The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

A Cetlidh. 565
generally of a motley character, consisting as it did, of
persons of all ages and of both sexes.
There were other houses specially patronised by the
young women, which became, as a matter of course, the
habitual resort of their sweethearts. There the nights
were spent in singing Gaelic songs, and in mirthful and
how often I think of those joyous
innocent talk. Ah !
nights when I listened enraptured to a rosy-cheeked
and dark-eyed Highland maiden, ignorant of the amount
of wickedness that exists in the great world beyond yonder
blue mountains that have ever separated her from it, and,
pure as the snow that caps the bens of her native land, sing
in a voice untrained and uncultivated, but sweet as that
of the mavis that, with the rosy dawn, wakens her as it
sings its morning carol to welcome the advent of a new
day, such verses as these :
—
^ " A nighean bhoidheach an orfhuilt bhachalaich
Nan gorm shul miogach 's na min-bhas sneachda-gheal,
Gun siubhlain reidhleach air sleibhtean Bhreatuin leat,
Fo earradh sgaoilte de dh' aodach breacan orm.
" Gur binne comhradh na oraid fhileanta ;
Tha guth nas ceolmhor na oigh cheol binn fhaclach,
Cha laidheadh bron oirn, no leon, no iomadan,
Ri faighinn sgeul duinn o bheul na finne sin.
" 'Nuair thig a bhealtuinn 's an samhradh luiseanach,
Bidh sinn air airidh air ard nan uchdanan,
Bidh cruit nan gleanntan gu canntair cuirteasach,
Gu trie gar dusgadh le surd gu mocheirigh."
Mackenzie's "Beauties of Gaelic Poetry."
[to be continued.]
D. M.