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

THE KXIGHT OF THE RED SHIELD. 473
'■ liberty of substituting such words as they were best accjuainted
" with, in room of such as were foreign or obsolete, a few words
" that may perhaps be considered as modern or provincial may
" occur in the coui-se of these compositions. To expunge these
" words, when none of the editions in the editor's hands supplied
" him with better, was a task which he did not consider as any
" part of his province. He hopes that, with all their imperfec-
" tions, the poems have still so much merit as to give the reader
" some idea of what they had once been. We have only the
" fragments of the ruin, but they may serve to give an idea of the
" grandeur of the edifice."
This then is the statement of the collector's plan of action.
The following note shews the spirit in which the best of them
worked in these days. I think it was a mistaken spirit that
caused the Ossianic controversy, and threw discredit on Higliland
literature. Still, as it is openly and fairly stated, it is fair to be-
lieve what is asserted by a gentleman and a clergyman, and for my
part 1 implicitly believe that Dr. Smith of Campbeltown really
did what he tells us, and that these poems are what they purport
to be, — patched versions of oral recitations, with portions left out.
" DiAKMAtD. — This poem is generally interlarded with so
" much of the ursgeuls or later tales as to render the most common
" editions of it absurd and extravagant. But the fabulous dross oi
" the fifteenth century is easily separated from the more precious
" ore of the ancient bards."
Of part of this same story of Diarmaid, Mrs. MacTavish
writes in 1850 : —
"A dan or song which I heard an old ploughman of my
father's sing very near sixty yeais since. He had a great collec-
tion of tales and songs, and often have I stood or sat by him in
winter when kiln-drying corn, or in summer when building a peat
stack, listening to what was to me so fascinating in those days.
And then follows the story of how Diarmaid was killed by pacing
bare-footed against the bristles of a boar which he had killed, and
the lament of Diarmaid's love, and the music to which it used to
be sung ; and this same story of Diarmaid and the boar was sung
to me by Alexander MacDonald in Barra, in September 1860,
together with other long Gaelic poems. And whatever may be