiterate the lines of Horace?—