Ossian Collection > Gaelic bards

FUGITIVE SONGS. 135
ate Highland singers, too. It is easy, however, for the
kettle on the hob to tell the kettle on the fire not to boil.
When their souls Avere pierced through with bitter
sorrows, and their poor hearts were full and overflowing,
how were those tuneful females to accommodate them-
selves to the sedate proprieties of their cool and un-
disturbed sisters, whose feelings had perhaps never in
their lite given them much trouble in the grand concern
of looking after themselves? Nothing more, perhaps,
remained for the tender lyrists than to speak or die ; or,
it may be, speak and die. Their language betrays no
guilt, at least. If anything was wrong in them, it was
merely an excess of feeling — neither a great nor a
common fault. Whatever cool-headed ladies may think
of these poor sufferers, — of our sex, at all events, it may
be said, that those of us who do not value a true and
unaffected sensibility more than any amount of practical
good sense in a woman — who do not intuitively prefer
a Mary to a Martha, in fact — will possess but little
sensibility, or sense eitlier, themselves. The title of the
next song is, —
A MAIDEN'S LAMENT.
My heart is broken ! broken !
What was bright in it is bleak :
Its joys are gone, and gone away,
This many and many a week.
They are gone away with him
Who was fairest of us all —
Fairest Avhitest, whiter
Than the snow-flakes as they fall !
He was manly ; he was nobly brave ;
He was first in every need.