226 NETHER LOCHABER. 



panding blossom and bursting bud. Our -wild-birds never had a 

 finer nesting season, and they are now literally as merry as the day 

 is long, for with the first flush of dawn in the east they begin their 

 rich and varied song, which, with a short interval of quiescence 

 and repose about mid-day, is continued without interruption until 

 long after the sun has set and the earlier stars are already twinkling 

 through the twilight gloom. April will be succeeded by the " merry 

 month of May," which, with the exception of two, or at most three, 

 cold days, with frost at night, about the 10th, is pretty sure to be 

 an unusually fine month even for May. It was an article of belief 

 in the hygienic code of the old Highlanders, and which you come 

 across occasionally even at the present day, that the invalid, sufier- 

 ing under no matter what form of internal ailment, upon whom 

 the sun of May once fairly shed its light, was pretty sure of a 

 renewed lease of life until at least the next autumnal equinox, 

 and how fine, by the way, and lightsome and cheery withal, Bishop 

 Gawin Douglas' apostrophe (circa 1512) : — • 



' ' Welcum the lord of licht, and lamp of day, 

 Welcum foaterare of tender herbis grene, 

 Welcum quickener of flurest flouris schene, 

 Welcum supporte of every rute and vane, 

 Welcum comfort of all kind frute and grane, 

 Welcum the birdis beUd upon the brier, 

 Welcum maister and ruler of the yeare, 

 Welcum weilfare of husbands at the plewis, 

 Welcum repairer of woddis, treis, and bewis, 

 Welcum depainter of the blomyt medis, 

 Welcum the lyf of every thing that spedis, 

 Welcum storare of all kind bestial, 

 Welcum be thy bricht beams gladand all ! " 



(Prologue to " xii. Buhc of Encados of Virgill.") 



The ^neid has been often translated into English, both in prose 

 and verse, since the days of Gawin Douglas, but we doubt if the 

 Mantuan bard has ever been more happily rendered than by tlie 

 good Bishop of Dunkeld. The following is his rendering of perhaps 



