PRIMROSES AND DAISIES. 



" Farewell, farewell, but this I tell 



To thee, thou Wedding Guest, 

 He prayeth well, who loveth well 



Both man, and bird, and beast. 

 He prayeth best, who loveth best 



All things, both great and small ; 

 Por the dear God who loveth us, 



He made and loveth all." 



We love The Posie of Burns for its own sake, but we love it 

 aU the more, perhaps, because our attention was first directed to 

 its sweet simplicity and tender beauty by one of our earliest 

 and kindest friends, himself a poet of no mean order, the late 

 Professor "William Tennant, author of Anster Fair, in aU its 

 fantastical gaiety and homely mirth the most original poem, per- 

 haps, to be found in the literature of our country. 



A gentleman who resides at present in Cheltenham, a cadet of one 

 of the oldest and most respectable families on the "West Coast, and 

 himself the head of a house not unknown in Highland story, has 

 been so good as to send us a short Gaelic poem in manuscript, with 

 a request that we should give an English version of it. "With this 

 request we very readily comply, such a task being to us a labour of 

 love ; the poem itself, besides, being very beautiful, and the history 

 of its composition extremely interesting, as throwing some light on 

 the manners and customs of the olden times. The following 

 prefatory note from the MS. itself sufficiently explains the origin 

 of this quaint and curious Hebridean Epithalamium : — " It was tho 

 custom in the West Highlands of Scotland in the olden time to 

 meet the bride coming forth from her chamber with her maidens 

 on the morning after her marriage, and to salute her with a 

 poetical blessing called Beannacliadh Baird. On the occasion of 

 the marriage of the Eev. Donald Macleod of Durinish, in the 

 Isle of Skye, this practice having then got very much into 

 desuetude, and none being found prepared to salute his bride 



