296 NETHER LOCHABER. 



breeze, and free and sparkling as the mountain stream, and more 

 especially our Celtic friends who have been taught to honour and 

 reverence the " kilted " muse — will be glad to know that Professor 

 Blackie has in preparation the materials of what cannot fail to 

 prove a very interesting volume, consisting of translations of some 

 of the most admired compositions of our modem Gaelic bards. 

 Macintyre's Ben. Dorain, Alasdair Macdonald's Berliun, with 

 many of such lesser popular lyrics, as Am Breacan Wallach, 

 Failte na Mor-Tliir, A Bhanarach Dlioim a Cruidh, &c., will 

 thus appear for the first time in a becoming Saxon garb ; not — to 

 use the milliner's phrase — too tight a fit, observe, but natural and 

 easy, though " made to measure," and we venture to predict that 

 our English readers, who as yet know them not at all, and our 

 Gaelic friends, who know them well and have long known them, 

 wiU alike be pleased vrith the results of the learned Professor's 

 gallant raid into bard-land. The Professor has been visiting us 

 here lately, and we can honestly say that such specimens of his 

 work as he was good enough to read to us — and there are few better 

 readers than Professor Blackie — seemed to us admirably done. 

 His version of Ben. Dorain particularly, which we had an 

 opportunity of hearing twice, and of which we can thus speak most 

 positively, is thoroughly well done ; so well, so faithfully, and 

 vrith such spirit and verve as must delight not only the ordinary 

 reader, but the very " ghost " of the original author — Macintyre 

 himself — if, like the Ossianic departed heroes, he is permitted to 

 know and appreciate sublunary afi'airs from out the bosom of " his 

 cloud." The Professor translates these Gaelic poems into English 

 verse just as, in our opinion, they should be translated ; not too 

 literally, but with all necessary freedom and elbow room, and yet 

 so literally that any one knowing the English version may rest 

 assured that he knows also the original quite as intimately and 

 correctly as it is possible in the circumstances for any mere outsider 



