Blair Collection > Galic antiquities

148 D A R G O:
We bore him on our fpears to Crimoina ; and fung, as we went
along, the fong of death. Connas ran before ns with the fkln of
the boar. I flew him, he faid, with my fteel ; but firft his deadly
tufk had pierced thy Dargo. For the fjiear of the chief was broke,
and the loofe rock had failed below him.
Crimoina heard the tale of the tomb. She faw her Dargo
brought home, as dead. Silent and pale flie flood, as the pillar of
ice that hangs, in the feafon of cold, from die brow of Mora's
rock. At length fhe took her harp, and touched it, foft, in praifc
of her love. Dargo would rife, but we forbade till the fong fliould
ceafe ; for it was fweet as the voice of the wounded fwan, when
flie fings away her foiil in death, and feels in her breafl the fatal
dart of the hunter *. Her companions flock, mournful, around ;
they
* This fimile is differently cxprefledj cifically different from the tame, emit
being fometimes derived from the fwan, fome very melodious notes on certain oc-
(Mar bhinnghuth ealiadh 'a guin bais), cafions ; particularly when two flocks of
and fometimes from the minjlrel, which them meet, when they are wounded, and
is exprefledby a word of nearly the fame when about to take their flight, being
found, (mar bhinn-ghuth filuidh, &c.) birds of paffage in thefe countries. Their
with a flight variation in the reft of the note has, in the Galic, a particular name,
ftanza. — Which of the words was origi- which would not readily be the cafe if the
nally ufed by Ullin, is uncertain; but the thing had not a foundation in nature :.
firft is here retained as the moft beauti- and there is likewife a tune or fong called
ful, though perhaps the moft exception- Luineag na h Ealuf, " the fwan's ditty,"
able, reading. The finging of the fwan the words and air of which are in imita-
has been always confidered as a dream, of tion of this bird's finging. A part of this
the Greek and Latin poets : and though Luineag is here fubjoined,
the Celtic may need no defence, aa his ^"'' '"§■ '> G"i'eug-i>
expreflTion is fo dubious and fo differently ^2™'" ""^ "^"^ ""''*'
. Gni'cug-i
repeated ; yet, in fupport of them, I muft Ri,„ „„ ,,,„.
obferve, that it is univerfally affirmed in Gui'eug-o
ihe weft of Scotland, as an undoubted ^'° ''''''"'" ''"^''
fadl, that the wild fwans which frequent .0 • r • 1",' '?^"'.
T bmi fcin glc gheal
thefe parts in winter, and which are fpe- Cui'eug-c,