86 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



assemblage poured. Old men in the trews and plaid, lads in the 

 philibeg, grey crones and withered calliaghs, the kerchiefed 

 dame, and the lass whose golden locks no coif or ribbon im- 

 prisoned, had crossed, bare-footed not a few of them, half the 

 breadth of the island, over mountains rugged and trackless, 

 along precipitous scars, by the banks of foaming torrents, through 

 weary heaths and swamps curtained with mist all led by that 

 spirit which the fame of eloquence invokes. I have seen this 

 motley congregation seated on the sward below the preacher, 

 distributed in picturesque groups along one side of the grassy 

 knoll which he occupied, every eye fixed, every ear at stretch, 

 every heart held open to receive. You could have heard, in the 

 silence of an occasional pause, the grasshopper's chirp or the 

 wild-bee's hum, even the cropping of the daisied turf by a shaggy 

 pony, whose affection for its owner had guided it towards the 

 sacred precincts ; and when the service was over, little skill did 

 it require to read in the countenance of every retiring listener 

 the shining triumphs of the gospel orator the signet-stamp of 

 his Angel of Persuasion. 



The same master-spell which works in the speech appears to 

 work also in the music of the Gael. On this occasion ample 

 evidence was given of its strange control ; for, as fate would 

 have it, the spirit being raised, and the presence in an adjoining 

 apartment of a couple of rival pipers having been announced, 

 my frail ear was subjected, for the space of at least four mortal 

 hours, to a course of laments and pibroch s, which the circulation 

 of potent punch, ladled out by the host with severe exactness 

 from the hollow of a bowl at least two feet in circumference, and 

 of corresponding altitude, only rendered the more excruciating. 

 Such an afternoon of musical agony I have never since en- 

 dured ; and although it has been my lot to encounter many a 

 wet and gusty night, I have always managed to steer pretty 

 clear of kilted lairds given to connect their unhallowed orgies, in 



