Ossian Collection > Galic antiquities

148
DARGO
We bore him on our fpears to Crimoina ; and fung, as we went
along, the fong of death. Connas ran before us with the fkin of
the boar. I (lew him, he faid, with my iteel ; but firfl his deadly
tufk had pierced thy Dargo. For the fpear of the chief was broke,
and the loofe rock had failed below him.
Crimoina heard the tale of the tomb. She faw her Dargo
brought home, as dead. Silent and pale fhe flood, as the pillar of
ice that hangs, in the feafon of cold, from the brow of Mora's
rock. At length (he took her harp, and touched it, foft, in praife
of her love. Dargo woidd rife, but we forbade till the fong mould
ceafe; for it was fweet as the voice of the wounded fwan, when
lhe lings away her foul in death, and feels in her bread the fatal
dart of the hunter *. Her companions flock, mournful, around ;
they
* This fimile is differently expreffed; cifically different from the tame, emit
being fometimes derived from the fwan, fome very melodious notes on certain oc-
(Mar bbinn-ghuth caluidh "n gum bais), Cafions ; particularly when two flocks of
and fometimes from the minftrel, which them meet, when they are wounded, and
is expreffed by a word of nearly the fame when about to take their flight, being
found, (mar bhinn-ghuth jiluidh, Sec.) birds of paffage in thefe countries. Their
with a flight variation in the reft of the note has, in the Galic, a particular name,
ftanza. — Which of the words was origi- which would not readily be the cafe if the
nally ufed by Ullin, is uncertain; but the thing had not a foundation in nature :
firft is here retained as the molt beauti- and there is likewife a tune or fong called
ful, though perhaps the moft exception- Luineag na h EatuCy " the fwan's ditty,"
able, reading. The finging of the fwan the words and air of which are in imita-
has been always confidered as a dream of tion of this bird's finging. A part of this
the Greek and Latin poets : and though Luineag is here fubjoined.
the Celtic may need no defence, as his ° ui ' eu S- '. Gui'eug-o
expreffion is fo dubious and fo differently
repeated ; yet, in fuppoi t of them, I mull
obferve, that it is univerfally affirmed in
the weft of Scotland, as an undoubted
fa£t, that the wild fwans which frequent
thefe parts in winter, and which are fpe-
Sgeula mo dhunach
Gui'eug-i
Rinn mo leire'
Gui'e\ig-o
Mo chafan dubh
Gui'eiig-t
'Smi fein gle' gheal
Gui'eug-o.