The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

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Skyc Bards. 751
Mr Pattison gives the following translation :
Yet nought to mc but a sting all her bright beauties
bring
I droop with decay and I languish ;
There's a pain at my heart like a pitiless dart,
And I waste all away with anguish.
She has stolen the hue on my young cheek that grew,
And much she has caused my sorrow
Unless now she renew with her kindness that hue,
Death will soon bid me " Good-morrow."
The curl of her hair was so grarcful and fair,
Its lid for her eye a sweet warden ;
Her cheek it was bright, and her breast limy white,
And her breath like the breeze o'er a garden.
Till they lay down my head in its stone-guarded bed
The force of these charms I feel daily,
While I think of the mirth in the woods that had
birth ;
When she laughed and sported gaily.
Neil Macleod in the song which he composed, " Aig
Uaigh Uilleim Rois," says :
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Am measg nam bard a thog ar tir
Cha robh a h-aon dhuibh 'sheinn r'a linn,
A dhuisgeadh suas ar baigh 'g a chaoidh
Cho seimh ri Ros.
An nine ghearr bha 'chlarsach bhinn
A' seirm a bhos.
NEIL MACNAB.
Neil Macnab lived during the latter half of last century.
His great grandson, J. Macnab, is the present admirable
teacher of Kilmuir, in Troternish, and it is from him that I
got the following account of Neil Macnab. In his letter to
me Mr J. Macnab says :
" After some delay, I beg to send you the very few notes
I have been able to gather of my great grandfather's life.
My father knows less about his life than I would like, and,
of his songs, he has plenty fragments, but no complete piece.
A much rarer art than that of the rhymster, at least now
a days, in the Highlands is that of musical composition.