The passages 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 illustrious 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 assailing,
    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.