Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

">8 MODERN GAELIC BARDS.
Ben Dorain, where the description is more extended. The verse
that speaks of the salmon leaping over the whirling eddies, is the
most famous thing of its kind in the Gaelic language.
There can hardly be any Highlander, with the slightest turn for
poetry, who has not repeated it approvingly himself, or been called
on by others sometime to admire it. In about equal esteem,
however, are those verses on the early morning and the singing of
the birds; and they are even more musical with their fine metrical
succession of soft vowel sounds. But the flowers, trees, streams,
aud living creatures, throughout this excellent poem, are all nearly
equally good.
To point out every thing in it that is highly thought of, would
be in fact only to go over the whole of it. Coire Cheathaich is
considered as fine a specimen of the harmony of which the Gaelic
language is capable, as any other production of the Celtic muse.
This translation is in the rhythm of the original, and verse
for verse with it.
CORRI CEATHACH.*
My misty Corri! where hinds are roving;
My lovely Corri ! my charming dell!
So grand, so grassy, so richly scented,
And gemm'd with wild flowers of sweetest smell.
Thy knolls and hillocks, in dark green clothing,
Rise o'er the gay sward with gentle swell ;
Where waves the cannach and grows the darnel,
And troop the wild deer I love so well.
* C is always hard, ami th frequently silent in Gaelic. Ceathach is
therefore- pronounced almost as if it were spelt, "Kayach." The name
Mackooch, comes from it, and means, " Son of the Mist."