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

MEMOIR.
XV
in that part of the parish of Durness which bor¬
ders upon Cape Wrath. Whatever was the cause
of the difference that occasioned his removal, he
was soon recalled, and left not the service again
during the life of his Chief.
After the death of Donald Lord Reay, the place
of Baile-na-cille came into the management of Mr
Mackay of Skibo, and shortly afterwards became
the residence of Col. Hugh Mackay, the son of Mr
John Mackay, the Bard’s early employer and friend.
Robert continued in Colonel Mackay’s employ,
till his wife, now feeling the infirmities of age, was
no longer able to undergo the fatigues of her la¬
borious office. They retired to the neighbouring
small farm of Nuybig. They had not long resided
here, when our Bard was deprived by death of his
excellent wife, whom he tenderly loved, and whom
he did not survive many months. He continued,
however, to attend his usual avocations, till within
a fortnight of his death, on the 5th August 1778,
being then aged 63 years and 9 months.
If any one ever had a mind intuitively alive to
the fair, the beautiful, in manners, and conduct,
and principle, his was that mind. Ingenuously
and openly alive to the beauty of what was moral,
good, and becoming, his mind seemed to be in¬
capable of viewing the opposite deformities, without
being excited to feelings of displeasure.
His sense of the ludicrous was poetically keen ;
so much indeed was it, that its free indulgence
may be considered by many too nearly allied to
blemish, in two respects. His stores of wit and
humour were inexhaustible, and next to superior
intelligence and acuteness of mind, formed perhaps
in his every-day character, the most distinguishing
feature; while, in the social circle, where it was
the delight of all to behold him, we have not
learned that he ever made his wit and humour
offensive, by any thing bordering upon vulgarity.