Matheson Collection > Popular tales of the west Highlands > Volume 1

CXX INTRODUCTION.
coming on of darkness. The expression is poetical. It
seems to refer to some old mythical notion that the
sun went into a cave or a tent to sleep, for " Take thy
sleep in thy cave " is a line in Ossian's " Address to
the Sun," and though it was suggested to me to alter
this translation, and make it "good English," I thought
it best to adhere to my original plan. Generally where
the phrase occurs it is translated "in the mouth of
night," though I was advised to Avrite, "in the dusk,"
"in the evening," "at nightfall," "in the mantle of
night," "at twilight," "in the grey of the evenihg."
I admit that all these phrases express ideas which
might be attached to the Avords ; but what could an
unfortunate student make of a passage in which a word
meaning mouth according to all dictionaries, should
seem to mean mantle, or fall, or grey. It is very much
easier to write naturally and translate freely ; and as
I have tried hard to make my translation a close one, I
hope the bad English will be forgiven.
Those only who have tried to turn Gaelic into Eng-
lish can understand the difficulty. There are in fact
many Gaelic phrases which ■will not go into English at
all. For example, tha so agAjVI (I have this), is this
at me, or toith me, or hy me, is a phrase which cannot
be rendered for want of a word equivalent to AG or aig,
which expresses position and possession, and is com-
bined with am, ad, e, inn, ihh, and changed to aca to
express the persons. Gaelic will not bear literal trans-
lation into English, but I have tried to give the real
meaning of every word as nearly as I could, and to
give it by using the English word which most resembled
the Gaelic ; and thus I have unexpectedly fallen in
with a number of English words which seem to have the
same origin as Gaelic, if they are not STU'vivors of the