Books and other items printed in Gaelic from 1871 to 1900 > Gaelic bards, and original poems

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xvii
ear the melodious airs and the vibrating strains of Celtic
melodies and their tuneful soul wedded them in their
respective works to matchless Gaelic verse. Their
historic faculty seized upon the popular aspects of
Highland scenery, story and romance, and these their
artistic eye painted in unfading colours on the canvas of
descriptive song. Their work is deeply rooted in the
hearts of the Gaelic people. Like the great masters of
religious poetry, Dante and Milton, our Gaelic Bards
hold to the central truths of our religion and to a belief
in the glorious resurrection of the body, and in the joyful
ennoblement of life beyond the grave. In the words of
Robert Browning our Gaelic Bards,
“Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted,
Wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better.
Sleep to awake.”
Of the broad sympathies and deep yearnings of the human
heart expressed with genuine feeling and real poetic
power in the Gaelic Originals, Thomas Pattison became
the faithful interpreter in his felicitous English Trans¬
lations.
Peter Thomas Pattison died on the 16th day of
October, 1865, at 28 Florence Place, Glasgow: aged, 37
years.
J. G. MACNEILL.
Free Manse, Cawdor, 1890.