The Modern Scottish Minstrel Volume I Part 43

ISABEL MACKAY--THE MAID ALONE.

TO A PIOBRACH TUNE.

This is one of those lyrics, of which there are many in Gaelic poetry, that are intended to imitate pipe music. They consist of three parts, called Urlar, Siubhal, and Crunluath. The first is a slow, monotonous measure, usually, indeed, a mere repet.i.tion of the same words or tones; the second, a livelier or brisker melody, striking into description or narrative; the third, a rapid finale, taxing the reciter's or performer's powers to their utmost pitch of expedition. The heroine of the song is the same Isabel who is introduced towards the commencement of the "Forsaken Drover;" and it appears, from other verses in Mackay's collection, that it was not her fate to be "alone" through life. It is to be understood that when the verses were composed, she was in charge of her father's extensive pastoral _manege_, and not a mere milk-maid or dairy-woman.

URLAR.

Isabel Mackay is with the milk kye, And Isabel Mackay is alone; Isabel Mackay is with the milk kye, And Isabel Mackay is alone, &c.

Seest thou Isabel Mackay with the milk kye, At the forest foot--and alone?

SIUBHAL.

By the Virgin and Son![100]

Thou bride-lacking one, If ever thy time Is coming, begone, The occasion is prime, For Isabel Mackay Is with the milk kye At the skirts of the forest, And with her is none.

By the Virgin and Son, &c.

Woe is the sign!

It is not well With the lads that dwell Around us, so brave, When the mistress fine Of Riothan-a-dave Is out with the kine, And with her is none.

O, woe is the sign, &c.

Whoever he be That a bride would gain Of gentle degree, And a drove or twain, His speed let him strain To Riothan-a-dave, And a bride he shall have.

Then, to her so fain!

Whoever he be, &c.

And a bride he shall have, The maid that's alone.

Isabel Mackay, &c.

Oh, seest not the dearie So fit for embracing, Her patience distressing, The b.e.s.t.i.a.l a-chasing, And she alone!

'Tis a marvellous fashion That men should be slack, When their bosoms lack An object of pa.s.sion, To look such a la.s.s on, Her patience distressing, The b.e.s.t.i.a.l a-chasing, In the field, alone.

CRUNLUATH (FINALE).

Oh, look upon the prize, sirs, That where yon heights are rising, The whole long twelvemonth sighs in, Because she is alone.

Go, learn it from my minstrelsy, Who list the tale to carry, The maiden shuns the public eye, And is ordain'd to tarry 'Mid stoups and cans, and milking ware, Where brown hills rear their ridges bare, And wails her plight the livelong year, To spend the day alone.

[100] A common Highland adjuration.

EVAN'S ELEGY.

Mackay was benighted on a deer-stalking expedition, near a wild hut or shealing, at the head of Loch Eriboll. Here he found its only inmate a poor asthmatic old man, stretched on his pallet, apparently at the point of death. As he sat by his bed-side, he "crooned," so as to be audible, it seems, to the patient, the following elegiac ditty, in which, it will be observed, he alludes to the death, then recent, of Pelham, an eminent statesman of George the Second's reign. As he was finishing his ditty, the old man's feelings were moved in a way which will be found in the appended note. This is one of Sir Walter Scott's extracts in the _Quarterly_, and is now attempted in the measure of the original.

How often, Death! art waking The imploring cry of Nature!

When she sees her phalanx breaking, As thou'dst have all--grim feature!

Since Autumn's leaves to brownness, Of deeper shade were tending, We saw thy step, from palaces, To Evan's nook descending.

Oh, long, long thine agony!

A nameless length its tide; Since breathless thou hast panted here, And not a friend beside.

Thine errors what, I judge not; What righteous deeds undone; But if remains a se'ennight, Redeem it, dying one!

Oh, marked we, Death! thy teachings true, What dust of time would blind?

Such thy impartiality To our highest, lowest kind.

Thy look is upwards, downwards shot, Determined none to miss; It rose to Pelham's princely bower, It sinks to shed like this!

Oh, long, long, &c.!

So great thy victims, that the n.o.ble Stand humbled by the bier; So poor, it shames the poorest To grace them with a tear.

Between the minister of state And him that grovels there, Should one remain uncounselled, Is there one whom dool shall spare?

Oh, long, long, &c.!

The hail that strews the battle-field Not louder sounds its call, Than the falling thousands round us Are voicing words to all.

Hearken! least of all the nameless; Evan's hour is going fast; Hearken! greatest of earth's great ones-- Princely Pelham's hour is past.

Oh, long, long, &c.!

Friends of my heart! in the twain we see A type of life's declining; 'Tis like the lantern's dripping light, At either end a-dwining.

Where was there one more low than thou-- Thou least of meanest things?[101]

And where than his was higher place Except the throne of kings?

Oh, long, long, &c.!

[101] At this humiliating apostrophe, the beggar is reported to have instinctively raised his staff--an action which the bard observed just in time to avoid its descent on his back.

DOUGAL BUCHANAN.

Dougal Buchanan was born at the Mill of Ardoch, in the beautiful valley of Strathyre, and parish of Balquhidder, in the year 1716. His parents were in circ.u.mstances to allow him the education of the parish school; on which, by private application, he so far improved, as to be qualified to act as teacher and catechist to the Highland locality which borders on Loch Rannoch, under the appointment of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Never, it is believed, were the duties of a calling discharged with more zeal and efficiency. The catechist was, both in and out of the strict department of his office, a universal oracle,[102] and his name is revered in the scene of his usefulness in a degree to which the honours of canonization could scarcely have added. Pious, to the height of a proverbial model, he was withal frank, cheerful, and social; and from his extraordinary command of the Gaelic idiom, and its poetic phraseology, he must have lent an ear to many a song and many a legend[103]--a nourishment of the imagination in which, as well as in purity of Gaelic, his native Balquhidder was immeasurably inferior to the Rannoch district of his adoption.

The composition of hymns, embracing a most eloquent and musical paraphrase of many of the more striking inspirations of scriptural poetry, seems to have been the favourite employment of his leisure hours. These are sung or recited in every cottage of the Highlands where a reader or a retentive memory is to be found.

Buchanan's life was short. He was cut off by typhus fever, at a period when his talents had begun to attract a more than local attention. It was within a year after his return from superintending the press of the first version of the Gaelic New Testament, that his lamented death took place. His command of his native tongue is understood to have been serviceable to the translator, the Rev. James Stewart of Killin, who had probably been Buchanan's early acquaintance, as they were natives of the same district. This reverend gentleman is said to have entertained a scheme of getting the catechist regularly licensed to preach the gospel without the usual academical preparation. The scheme was frustrated by his death, in the summer of 1768.

We know of no fact relating to the development of the poetic vein of this interesting bard, unless it be found in the circ.u.mstance to which he refers in his "Diary,"[104] of having been bred a violent Jacobite, and having lived many years under the excitement of strong, even vindictive feelings, at the fate of his chief and landlord (Buchanan of Arnprior and Strathyre), who, with many of his dependents, and some of the poet's relations, suffered death for their share in the last rebellion. While he relates that the power of religion at length quenched this effervescence of his emotions, it may be supposed that ardent Jacobitism, with its common accompaniment of melody, may have fostered an imagination which every circ.u.mstance proves to have been sufficiently susceptible. It may be added, as a particular not unworthy of memorial in a poet's life, that his remains are deposited in perhaps the most picturesque place of sepulture in the kingdom--the peninsula of Little Leny, in the neighbourhood of Callander; to which his relatives transferred his body, as the sepulchre of many chiefs and considerable persons of his clan, and where it is perhaps matter of surprise that his Highland countrymen have never thought of honouring his memory with some kind of monument.

The poetic remains of Dougal Buchanan do not afford extensive materials for translation. The subjects with which he deals are too solemn, and their treatment too surcharged with scriptural imagery, to be available for the purposes of a popular collection, of which the object is not directly religious. The only exception that occurs, perhaps, is his poem on "The Skull." Even in this case some moral pictures[105] have been omitted, as either too coa.r.s.ely or too solemnly touched, to be fit for our purpose. A few lines of the conclusion are also omitted, as being mere amplifications of Scripture--wonderful, indeed, in point of vernacular beauty or sublimity, but not fusible for other use. Slight traces of imitation may be perceived; "The Grave" of Blair, and some pa.s.sages of "Hamlet," being the apparent models.

[102] "Statistical Account of Fortingall."--Stat. Acc., x., p. 549.

[103] The same account observes that though none of his works are published but his sacred compositions, he composed "several songs on various subjects."

[104] Published at Glasgow, 1836.