Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

472 WEST niGHLAND TALES.
If further evidence were required it is not wanting. The
very words of the hoat passage, and a great deal that is not in
any version of it which I have got, is in the " Fragment of a Tale,
page 17th," lent me by my friend Mr. Bain, and referred to in
the Introduction. It proves that the passage was in existence
about the beginning of this century at all events, and that it was
then thought worthy of preservation.
There are many other similar passages in the manuscript talc
of which I have found no trace hitherto amongst the people, and
wjiicli have probably died out with the old race, or emigrated with
them to America.
I have been permitted to have access to other manuscrijits
belonging to the Highland Society. They are nearly all poetry
One is marked MS. poems collected in the Western Highlands
and Islands by Dr. John Smith ; and from it I copy this
" Advertisement.
" The following poems being compiled from various editions
" will often appear inelegant and abrupt, it being sometimes
" necessary to take half a stanza or perhaps half a line from one,
" to join to as much of another edition.
" In order to complete the sense, and to supply many defects
" in the versification, recourse has frequently been had to the talcs
" or ursgeuls which generally accompany the poems. As these
" tales, although they have the appearance of prose, were com-
" posed in a particular kind of measure, they are set down in the
" form of verse, but without any alteration in the arrangement of
" the words. This, it was thought, would give the work a more
" uniform appearance than if it had been a mixture of prose and
" verse, as one is apt to supjiose it on hearing some parts of it re-
" peated.
" As these pieces were, for the most part, taken down from
" oral recitation, frequent mistakes may have been made in the
" proper division of the lines, and in the assigning of its due quan-
" tity to each. A matter to which the poets themselves do not
" always seem to have been very attentive, their measure often
" varying as their subject changes.
" As those who recited ancient poems took frequently the