Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

DUNCAU BAN MACINTYBE. 07
Then I told the sweet cause of my anguish,
How no leech could give me rest;
But my wounds, with her virtues, she cured them.
As myself she gently caress' d.
Then kiss'd I the round and soft maiden
Who 'd grown up so mild and sweet —
So comely, so tall, and so curly,
So womanly, graceful, and neat :
In many a way am I favour'cl,
Such a love as hers to meet;
When her vows and herself she gives me,
A cheaply bought bargain I greet
I went to the wood with its saplings,
And glorious it looked all around ;
But my eye caught a spray, all surpassing,
High in the dusky shade found:
It was quite covered over with blossoms —
I bent it down to the ground,
And cut it — a sad sight for many;
But my fate with it was bound.
I cast out my net in the true waters,*
And strained hard to draw it to land,
* Water that flows from a spring is called, " true water " in Gaelic.
It shows the originality of Duncan Ban's mind thus to have drawn his
similies from his own occupations, chosen them so well, and used them so
happily. A sea-trout, just fresh from the ocean, is always pure and
bright looking. Any person who has had the good fortune to see one
caught at the mouth of the sea, as the darkness came on, will no doubt
remember how it flashed with a silvery lustre among the other fishes,
almost indeed " like the star of the morning." I once saw one caught
accidentally in this way, by some working people who were, with their
nets, dragging a little port near a river for sathe. Whenever the net
touched the shore, the stranger that was entangled in it, leaping and glit-
tering so lively and bright, attracted every eye, and when landed it really
did lie " like a swan on the strand." Something of this sort must have