Ossian Collection > Literature of the Highlands

Highland Liter attire 7
Yet it is to the bards that arose towards the middle of
the eighteenth century that we must turn for the full ex-
pression of this intimate sympathy and keen enjoyment.
Macdonald's " Birlinn " and Duncan Ban IMacintyre's " Coire-
cheathaich " and " Ben Dorain " are the best of the kind in
the language. These poets find in the aspects of the mighty
ocean, the towering ben, or even the misty corrie or inobtru-
sive brook, ample scope for the exercise of the poetic gift.
The seasons too with their varying changes were
favourite topics. Alexander Macdonald, Duncan Ban
Macintyre, William Ross, and Ewen Maclachlan have all
odes to Summer ; Alexander Macdonald, Dugald Buchanan,
Rob Donn, and Ewen Maclachlan, to Winter. In fact
Maclachlan, like Thomson, sang the praises of Spring,
Summer, Autumn, and Winter. So enamoured of the
beauties and wonders of Nature were the bards of this
period that they can scarcely dissociate these from the most
human and overpowering emotions and sentiments, especi-
ally those of love or sorrow. Consequently, when natural
objects are not actually their theme, they weave descriptive
sketches of scenes of nature, beautiful or bare, into their
poems as part of the experience depicted. No sentiment or
emotion seems complete without its setting in the world of
nature around.
From this period also dates the headlong entrance of
passionate love into Gaelic poetry. Most of the numerous
and attractive love songs so characteristic of Highland
literature were composed since the time that Alexander
Macdonald sang the praises of Morag, Rob Donn of Ann
Morrison, and Duncan Ban Macintyre of his Mairi bhan 6g.
This class of poetry found its most ardent devotees in these
pioneers, in the love-lorn William Ross consumed of longing,
in Ewen Maclachlan, and in various anonymous Romeos and
Lotharios, born adepts of sweet Gaelic speech.
Stirred in all their nature by the profound changes that
seemed to overthrow their entire system of things, the High-
landers turned likewise to religion and found in hymn-