e were
early astir on the morning of the 5th November [1868]; with
little thought, be sure, of Guy Fawkes or the Gunpowder Plot, intent
only on witnessing, if we might be so fortunate, the transit of Mercury
over the solar disc. The phenomenon in question we have seen referred to
as an "eclipse" of Mercury, which it certainly was not. A celestial body
is properly said to be eclipsed when, by the interposition of another
and a nearer orb, it is temporarily hid from view. A star or planet so
hidden by the body of the moon, for instance, is said to be "occulted."
The sun is truly said to be eclipsed when the new moon at a particular
conjunction steps in between us and him, and temporarily intercepts his
beams. AYhat again, for convenience sake, is called an eclipse of the
moon, is really not an eclipse at all, so far at least as the
terrestrial spectator is concerned; it would be more strictly correct to
call it simply a lunar obscuration. The temporary appearance of Venus
and Mercury as circular and sharply defined black spots on the solar
disc, has hitherto always, and very properly, been called in the
language of astronomers a " transit" of the particular planet by name,
such as the " transit of Venus," or the " transit of Mercury;" and there
is no reason to change the term, for it is expressive and true, which
the word eclipse, applied
to such a conjunction, certainly is not.
Be it called what it may, however—eclipse or transit—we
were disappointed in not getting a glimpse of the phenomenon in question
on the present occasion. Although duly at our post from before sunrise
till the minute calculated for the last contact of the planet with the
solar disc, we were unable to obtain anything more than the most
momentary blink even of the larger orb, and, of course, the detection of
the black button-like disc of the planet itself, in such circumstances,
was altogether out of the question. The disappointment, however, was
less annoying to us in this instance from the fact that we had already
been privileged to witness all the phases of a similar conjunction from
first to last on the 12th November 1861. The next visible transit of
Mercury does not take place till the 6th of May 1878—ten years hence.
There are several other transits during the present century, invisible
in our country, however, and on the continent of Europe; but which will
probably afford much delight to many an eager watcher over the length
and breadth of the South American continent, and generally over the
islands of the Pacific Ocean.
Nor, with us here at least, was the night of the 13-14th
instant any way more favourable for observation than the dull beclouded
morning of the 5th itself. The night was calm and rainless, to be sure,
but a heavy impenetrable mass of dark grey clouds, so low as to envelop
all the mountain summits around, obscured the vault from horizon to
horizon, from sunset to sunrise, so that not a single meteor could be
seen by the keenest eye, even if above that pall of cloud the display
had been the most brilliant and splendid conceivable. From the fact,
however, that in several places widely distant from each other, from
which we have had communications on the subject, and where the sky was
abundantly clear and unclouded throughout, no unusual display of meteors
was seen, the probability is that we have on this occasion missed them
in our country, either because they came into contact with our
atmosphere in the daytime, when, of course, they would be invisible, or
more likely because our contact this year with the meteorolithic annulus
was of the slightest, and at a segment thereof where the
meteoric bodies are least numerous, and thus we must patiently wait till
we again dash through it at its densest before wo can hope for such a
magnificent meteor shower as astonished and delighted us all in 1866.
Only at Oxford, as far as our country is concerned, was there anything
like a meteor shower 011 the
present occasion, and even there the display seems to have been too
faint and uninteresting to have attracted much attention. Intelligence
has reached our country from New York, however, that over that city, and
over the States generally, the meteoric display of the morning of the
14th was very splendid indeed, though, owing to the morning being
further advanced before it commenced, less of it was seen by the people
at large than on some previous occasions. The weather with our
Transatlantic cousins seems to have been all that could be desired, as
it is stated that " astronomers and others were able to make very
complete observations." The worst thing about our insular position with
respect to matters astronomical is the extreme uncertainty with which
anything like continuous observation can be conducted. The chances
always are twenty to one that in Great Britain, at any given hour in any
given place, the weather should be such as to render an observation of a
celestial phenomenon impossible, or at the least partial and
unsatisfactory. One thing, at least, is now pretty certain—that
annually, and at a date that falls somewhere between sunset of the 13th
and sunrise of the 14th November, we may confidently look for greater or
less displays of these meteoric bodies, the only thing likely to
interfere with the interesting pyrotechnic exhibition being an
unfavourable state of the weather at a moment when we are most concerned
that the sky shall be clear and cloudless.
;Mr. Huggins, whose researches with the spectroscope have
already made his name famous, has recently communicated a most
interesting paper to the Royal Society, giving an account of the
spectrum analyses of one of the smaller and commoner class of comets
that was -visible for a short time in the month of June last. Avoiding
technical details, which might be uninteresting to some of our readers,
we may simply mention that on testing the nucleus of this comet with the
spectroscope, Mr. Huggins found that it was resolved into three broad "
bands," precisely similar to the results obtained on examining with the
same wonderful instrument such carbon as follows the transmission of
electric sparks through olefiant gas. The conclusion arrived at by Mr.
Huggins is, that the nucleus of the comet in question consisted solely
of volatilised carbon. This paper of Mr. Huggins is altogether a most
interesting one, and we may have something more to say about it on a
future occasion.
The following is a translation—somewhat freely
rendered—of an old Irst or St. Kilda song, the solitary island home of a
score or two of hardy inhabitants, and by all accounts a happy and
hospitable race too, who cling with an unquenchable love to their lonely
rock, as if it were a perfect paradise, ocean-girt and storm-beaten
though it be—
''Placed far amid the melancholy main."
Except another specimen given in a small collection of
Gaelic songs, edited by the late Rev. Mil M'Callum of Arisaig, the
original of the following is the only St. Kilda song that we have met
with. Our copy was procured in this way: Some years ago we were dining
on board H.M. Revenue cruiser "Harriet," Captain M'Allister. Going
ashore on a fine moonlight night, one of the seamen who rowed our boat
sang the song, which we had also hesitation in at once declaring to be
of St. Kilda origin, which the man admitted was the case, he having
picked it up many years before from an old woman Avho had
spent some time on the island. Of the air, we can only remember that it
was a wild, irregular sort of chant, very different from the soft low
airs to which our mainland songs are for the most part sung, with the
refrain or burden (represented by our Alexarulrines in
each stanza) given in a shrill falsetto that was somewhat disagreeable
to the ear, although abundantly appropriate, probably, in the
circumstances in which the song was composed, and when sung amid all the
surroundings of the scene depicted.
The St. Kilda Maid's Song
Over the rocks, steadily, steadily;
Down to the clefts with a shout and a shove, O;
Warily tend the rope, shifting it readily,
Eagerly, actively, watch from above, O.
Brave, 0 brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:
(And the sea below is still as deep as the sky is high
above!)
Sweet 'tis to sleep on a well feathered pillow,
Sweet from the embers the fulmar's red egg, O;
Bounteous our store from the rock and the billow:
Fish and birds in good store, we need never to beg, O;
Brave, 0 brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:
[And the sea below is still as deep as the sky is high
above!)
Hark to the fulmar and guillemot screaming:
Hark to the kittiwake, puffin, and gull, O:
See the white wings of solan goose gleaming;
Steadily, men ! on the rope gently pull, O.
Brave, O brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:
(And the sea below is still as deep as the sky is high
above!)
Deftly my love can hook ling and conger,
The grey-fish and hake, with the net and the creel, O;
Far from our island be plague and be hunger;
And sweet our last sleep in the quiet of the Kiel, O.
Brave, O brave, my lover true, he's worth a maiden's love:
(Ami the sea below is still as deep as the sky is high
above!)
Pull on the rope, men, pull it up steadily:
(There's a storm, on the deep, see the scart claps his
wings, O);
Cunningly guide the rope, shifting it readily;
Welcome my true love, and all that he brings, O!
Now God be praised, my lover's safe, he's worth a maiden's love:
(And the sea below is still as deep as the sky is high
above!)
Our song needs but little elucidation. The reader who
knows that the wealth of the St. Kildians mainly consists of the
feathers and eggs of wild-fowl, to procure which they are obliged to
hang suspended from ropes over the most dreadful precipices, in the
clefts and along the otherwise inaccessible ledges of which the sea-fowl
breed, will have no difficulty in understanding the general drift of the
island maid's very spirited and very earnest song. It is, perhaps,
unnecessary to say that as ling, conger, hake, and grey-fish are certain
kinds of sea fish, so fulmar, guillemot, kittiwake, puffin, and scart
are certain kinds of web-footed sea-fowl.
