1891-92. ] CELTIC PROSODY. 223 
the talented author. Mrs. Mary MacKellar is a poetess whose ability in 
the composing of Gaelic Anapaests is very remarkable, indeed, and whose 
mellifluous metres would do credit to a Greek tragedian. Several of 
Mrs. MacKellar’s poems are written in Anapaests. She appears to fine 
advantage in praise of a meeting which was held in Edinburgh and of 
which the late Lord Colonsay—himself a Gael of the Gaels—was chair- 
man, for the purpose of taking steps to establish a Chair of Celtic Liter- 
ature in the University of that city. I shall give two’stanzas merely of 
the poem in question. 
O lionaibh dhomh corn ’us gu’n ol mi le fonn 
Deoch-slainte nan uaislean sliochd uaibhreach nan sonn, 
’S air tus cuiream failt air an t sar ’bh’air an ceann, 
Am morair bho Cholonsa nan gorm ghleann ’s nam beann. 
A chanain mo mhathar, a chanain mo ghaoil, 
Bidh tu fas ann an sgiamh gus’m bi crioch air an t-saogh’l, 
’S ged bha thu gu tinn, gheabhar cinnteach dhuit leigh, 
’S bidh tu luinneagach binn feadh gach linn’ thig nar deigh.” 
Mrs. MacKellar is equally at home in various forms of Gaelic verse, as 
her touching elegy in connection with the death of Prince Leopold clear- 
ly shows. 
O buailidh mi ’n teud orbhuidh, 
Fann bhuailidh mi ’n teud 
’S mi’ sileadh nan deur, 
O’n chuala mi’ n sgeul bronach. 
Campbell of Ledag has composed Gaelic Trochaics and Iambics that 
are worthy of great praise. Neil MacLeod with an elegance of diction 
that would do honour to Tennyson with his pure Anglo-Saxon, has 
shown that he is a master of Gaelic verse, and that his native language 
can be fashioned by him into very musical combinations. The Irish 
poems that appear in the Gaelic Journal of Dublin, and in the 
‘(Gaodhal of Brooklyn; the Gaelic poems that appear either in a per- 
manent form or that have an ephemeral existence in newspapers and 
magazines, indicate that Celtic versification is keeping pace with the 
greater refinement and concinnity of modern poetry ; and that the Celtic 
languages, if justice is done to them, have intrinsic strength and powers 
of adaptation which can gain for them, and ought to gain for them, as 
long and as glorious a future as is in store for even the most popular 
forms of German and English verse. 
