Hew Morrison Collection > Leabhar Nan Gleann

PREFATORY NOTE.
rnSE following pages are reprinted from
^l^ "The Highland Home Journal," the
-L weekly supplement of "The Highland
News," where they appeared for the first
time.
The sweet voices associated in my memory
with so many of them, I know, I shall hear
no more, and yet they abide with me in
spirit. If for a little time they may enable
any one else to share in a portion of the
joy given me, my aim will have been amply
fulfilled. My original intention was to
restrict myself entirely — as I have to a good
extent done— to unpublished sources, and to
have included some Gaelic romances. When
I had proceeded but a part of the way I had
mapped out, inner considerations led me to
offer some transliterations from the Fernàig
MS., actuated in part also by a suggestion
given by the editors in their preface. To
give the whole, space fails me; but what
is here given includes an interesting portion,
and, perhaps, what is in all respects of most
permanent significance. It was not my aim
to obliterate dialectal traits unnecessarily.
The shroud of the traditional orthography
would here have often marred the living
form; but I liave no quarrel with the rigid
traditional scrjpt in its place. May I ven-
ture to hope therefore that, as it is, my
reading of Macrae's often puzzling, incon-
Bistent phonetic spelling, does no great in-
justice to a noble voice, which is to me
daily deepening a long-cherished fondness
for Kintail. Macrae's work lets us have a
glimpse of more than one side of Highland