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

104
MODERN GAELIC BARDS.
But the dear known direction
My thoughts ever flee.
Heich ! when we stray’d
Far away,
Where soft shone the summer day
Through the green shade.
The airy, haughty, heartless coquette of this little
ballad is sketched with considerable spirit. “Ha! ha! ha!
Are you ill 1” is a touch of Nature. One sees the poor
disconsolate bard standing bewildered before her without
a word in his head—so utterly cast down is he at the ill-
placed mirth and cruel triumph of his fair-haired beauty.
He has contrived, however, to make the lady show a little
pique too,—If love seeks to kill you—bah ! small is his
skill! ”—as if to console himself with the idea that his old
favourite was not so utterlv destitute of feeling, nor her
old love, after all, so easily cast off without leaving a
trace behind.
It would not perhaps be altogether unsatisfactory to
know that “ Anna, the yellow-hair’d,” met with some
little bit of a disappointment herself in the end, in spite
of her vaunted powers of attracting six lovers in one year,
—and such is said to have been the case. A Gaelic note
to this song declares that she married the fair-haired
carpenter, but led an unhappy life with him, and never
quite recovered her old spirits after the memorable parting
at the shieling, recorded above.
The date of the following song is 1784. On the day
when the news of the death of Henry Pelham, the prime
minister, reached Durness, Rob Donn sallied forth among
the neighbouring mountains in search of deer. After
wandering about the whole day he found himself towards
evening in a very remote glen, far from any human
habitation, except one where lay a solitary old man suffer¬
ing fearfully from asthma. The gloom of night, the