Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Jacobite minstrelsy

274 JACOBITE
THE LAMENT OF FLORA MCDONALD.*
Far over yon hills of the heather so green,
And down by the correi that sings to the sea,
The bonnie young Flora sat sighing her lane,
The dew on her plaid, and the tear in her e'e.
She look'd at a boat which the breezes had swung
Away on the wave, like a bird of the main ;
And aye as it lessen'd, she sigh'd and she sung,
" Farewell to the lad I shall ne'er see again !
Farewell to my hero, the gallant and young !
Farewell to the lad I shall ne'er see again !
" The moorcock that crows on the top of Ben-
Connal,
He kens o' his bed in a sweet mossy hame ;
The eagle that soars o'er the cliffs of Clan
Ronald,
Unaw'd and unhunted, his eiry can claim ;
The solan can sleep on his shelve of the shore ;
The cormorant roost on his rock of the sea :
But, oh ! there is ane whose hard fate I deplore ;
Nor house, ha' nor hame, in his country has he.
The conflict is past, and our name is no more :
There's nought left but sorrow for Scotland
and me.
* The Ettricfc Shepherd composed this song from some rude
verses translated from the Gaelic, which were communicated to hira
by Neil Gow, the famous performer on the violin. Neil wished to
publish them on a single sheet for the sake of the old air, but found
them too rough-spun and vulgar for publication. " Accordingly,"
says the Shepherd, " I undertook to versify them of new, and think
I have made them a great deal better without altering one senti-
ment." The original Highland poet has taken the usual license of
representing Flora as bewailing a lost lover in the exiled Prince.
Miss M'Donald's attachment to Charles, and the services she ren-
dered him, however, appear to have been founded on duty and hu-
manity, not love. Neither did the prince seem to view her in any