Ossian Collection > Reliquiae Celticae > Volume 2

THE BOOK OF CLANRANALD. -•).
The generous men have departed from ourselves,
The learned men receive no rewards after them,
They brought the hospitality with them into the grave,
The victory of battle, and the sway of the good sense of all.
Tears on their account come in floods,
We are unwilling to compose their elegy,
Very little obedience is yielded by the people after them ;
Our beautiful wood in the earth in the church-yard.
After the sadness of the excited sorrow
No one is called to the chase ;
My tribute of grief attends me to beguile me.
As if it were now I went to my trade.
A cluster of carbuncles of precious stones —
Illiberality about gold they did not practise ;
In every ])art of Scotland, alas !
A pen-drop of my lamentation is not decreased.
Such sorrow as this which has taken root
Should now be stated by us,
A ship having met with a stumbling wave at Banba,
That concerning the sons uf Uisneach, wondrous, fair.
They were killed by Conchobar, the mild, the free,
Through rude jealousy in drinking ;
The sons of Uisneach, the powerful heirs presumptive,
A story by which Banba acquired her sorrow.
Naoisi, Ainli, and Ardan the generous,
Were slain in the thick of the battle ;
That brought a great deal of pain and anguish
Unto Ireland both east and west.
To-day througliout the Hebrides
There is much of this lamentation of the plain of the Fi;iiis
Every day in its full entirety increases
Our deep melancholy by a degree.
Without the aid of chords in musical harps
The grief which is in our country is expressed ;
With deep soitow the clergy remember
In a degree exceeding that of the bond maid of Ireland
The death of the sons of Ranald is melancholy.
On which account our opposition at the shore is feeble ;
Like the moaning of a flood towards the strand
Is our lamentation because thcv have all fled from us.