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

12
MODERN GAELIC BARDS.
For the stout, stiff, manly heroes
Must work untiring,
Should every board of her be quivering,
Round oaken post and iron;
While oar blades splash among the water,
And knobs clank on her side,
On with such force, you ’ll make her course,
With fearless pride.
Strong arms can drive this slender bark
Through the wide deep,
Right in the face of the blue billows’
Rising, bristling heap.
Row for such mettled manly crew,
Our oars to sweep;
To make the grey-backed eddies whirl
Where their strokes press’d,
And flag not, tire not, drowse not, bend not,
In the storm’s rough breast.
Then after the six men and ten are seated at the oars,
in order to row under the wind to the sailing place, let
stout Galium, son of Ranald of the Ocean, shout the
lorram* for her and be seated on the foremost oar, and
let this be it:—
Row since you are rank’d in order,
And seem all to be well chosen,
Give her one good plunge, like champions,
Brave and boldly.
Give her one good plunge, &c.
* lorram (pronounced, Yirram) is a boat-song, or an oar-song,
and sometimes a lament. This double meaning it acquired from
the fact of the lorram being so often chanted in the boats that
carried the remains of chiefs and nobles over the western seas to
Iona.