Blair Collection > Luinneag nan gleann

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P E E F A C E .
Jonx MacColl, West Larocli, Ballacliulish, the author
of the following songs, has been known to me from
his early Ijoyhood. He is quite a young man still,
and it gives me pleasure to be able to say that he is
held in highest esteem by all who know him, for his
kindly manners, amiableness of disposition, and entire
blamelessness of life. Bred as a slatequarrier, he
followed that occupation until, his health failing, he
was obliged to desist from a species of labour which
can only be successfully engaged in by the hardy and
robust ; and having thus been thrown into a state of
enforced idleness, he was fortunately able to find some
solace at once and occupation in the ardent cultivation
of an inherent and early developed taste for painting
and poetry. Some of his sketches in water colours
are highly creditable to ati entirely self-taught artist,
while of his dalliance with the Gaelic Muse the reader
has the issue in the following pages.
The reader will probably agree with me that several
of the following songs are of very considerable merit ;
and if they do not in any one instr.nce reach the highest