4i6 NETHER LOCHABER. 



have teen the chief and most remarkable agents, the name comes 



to have a fitting and appropriate enough meeting, vrithout the 



necessity of taking in the name of Deirdri or Dearduil at all. Mr. 



Mackay next gives a translation of a couple of quatrains from the 



oldest known version of the Clann-Uisneachan ballad ; that, namely, 



of the veUmn manuscript in the Advocates' Library, bearing the 



date 1238, and quoted in the Highland Society's Eeport on 



Ossian : — 



' ' Beloved land, that eastern laud, 

 Alba, with its lakes ; 

 Oh, that I might not depart from it ; 



But I go with Kaois. 

 Glen Urchain, Glen TJrchain, 

 It was the straight glen of smooth ridges : 

 Not more joyful was a man of his age 

 Than Naois in Glen Urchain." 



Mr. Mackay will have it, of course, that this " Glen-Urchain " is his 

 Glen Urquhart. The Gaelic name of Urquhart, however, is invari- 

 ably a trisyllable ; but this apart, the Glen-Urchain of Mr. 

 Mackay has no existence in the ballad from which he professes to 

 translate. The quatrain stands thus in the original : — 



" Mo cheu Glen Urohaidh, 

 Ba hedh in Glen direaoh dromchain ; 

 Uallcha feara aoisi 

 Ma Naise an Glend Urchaidh." 



It is Glen Urchaidh, observe, not Urchain; the Glenurchay of 

 Argyllshire, in short, not the Glen Urquhart or Urchadan of 

 Inverness-shire. This is further proved by the context, the 

 immediately preceding and succeeding stanzas, which speak of 

 Glen Mason and Glendaruel in Cowal ; of Duntroon ; of Innisstry- 

 nich on Loch Awe ; of Eite or Etive, &c. In so far, in short, as 

 this story of Clann-Uisneachan of Ireland has to do with Scotland, 

 we find it connected with Argyllshire, where indeed • we should 

 most naturally look for it; and chiefly with Glen Etive and Loch 



