1881.] on the Literature of the Scottish Wujhlands. 55^ 



Duncan MacIntyue, of Inveroran in Argylcshirc, all belonging to 

 the niiildlc or tlio latter half of the last century. MacDonald, unlike 

 his brethren of the Celtic lyre, hail received a university education, and 

 had more of the character of a modern literary man than of a genuine 

 Highland minstrel. Possessed of a bold Byronic genius, he was the 

 author of several poems of undeniable power, and a man altogether 

 who, under more favourable circumstances, might have ri2)ened into a 

 great British poetic notability. He lived in the country of tlic Clan 

 Kanald, and his launch of the Biorlinn, or Barge of Clan Ranald, is 

 nn(i[uestionably one of the most spirited and powerful poems in 

 the Gaelic language. 



DuGALD Buchanan, the Bunyan of the religious world in tlio 

 Highlands, had a genuine poetic vein, as his poem on Hamlet's 

 suggestive theme — a human skull — places beyond doubt ; but that 

 classical production, and his other poems, are marred to heterodox 

 readers, by their want of sympathy with the peculiar theology of 

 terrors and tortures with which the natural gay temperament of 

 the Highland Celts, since the Evangelical revival of last centuiy, in 

 its most narrow and repulsive form, has been largely infected. 



MacIntyre, or Duncan Ban, fair Duncan, as he is more familiarly 

 called, like a genuine old Celtic bard, knew nothing of reading or 

 writing, but spun his musical musings into shai)e as he wandered up 

 and down the glens in the vicinity of Tijndrum and Loch Tulloch. His 

 poems breathe the finest appreciation of Nature and the most genuine 

 human kindness ; health and joy and beauty are the atmosphere which 

 he constantly carries about with him ; he borrows his colour from the 

 purple heather, and his music from the mountain brook ; while the stag 

 on the brae is his familiar friend, and the most distinctive living 

 figure in his landscape. As a picture of mountain scenery, and a 

 glorification of the characteristic Highland sport of deer-stalking, 

 Maclntyre's " Ben Doran " is a work as unique and perfect in the 

 region of poetical art as Landseer's pictures are in the sister art of 

 painting. Of this poem it may be interesting to present a specimen 

 from a translation made by me some years ago in Oban.* 



" Right pleasant was the view 

 Of that fleet red-mantled crew, 

 As with sounding hoof they trod 

 O'er the greon and turfy sod 



Up the brae. 

 As they sped with lithsome hurry 

 Through the rock-engirded corrie, 

 "With no lack of food, I ween, 

 When they cropped the banquet green 



All the way. 

 O grandly did they gather, 

 In a jocund troop together, 



* Published in 'Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands.' 

 Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1876. 



