Volume I Part 42 (1/2)

Its bristles are low'ring With darkness; o'erpowering Are its waters, aye showering With onset so fell; Seem the kid and the yearling As rung their death-knell.

XI.

Every out-lying creature, How sinew'd soe'er, Seeks the refuge of shelter; The race of the antler They snort and they falter, A-cold in their lair; And the fawns they are wasting Since their kin is afar.

XII.

Such the songs that are saddest And dreariest of all; I ever am eerie In the morning to hear ye!

When foddering, to cheer the Poor herd in the stall-- While each creature is moaning, And sickening in thrall.

[90] ”Birk-shaw.” A few Scotticisms will be found in these versions, at once to flavour the style, and, it must be admitted, to a.s.sist the rhymes.

[91] Birds.

[92] The sides of the cottages--plastered with mud or mortar, instead of lime.

[93] Salmon.

DIRGE FOR IAN MACECHAN.

A FRAGMENT.

Mackay was entertained by Macechan, who was a respectable store-farmer, from his earliest life to his marriage. According to his reverend biographer,[94] the last lines of the elegy, of which the following is a translation, were much approved.

I see the wretch of high degree, Though poverty has struck his race, Pa.s.s with a darkness on his face That door of hospitality.

I see the widow in her tears, Dark as her woe--I see her boy-- From both, want reaves the dregs of joy; The flash of youth through rags appears.

I see the poor's--the minstrel's lot-- As brethren they--no boon for song!

I see the unrequited wrong Call for its helper, who is not.

You hear my plaint, and ask me, why?

You ask me _when_ this deep distress Began to rage without redress?

”With Ian Macechan's dying sigh!”

[94] ”Poems,” p. 318.

THE SONG OF THE FORSAKEN DROVER.

During a long absence on a droving expedition, Mackay was deprived of his mistress by another lover, whom, in fine, she married. The discovery he made, on his return, led to this composition; which is a sequel to another composed on his distant journey, in which he seems to prognosticate something like what happened. Both are selected by Sir Walter Scott as specimens of the bard, and may be found paraphrastically rendered in a prose version, in the _Quarterly Review_, vol. xlv., p.

371, and in the notes to the last edition of ”The Highland Drover,” in ”Chronicles of the Canongate.” With regard to the present specimen, it may be remarked, that part of the original is either so obscure, or so freely rendered by Sir Walter Scott's translator, that we have attempted the present version, not without some little perplexity as to the sense of one or two allusions. We claim, on the whole, the merit of almost literal fidelity.