J. F. Campbell Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

186 ANCIENT GAELIC BARDS.
posed it, could have been no mean poet. Gaul, the son of Morni,
it will be remembered, was a great hero. The Ajax of the Fin-
galians, excelled by none in strength and courage, he deserved to
have so noble an elegy spoken over him, by the ever-generous and
courteous Finn.
FINGAL GOING TO BATTLE.
There seems to have been favourite bits of poetry floating about
in the Highlands, not belonging to any particular poem, but ready
to be used by the reciters in any place where they appeared to fit
well. These formed an elaborate description of the dress, the
appearance, the warlike equipage, or else some single great action
of a celebrated hero; or, indeed, any one incident in the old
traditions, common perhaps to them all, which might strike the
fancy of a young and sensitive mind, that would keep brooding
over the favourite passage for years, until at last it finished and
refined it into such lyric excellence that it thenceforth formed a
noted piece of popular poetry, and one of the famed and welcome
gems of recitation round a thousand firesides.
The following very splendid description is found in Kennedy's
Collection in one poem ; in Dr. Smith's " Old Lays " in another ;
and in Macpherson's Ossian in a third place. It is a piece of
popular Highland poetry. I translate this truly grand passage
with the closest fidelity : —
With loud-sounding strides he rush'd westward,
In the clank of his armour bright ;
And he look'd like the Spirit of Loda, that scatters
Dismay o'er the war- way and fight !
Like a thousand waves on a crag that roll, yelling,
When the ugly storm is at its height.