Books and other items printed in Gaelic from 1871 to 1900 > Orain

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MEMOIR.
The first verse he is said to have composed was
when he had attained only his third year. It was
then the fashion for children, when they had little
more than left the nurse’s lap, to be dressed in a
short frock or cassock, formed close to the body
round the waist, and buttoned at the back. A
tailor had fitted our youthful author with such an
habiliment, and next morning the child was anxious
to exhibit it; but his mother and the domestics
having been summoned early to some out-door
pursuits, Robert became anxious to get abroad in
his new garb, but found himself quite defeated in
every attempt to button it on. He took the alter¬
native of sallying forth in a state of nudity; when,
being met by his mother coming towards the house,
she chided him for being seen out of doors in this
state. Robert’s defence was made in a stanza, (page
329,) reproaching the tailor for the trick he had
played him, in placing the buttons behind, and la¬
menting his own inability to accommodate the new
dress to his person. His next exhibition of poetic
promise was given in the same year, we are told, in
the harvest season, when all the inmates of the
family were employed in reaping. An old woman,
who acted as nurse to the children, was on this
occasion called to the sickle. She complained
that the more active labourers had jostled her out
of her place, and left her only to reap the strag¬
gling stinted stalks that grew in the border furrow.
Robert, able but to creep at his nurse’s elbow,
endeavoured to rally her with a verse, (page 330) in
which he sagely advises her to make the best of the
worst;—to amuse herself with doing it completely.
At the age of six or seven years, he attracted
the particular observation of Mr John Mackay,
a gentleman of the family of Skerray, then living
on the neighbouring farm of Musai. This gentle¬
man, of poetic talents himself, prevailed with our
author’s parents to allow their child to come into