The Modern Scottish Minstrel Volume I Part 41

Enough, after absence to meet me again, Thy steps still with ecstacy move; Enough, that those dear sober glances retain For me the kind language of love.

METRICAL TRANSLATIONS

FROM

The Modern Gaelic Minstrelsy.

ROBERT MACKAY (ROB DONN).

Robert Mackay, called _Donn_, from the colour of his hair, which was brown or chestnut, was born in the Strathmore of Sutherlandshire, about the year 1714.

His calling, with the interval of a brief military service in the fencibles, was the tending of cattle, in the several gradations of herd, drover, and bo-man, or responsible cow-keeper--the last, in his pastoral county, a charge of trust and respectability. At one period he had an appointment in Lord Reay's forest; but some deviations into the "righteous theft"--so the Highlanders of those parts, it seems, call the appropriation of an occasional deer to their own use--forfeited his n.o.ble employer's confidence. Rob, however, does not appear to have suffered in his general character or reputation for an _unconsidered trifle_ like this, nor otherwise to have declined in the favour of his chief, beyond the necessity of transporting himself to a situation somewhat nearer the verge of Cape Wrath than the bosom of the deer preserve.

Mackay was happily married, and brought up a large family in habits and sentiments of piety; a fact which his reverend biographer connects very touchingly with the stated solemnities of the "Sat.u.r.day night," when the lighter chants of the week were exchanged at the worthy drover's fireside for the purer and holier melodies of another inspiration.[87]

As a pendant to this creditable account of the bard's principles, we are informed that he was a frequent guest at the presbytery dinner-table; a circ.u.mstance which some may be so malicious as to surmise amounted to nothing more than a purpose to enhance the festive recreations of the reverend body--a suspicion, we believe, in this particular instance, totally unfounded. He died in 1778; and he has succeeded to some rather peculiar honours for a person in his position, or even of his mark. He has had a reverend doctor for his editorial biographer,[88] and no less than Sir Walter Scott for his reviewer.[89]

The pa.s.sages which Sir Walter has culled from some literal translations that were submitted to him, are certainly the most favourable specimens of the bard that we have been able to discover in his volume. The rest are generally either satiric rants too rough or too local for transfusion, or panegyrics on the living and the dead, in the usual extravagant style of such compositions, according to the taste of the Highlanders and the usage of their bards; or they are love-lays, of which the language is more copious and diversified than the sentiment.

In the gleanings on which we have ventured, after the ill.u.s.trious person who has done so much honour to the bard by his comments and selections, we have attempted to draw out a little more of the peculiar character of the poet's genius.

[87] Songs and Poems of Robert Mackay, p. 38. (Inverness, 1829. 8vo.)

[88] The Rev. Dr Mackintosh Mackay, successively minister of Laggan and Dunoon, now a clergyman in Australia.

[89] _Quarterly Review_, vol. xlv., April 1831.

THE SONG OF WINTER.

This is selected as a specimen of Mackay's descriptive poetry. It is in a style peculiar to the Highlands, where description runs so entirely into epithets and adjectives, as to render recitation breathless, and translation hopeless. Here, while we have retained the imagery, we have been unable to find room, or rather rhyme, for one half of the epithets in the original. The power of alliterative harmony in the original song is extraordinary.

I.

At waking so early Was snow on the Ben, And, the glen of the hill in, The storm-drift so chilling The linnet was stilling, That couch'd in its den; And poor robin was shrilling In sorrow his strain.

II.

Every grove was expecting Its leaf shed in gloom; The sap it is draining, Down rootwards 'tis straining, And the bark it is waning As dry as the tomb, And the blackbird at morning Is shrieking his doom.

III.

Ceases thriving, the knotted, The stunted birk-shaw;[90]

While the rough wind is blowing, And the drift of the snowing Is shaking, o'erthrowing, The copse on the law.

IV.

'Tis the season when nature Is all in the sere, When her snow-showers are hailing, Her rain-sleet a.s.sailing, Her mountain winds wailing, Her rime-frosts severe.

V.

'Tis the season of leanness, Unkindness, and chill; Its whistle is ringing, An iciness bringing, Where the brown leaves are clinging In helplessness, still, And the snow-rush is delving With furrows the hill.

VI.

The sun is in hiding, Or frozen its beam On the peaks where he lingers, On the glens, where the singers,[91]

With their bills and small fingers Are raking the stream, Or picking the midstead For forage--and scream.

VII.

When darkens the gloaming Oh, scant is their cheer!

All benumb'd is their song in The hedge they are thronging, And for shelter still longing, The mortar[92] they tear; Ever noisily, noisily Squealing their care.

VIII.

The running stream's chieftain[93]

Is trailing to land, So flabby, so grimy, So sickly, so slimy,-- The spots of his prime he Has rusted with sand; Crook-snouted his crest is That taper'd so grand.

IX.

How mournful in winter The lowing of kine; How lean-back'd they shiver, How draggled their cover, How their nostrils run over With drippings of brine, So scraggy and crining In the cold frost they pine.

X.

'Tis hallow-ma.s.s time, and To mildness farewell!