The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Neiv Books. 319
" Sweet bard, another still I see ;
A host it flutters o'er ;
Like bird above the roaring surge
That laves the storm-swept shore."
" The Broom of Peril," quoth the bard,
" Young Oscar's banner, see :
Amidst the conflict of dread chiefs
The proudest name has he."
The banner of great Finn we raised ;
The Sunbeam gleaming far,
With golden spangles of renown
From many a field of war.
The flag was fastened to its staff
With nine strong chains of gold.
With nine times nine chiefs for each chain ;
Before it foes oft rolled.
"Redeem your pledge to me,"' said Finn ;
" And show your deeds of might
To Lochlin as you did before
In many a gory fight."
Like torrents from the mountain heights
That roll resistless on :
So down upon the foe we rushed.
And brilliant victory wo;:.
A pioneer work of wide scope is never free from a good many
more or less trivial errors. As we think it likely that this book
will go into a second edition, it is as well to point out some errors
which struck us on the first hasty reading. At page 16 r, two
poems from the Dean of Lismore's collection, which have nothing
in common, have been strangely run into one another. Down to
the line,
" Than want the wealth of Cnesus,"
Finlay Roy Bovaine, or Finlay MacNab, sings the praises of Macgregor,
after that a nameless bastard, in vaunting his own descent,
obligingly gives almost a complete list of the fifteenth century
Highland Clans. Isabel, Countess of Argyll, was not the wite of
Colin, the first Earl of Argyll, but of his descendant, who died at
Flodden. She was a daughter of that Earl of Athule who was the
son of the Black Knight of Lome, and of the widowed Queen
ot James the First. At page 165, Turner's and Pattison's
mistake in regard to the authoress of the fiercely and
pathetically unique, " Ochan, ochan uiri," Macgregor Lullaby,