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

XXVI
INTRODUCTION.
most elaborate departments say, that Highland melodies,
when properly played or sung—that is with their own
simple and peculiarly expressive character—thrilled him
through with an amazing power. He felt as in a moment
surrounded with Highland scenery, its lofty mountains
and sweet glens, its sounding winds and waters, its mists
and varied skies, and old historic associations, and he was
accordingly profoundly affected. I can well understand
this, for no music can be more like a living wail of
sorrow, or a living laugh of joy, than that which melts
our hearts, or makes them dance beneath its magic
influence in the sweet wild notes of the mountain melodies
of the Highlands. For my own part I will yield to no
Scotchmen whatever in admiration of everything that is
good and beautiful, and distinctively characteristic in
Scottish poetry, no matter where or by whom produced;
but I believe there is a chapter, and that not the worst
in it, yet to be added to “The Book of Scottish Song;”
and I believe, when that chapter is added, this book will
contain a treasure of popular national lyrics such as is
possessed by no other nation in the world.
In the following pages I attempt to show, not only
that there is as much Highland poetry, in proportion to
the population, as there is af Lowland poetry, but that it
possesses as much variety, and as high excellence of its
own, as the Lowland Scottish poetry, of which we are all
so justly proud. With regard to the poetry current at
one time or another in the Highlands, a simple statement
of one or two well-known facts will be sufficient to
render that strikingly evident, and to prove that poetic
genius was abundantly possessed by the inhabitants of
the mountain and insular districts of Scotland. In Reid’s
“Bibliotheca Scoto-Celtica, an account of all the books
that have been printed in the Gaelic Language,” there is
a list given of fifty-eight different volumes of Gaelic
poetry, containing the words of well-known bards, or the
result of collections made orally throughout the Highlands.