Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

100 MODERN GAELIC BARDS.
" Anna, the yellow-hair' J," met with some little bit of a dis-
appointment herself in the end, in spite of her vaunted powers of
attracting six lovers in one year, — and such is said to have been
the case. A Gaelic note to this song declares that she married
the fair-haired carpenter, but led an unhappy life with him, and
never quite recovered her old spirits after the memorable parting
at the shieling, recorded above.
The date of the following song is 1784. On the day when the
news of the death of Henry Pelham, the prime minister, reached
Durness, Rob Donn sallied forth among the neighbouring moun-
tains in search of deer. After wandering about the whole day he
found himself towards evening in a very remote glen, far from any
human habitation, except one where lay a solitary old man suffer-
ing fearfully from asthma. The gloom of night, the melancholy
and desolate scenery, the lonely hut, and the poor old man, whose
every gasp seemed to be his last, powerfully affected the mind of
the poet, as he sat by the fire he had made, and thought and
listened sadly, until blending the news of the morning so interest-
ing to the whole country, with the scene before him, about which
nobody cared, he began to chant to himself as follows: — He
spoke to Hugh as if he were already dead; but just as he was
closing the song, and going over the concluding verse for the last
time, and styling the old man the meanest of mortals, he glanced
up and saw that the miserable subject of his elegy — indignant at
the turn the verses took — had risen from his pallet, armed himself
with a stick, and was about to let it descend with all the force he
could muster on the singer's head. Rob had only time to avoid
the blow, and experienced some difficulty afterwards in pacifying
the querulous sufferer, and leading him back to bed. The bard's
friends are said to have sometimes laughed at this incident, but
he himself always looked grave when it was mentioned, and
seldom could be brought to speak of it at all.