An Comunn Gàidhealach Publications > Bardachd Ghaidhlig

Ivi.
Introduction.
The poems dealt with below are divided into Cumha
and Amhran or Oran.
We have very little poetry of the type of the Irish
caoineadh as described above. The earliest specimen
Tmown to me of a cumha in modern Gaelic is one stated
to be by Mary, daughter of Angus MacDonald of Dun
Naomhaig in Islay, for the death of her husband, Sir
Donald MacDonald of Cranranald, who died in 1618.
Moch ’sa mhaduinn ’s mi ’g eirigh
Gur ruiteach mo dhewr air mo ghrweudh,
Nach freagair thu m’eigheach,
A lub cheanalta treun a dh’fhas suaivc :
Is e chuir mo shuilean o leirsinn
Bhith caradh na le'ine mu d’ tbuairms’;
Ach, a Mhuire, mo sgeala,
Cha’n e’irich thu fein gu la Iwain.1
Though printed as an octave, this is really a quatrain,
consisting of four long lines, each with five stresses.
The final stress in each line is on ua: the quatrain is
therefore ■ua-quatrain. In each line the second and
fourth stresses fall on the vowel e.
This is the measure used by Ewen MacLachlan in
his lament for his friend, Professor Beattie, which
follows.
(56) P. 20:
Och nan och mar ath mi threig mo shugradh mo
mhknran’s mo cheol.
1 Macdonald Collection, p. 26. The language is almost
startlingly modem, but the internal evidence as to the occasion
of the poem is quite clear. An inferior and shorter version in
Margaret Cameron’s Grain Nuadh Ghaidhealach (Inverness,
1805), p. 58, is ascribed to the wife of Macdonald of Kinloch-
moidart, wrongly.