Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

ALEXANDER MACDONALD. 29
As to their speckled, giddy calves
From the fold the dams reply :
Where the milkmaid with her buara,*
Lists to the herdsman's tale ;
When sitting by the brindled cow,
She fills her foaming pail.
The wailing swans their murmurs blend,
With birds that float and sing ;
Where joins the Sugar Brook the sea,
Their tuneful voices ring.
Softly sweet they bend and breathe,
Through their melodious throat,
Like the mournful, crooked bagpipe,
A sad but pleasing note.
! dainty is the graving work,
By Nature near the wrought!
Whose fertile banks with shining flowers.
And pallid buds are fraught.
The shamrock and the daisy,
Spread o'er thy borders fair,
Like new-made spangles, or like stars,
From out the frosty air.
Ah ! what a charming sight display,
Thy ruddy, rosy braes ;
When sunbeams dye their flowers as bright,
As brilliants all a-blaze :
And what a civil suit they wear,
Of rib grass and of hay ;
And gay-topt herbs o'er which the birds,
Pour forth their pompous lay.
* Buara, fetters made of horse hair, and used for those cows that wen
apt to kick while being milked.