NETHER LOCHABER. 



CHAPTEE I. 



Primroses and Daisies in early March — "The Posie " — Burns — "The Ancient Mariner" — 

 William Tennant, Author of Anster Fair — Hebridean Epithalamhnn — A Bard's 

 Blessing— A Translation — Macleod of Eerneray. 



The weather [March 1868] with us here still continues wonderfully- 

 genial and mild : taken all in all, the season may be noted as in this 

 respect perhaps without precedent in our meteorological annals. The 

 sun, with nearly eight degrees of southern declination, is not yet half- 

 way through Pisces; we are still three weeks from the vernal equinox, 

 and yet on our table before us, as we write these lines, there is as 

 pretty a posy of wild-flowers as you could wish to see, consisting of 

 daisies, primroses, and other modest beauties, the " firstlings of the 

 year," culled from bank and brae at a date when in ordinary 

 seasons the country, snow-covered or ice-bound, is but a bleak and 

 barren waste. Older and wiser people than ourselves confidently 

 predict "a winter in mid-spring" as yet in store for us; but 

 meliora speramus, we had rather believe that to one of the mildest 

 winters on record wiU succeed a genial spring, a splendid summer, 

 and an abundant harvest. In any case, as somebody said of 

 Scaliger and Clavius, Mallem cum Scaligero errare quam cum 

 Clavio recti sapere : I had rather, that is, be a partaker in the 



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