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

ALEXANDER MACDONALD.
* 25
And the small fish of the ocean
Turn’d over their white breast—
Dead, innumerable, with the raging
Of the furious sea’s unrest.
The stones and shells of the deep channel
Were in motion;
Swept from out their lowly bed
By the tumult of the ocean ;
Till the sea, like a great mess of pottage,
Troubled, muddy grew
With the blood of many mangled creatures,
Dirty red in hue—
Where the hoi-n’d and clawy wild beasts,
Short-footed splay;
With great wailing gumless mouths
Huge and wide open lay.
But the whole deep was full of spectres,
Loose and sprawling
With the claws and with the tails of monsters
Pawing, squalling.
It was frightful even to hear them
Screech so loudly;
The sound might move full fifty heroes
Stepping proudly.
Our whole crew grew dull of hearing
In the tempest’s scowl,
So sharp the quavering cries of demons
And the wild beasts’ howl.
With oaken planks the weltering waves were wrestling
In their noisy splashing;
While the sharp beak of our swift ship
On the sea-pigs* came dashing.
The wind kept still renewing all its wildness
In the far west,
* Sea-pigs (inuea-mara) are porpoises