Ossian Collection > Loch Etive and the sons of Uisnach

312 LOCH ETIVE AND THE SUNS OF UISNACH.
I'd give heavy gold
For a hundred score of them 1
My blessing with the foxes dwell,
For that they hunt the sheep so well I
111 fa' the sheep, a grey-faced nation
That swept our hills with desolation '.
Who made the bonnie green glens clear.
And acres scarce, and houses dear ;
The grey-faced sheep, who worked our woe,
Where men no more may reap or sow.
And made us leave for their grey pens
Our bonnie braes and grassy glens."
Maclntyre lived when sheep-farming on the hills was new,
so late is the custom. In old times deer and foxes and free
hunting made a happy ground for undisturbed men.
Now we are come among deer foresters and stalkers, men
who make thousands of acres desert for the purpose of
shooting. Much of this is wilderness. There is a house in that
wood, and there is an inn at Inveroran, and you see some
trees called a part of the Caledonian Forest, but, so far as I
know, all interest here is in the wildness and the mountain
and the deer.
Loiidojtii. — And why nut } Did we leave home to see
more chimneys or houses ] You may travel in England
through many counties and scarcely see variety of scenery ;
perhaps some difference, not much, in building houses or
working farms : here you have land, crops, and animals all
different from those where we started, and it is a new world.
I think it worth while to lose the sheep for the variety of the
sight, even if we are not the favoured ones who possess it.
Even the owner may see it little. Look at the Moor of Ran-
noch, a desert with danger from water, a place without a track.