the
exception of two, or at most three, tolerably line days at the beginning
of the month, December [1870] has been hardly less rainy and generally
disagreeable than November itself, and this, although in November a fall
of 18 inches—1500 tons of rain water to the imperial acre—was duly
registered. A recent communication from Skye went to show that in the
matter of rainfall that island is far ahead, not only of Lochaber, but
of every other station in the kingdom—a pluvial pre-eminence which we
had really thought belonged to ourselves, but which, claimed for Skye on
the impartial authority of the rain-gauge, we give up ungrudgingly,
simply exclaiming with Meliboeus in the Virgilian eclogue—
"Non equidem invideo, miror magis."
(In sooth I feel not envy, hut surprise.)
With such a rainfall as is claimed for Skye, one only
wonders how it is that the inhabitants of the island seem not to suffer
a whit because of it. As a rule, they are a robust and remarkably
long-lived people; and, what is even more surprising, they are
exceedingly good-humoured and cheerful—the pleasantest people in the
world to meet with, whether at home or abroad. There is an old Gaelic
apologue current in Lochaber, which may perhaps have some bearing on the
point:—" It was long, long ago that, in the grey dawn of an intensely
cold January morning, after a wild night of drift and snow, the
heathcock of Ben Nevis clapped his wings, and, in a loud, prolonged,
interrogative crow, addressed his first cousin by the father's side, the
heathcock of Ben Cruachan—' How do you feel yourself this morning, dear
heathcock of Cruachan?' 'So, so,' with a feehle attempt at
wing-clapping, responded the heathcock of Cruachan; 'So, so; miserable
enough, believe me, after such a night as last night was. And if I am
thus miserable down here, it only puzzles me to understand how you can
at all endure it, and live up there on Ben Nevis.' 'Thanks, my dear
fellow,' with a second vigorous clapping of his wings, quoth the Ben
Nevis bird; 'Thanks, my dear fellow, for your kind and cousinly
solicitude for my welfare. Know this, however, that, bad as it doubtless
is up here on Ben Nevis, I
am made to it.'"
"We can only suppose that our friends in Skye bear this prodigious
rainfall with such philosophic equanimity and impunity because, like the
heathcock of Ben Nevis, they are " made to it." The first time we heard
this apologue was many years ago, in the cabin of one of the Messrs.
Hutcheson's steamers. A rubicund visaged drover—a fine-looking man, of
burly frame and Atlantean shoulders—had just swallowed quite half-a-tumblerful
of potent and unadulterated "Talisker" at a gulp rather than a draught,
when his parish clergyman, who happened to be reclining on a sofa at the
opposite side of the cabin, got up and expostulated with his parishioner
for drinking ardent spirits in such a way as that; prophesying that
unless he stopped it very quickly it would kill him, and only wondering
that it had not killed him long ago. The drover, who was not aware until
then that his minister was on board, and a witness to his potations,
respectfully took off his broad bonnet, and, with a bow, begged to
repeat the apologue, which he did, ore
rotundo, in
the most beautiful Gaelic; the application being so manifestly apt and
pertinent to his particular case that we all burst out a laughing, the
venerable clergyman—now, alas, no more!—enjoying it as much as any one
that the tables had been so cleverly turned upon him. Fables apart,
however, the fact of the matter seems to be simply this, that the
humidity of the climate along our western sea-board, and amongst the
Hebrides, is in nowise inimical to robust health or longevity. It is of
course disagreeable enough at times, and frequently a sad drawback on
our agricultural prosperity; but a minute examination of the vital
statistics of the Western Highlands and Islands would probably go far to
show that our superabundance of rain is rather favourable to health and
long life than otherwise. Ach
bedh sin mar a chithear da,
a beautiful Gaelic phrase literally. • But be that particular matter as
it may seem to it,—what
would most please us at this moment would be a month or more of the good
old-fashioned winters of our boyhood, when everything was blanketed for
weeks together in soft and virgin snow, and the earth was at times so
braced and bound with frost that under the rapid tread and multitudinous
rush of all the village schoolboys at play, it rang again like a hollow
globe of iron ! It is now, alas, dribble and drip, and splash, slop, and
slush from year's end to year's end.
We are indebted to our excellent friend Mr. Snowie, of
Inverness, for a very curious and valuable stag's head, admirably
stuffed, which reached us the other day by steamer. It is a splendid
trophy, a veritable Cabar-Feidh, which
the Chief of the Mackenzies himself, when the clan was at its proudest,
might be glad to have to adorn the entrance-hall of Brahan Castle. The
antlers are of immense girth and spread; one, except for the brow tine,
what is called a cabar-slat; the
other with two tines, each of them almost big enough for an antler of
itself. We have seen many grand and cuAous heads in our day, both cabar-slats and
multicornute; but this, which is properly neither the one nor the other,
is, from its size and peculiar style of antlers, a trophy to be singled
out and admired in a collection of the best heads of the kingdom. It
faces lis as we write from the opposite wall of our study, and
constantly reminds us of Scott's magnificent description of the stag
that led Eitzjames and his attendants such a merry dance in the Lady
of the Lake. We
must he pardoned for quoting a passage with which every one is
familiar:—
"As Chief, who hears his warder call,
To arms! the foomen storm the wall,'
The antler'd monarch of the waste
Sprang from his heathery couch in haste
But, ere his fleet career he took,
The dew-drops from, his flanks he shook,
Like crested leader proud and high,
Toss'd his beamed frontlet to the. sky;
A moment gazed adown the dale,
A moment snutf'd the tainted gale,
A moment listened to the cry,
That thicken'd as the chase drew nigh;
Then, as the foremost foes appeared,
With one brave bound the copse he clear'd
And, stretching forward free and far,
Sought the wild heaths of Uam-Var."
And yet some stupid people will ask if Scott was a poet!
Even Landseer never painted anything finer or truer to the life than
that word-painting of Scott's. Every one admits that Homer was a poet:
well, then, search the Iliad, point
out anything better, or anything, entre
nous, quite
as good, and when you have found it, please let us know, and we promise
to reperuse the passage, with every attention and care, in the original
of Homer himself, as well as in the translations of Pope, Cowper, and
Elackie; and if you are right and we are wrong, we shall not hesitate to
confess it, and humbly cry peccavi. Meantime
we shall continue steadfast in our belief that Scott is a
poet, and not only a poet, but a poet of the highest order ; more "
Homeric," too, than any other poet you can name, cither of the present
or past century; and that Mr. Gladstone has had the good sei se and
penetration to discover this, and the courage to avow it, is one, and
not the least, of many things which make us have a lining for that
distinguished statesman and scholar.
A lady, to whom we are indebted for numberless
obligations of a like nature, has sent us a copy of an old Gaelic
lullaby or baby-song, the composition of which must clearly be referred
to the days when cattle-lifting forays and spuilzies of
every description were in high fashion and favour with the gentlemen of
the north—
"When tooming faulds, or 8weeping of a glen,
Had still been held the deed of gallant men."
It is in many respects so curious that we venture on a
translation of it. Attached to it is a very pretty air, low and soft and
subdued as a lullaby air should be, though consisting but of a single
part, as was always the case with such compositions, unlike ordinary
songs, which generally had two parts, and admitted of endless
variations, according to the taste and vocal capabilities of the singer.
It is proper to state that our version is not intended to be sung to the
original air, for which the measure we have selected is unsuitable. Our
only object has been to convey to the English reader the general sense,
with something of the spirit and manner, of the original.
A Lullaby
"Hush thee, my baby-boy, hush thee to sleep,
Soft in my bosom laid, why should'st thou weep;
Hush thee, my pretty babe, why should'st thou fear,
Well can thy father wield broadsword and spear.
"Lullaby, lullaby, hush thee to rest,
Snug in my arms as a bird in its nest;
Sweet be thy slumbers, boy, dreaming the while
A dream that shall dimple thy cheek with a smile.
"Helpless and weak as thou 'rt now on my knee,
My eaglet shall yet spread his wings and be free—
Free on the mountain side, free in the glen,
Strong-handed, swift-footed, a man among men !
"Then shall my dalt' bring
his muim' a
good store
Of game from the mountain and fish from the shore;
Cattle, and sheep, and goats—graze where they may—
My dalta will
find ere the dawn of the day.
''Thy father and uncles, with target and sword,
Will back each bold venture by ferry and ford;
From thy hand I shall yet drain a beaker of wine,
And the toast shall be—Health
and the lowing of kine I
"Then rest thee, my foster-son, sleep and be still,
The first star of night twinkles bright on the hill;
My brave boy is sleeping—kind angels watch o'er him,
And safe to the light of the morning restore him.
Lullaby, lullaby, what should he fear,
"Well can his father wield broadsword and spear!"
To the proper understanding of this curious composition,
a few wurds of comment and elucidation may he necessary. The lullaby
must be understood as sung by a foster-mother to her foster-son, the
Gaelic words from which the exigencies of verse oblige us to retain in
our paraphrase. In lulling her charge to sleep, the foster-mother fondly
anticipates the time when the boy on her knee shall have become a
full-grown and perfect man; her beau-ideal of
a perfect man, observe, being that, like the heroes of ancient song, he
should be brawny limbed, strong of hand, and swift of foot, able and
willing at all risks to seize and appropriate his neighbour's goods,
especially his cattle, whenever necessity—an empty larder—or honour
urged him to the adventure. The coolness wTith which the old
lady commits her foster-son to the immediate care and guardianship of
the heavenly powers, in the self-same breath in which she hopes and
believes that he will, when he becomes a man, prove an active and expert
thief—a stealer of beeves from the pastures of neighbouring tribes, in
utter defiance of the decalogue—is ludicrous in the extreme. To
understand it aright, we must recollect that in former times it was
accounted not only lawful but honourable among hostile tribes to commit
depredations on one another; and as hostility among the clans was the
rule rather than the exception, every species of depredation was
practised,— cattle-lifting raids, however, heing accounted the most
honourable of all, and in the conduct of which the best gentlemen of the
clan might without a blush take an active part. The "lowing of kine," geumnaich
bha, occurring
in this lullaby, was an old toast of the cattle-lifting times, that the
late Dr. Macfarlane of Arrochar told us, he himself had often heard when
a young man at baptismal feasts and bridals on Loch Lomond side. The
secret of it is this : The geumnaich, or
"lowing," implied that the cattle were strangers to the glen, whilst
those that belonged to the glen itself, and were the bona
fide property
of the clan, if such there were, were quiet and staid and well-behaved,
as decent cattle should be. The cattle "stolen or strayed," as the
advertisements have it, "lowed," and were troublesome; while those born
and bred in the glen were content to graze in peace, and to "low" only
when they deemed it absolutely necessary. "The lowing of kine,"
therefore, was a toast that meant neither more nor less than success to
the cattle-lifting trade ! As ancient Pistol says—
" ' Convey,' the wise it caJL ' Steal!' foh, a fico for
the phrase.
