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

NOTES ON THE POEMS.
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Though on an earthen floor he kneels in peace,
To say with reverent devotion’s power,
“Our Father” to the God that made the heavens—
“Our Father” to the God that rules the earth—
“Thy Servant,” say unto the Man Divine,
The holy, harmless, undefiled with sin—
There is in verity a grandeur here. ” •
I shall never forget one summer evening I heard a
sermon in the Pious Labourer’s house beside Loch na
Crannaig. The preacher, on this memorable occasion,
was the venerable and eloquent Rev. Hugh Fraser, M. A.,
of the Free Church of Ardchattan. It was this accom¬
plished country minister who wrote the interesting
and instructive accounts of Ardchattan and Muckairn
which appeared in the New Statistical Account of
Argyllshire, published in 1845. Mr. Alexander C.
Fraser, D.C.L., LL.D., Professor of Logic and Psychology
in the University of Edinburgh, and the learned Editor
of the works of Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, the
expounder of Ideal Philosophy, is the son of the late
minister of Ardchattan. Among those who went with
Mr. Hugh Fraser to the Pious Labourer’s humble home,
was Mr. Pattison. In the whole audience there was not a
more attentive hearer than the brown-haired, fair-visaged,
large-eyed, gentle student of the Gaelic Bards. The
sermon was on Blind Bartimeus. With melting tones
the fluent speaker, in well-chosen Gaelic words, drew a
soul-moving picture of the blind beggar rising, casting
away his long outer garment and running to Jesus.
My occasional reading of Longfellow’s touching verses on
Blind Bartimeus vividly recalls this scene.
V.—Captain Gorrie’s Ride.—Captain Godfrey Mac
Neill, tenant of Kilcalumkil, a farm in the vicinity of
Port-Ellen, and laird of Ardnacross estate in Kintyre,
was the elder brother of Major Ban MacNeill of Balmony,
Rhinns of Islay. Captain Gorrie became proprietor of
Ardnacross through his mother’s marriage with Mac
s