Ossian Collection > Gaelic bards

NOTES ON THE POEMS. 277
posed a vigorous Gaelic song in praise of Captain Gorrie.
I conclude these few remarks on my chivalrous and high-
minded namesake who was a contemporary of my great-
grand-father, and give expression to my impossible wish by
quoting, after changing two words in it, the last stanza of
Cowper's diverting history of John Gilpin: —
"Now let us sing, long live the Queen,
And Gorrie, long live he ;
And when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see !"
VI — The Haunted Water of Dubh-thalamh. — This
water is a small burn running into Lochindaal, between
Gartbreac and Ardlarach. This murmuring stream
repeats the story of Tennyson's Brook : —
"I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I bubble on the pebbles.
E'or men may come and men may go.
But I go on for ever."
Dubh-thalamh^ Buaile na h-Eaglais, and Bnithach an
Diibhraich lie in the same locality, and in the immediate
vicinity of Fern Cottage once the Islay home of Peter
Thomas Pattison.
VII. — Dear Islay. — This is the best known and the
most popular of all Mr. Pattison's Original Poems. It
is one of the bright gems that sparkle in the royal crown
which her sons and daAighters place upon the head of
Dear Mother Islay, the queen of the Hebrides.
The Pattisons, men and women, were a talented family.
The late Miss Margaret C. Pattison, one of our author's
sisters, was a most accomplished lady, whose musical