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oughtest to defend young Fillan." Ossian will meet the foe! Green Erin, thy sounding tread is pleasant to my ear. I rush on thy ridgy host, to shun the eyes of Fingal. I hear the voice of the king, on Mora's misty top! He calls his two sons! I come, my father, in my grief. I come like an eagle, which the flame of night met in the desert, and spoiled of half his wings!"

Distant *, round the king, on Mora, the broken ridges of Morven are rolled. They turned their eyes : each darkly bends, on his own ashen spear. Silent stood the king in the midst. Thought on thought rolled over his soul. As waves on a secret mountainlake, each with its back of foam. He looked; no son appeared, with his long-beaming spear. sighs rose, crowding, from his soul; but he concealed his grief. At length I stood beneath an oak. No voice of mine was heard. What could I say to Fingal in his hour of woe? His words rose, at length, in the midst the people shrunk backward as he spoke.t

The

*"This scene," says an ingenious writer, and a good judge, "is solemn. The poet always places his chief character amidst objects which favour the sublime. The face of the country, the night, the broken remains of a defeated army, and, above all, the attitude and silence of Fingal himself, are circumstances calculated to impress an awful idea on the mind. Ossian is most successful in his night-descriptions. Dark images suited the melancholy temper of his mind. His poems were all composed after the active part of his life was over, when he was blind, and had survived all the companions of his youth: we therefore find a veil of melancholy thrown over the whole."

pen:

I owe the first paragraph of the following note to the same

"Where is the son of Selma, he who led in war? I behold not his steps, among my people, returning

"The abashed behaviour of the army of Fingal proceeds rather from shame than fear. The king was not of a tyrannical disposition: He, as he professes himself in the fifth book, never was a dreadful form, in their presence, darkened into wrath. His voice was no thunder to their ears: his eye sent forth no death. The first ages of society are not the times of arbitrary power. As the wants of mankind are few, they retain their independence. It is an advanced state of civilization that moulds the mind to that submission to government, of which ambitious magistrates take advantage, and raise themselves into absolute power."

It is a vulgar error, that the common Highlanders lived, in abject slavery, under their chiefs. Their high ideas of, and attachment to, the heads of their families, probably, led the unintelligent into this mistake. When the honour of the tribe was concerned, the commands of the chief were obeyed, without restriction; but, if individuals were oppressed, they threw themselves into the arms of a neighbouring clan, assumed a new name, and were encouraged and protected. The fear of this desertion, no doubt, made the chiefs cautious in their government. As their consequence, in the eyes of others, was in proportion to the number of their people, they took care to avoid every thing that tended to diminish it.

It was but very lately that the authority of the laws extended to the Highlands. Before that time the clans were governed, in civil affairs, not by the verbal commands of the chief, but by what they called Clechda, or the traditional precedents of their ancestors. When differences happened between individuals, some of the oldest men in the tribe were chosen umpires between the parties, to decide according to the Clechda. The chief interposed his authority, and, invariably, enforced the decision. In their wars, which were frequent, on account of family-feuds, the chief was less reserved in the execution of his authority; and even then he seldom extended it to the taking the life of any of his tribe. No crime was capital, except murder; and that was very unfrequent in the Highlands. No corporal punishment, of any kind, was inflicted. The memory of an affront of this sort would remain for ages, in a family, and they would seize every opportunity to be revenged, unless it came immediately from the hands of the chief himself; in that case it was taken, rather as a fatherly correction, than a legal punishment for offences.

from the field. Fell the young bounding roe, who was so stately on my hills? He fell; for ye are silent. The shield of war is cleft in twain. Let his armour be near to Fingal; and the sword of darkbrown Luno. I am waked on my hills; with morning I descend to war."

High* on Cormul's rock, an oak is flaming to the wind. The grey skirts of mist are rolled around; thither strode the king in his wrath. Distant from the host he always lay, when battle burnt within his soul. On two spears hung his shield on high; the gleaming sign of death; that shield, which he was wont to strike, by night, before he rushed to war. It was then his warriors knew, when the king was to lead in strife; for never was this buckler heard, till the wrath of Fingal arose. Unequal were his steps on high, as he shone in the beam of the oak; he was

*This rock of Cormul is often mentioned in the preceding part of the poem. It was on it Fingal and Ossian stood to view the battle. The custom of retiring from the army, on the night prior to their engaging in battle, was universal among the kings of the Caledonians. Trenmor, the most renowned of the ancestors of Fingal, is mentioned as the first who instituted this custom. Succeeding bards attributed it to a hero of a later period. In an old poem, which begins with Mac-Arcath na ceud frol, this custom of retiring from the army, before an engagement, is numbered, among the wise institutions of Fergus, the son of Arch or Arcath, the first king of Scots. I shall here translate the passage; in some other note I may, probably, give all that remains of the poem. Fergus of the hundred streams, son of Arcath who fought of old: thou didst first retire at night: when the foe rolled before thee, in echoing fields. Nor bending in rest is the king: hé gathers battles in his soul. Fly, son of the stranger! with morn he shall rush abroad. When, or by whom, this poem was written, is uncertain.

dreadful as the form of the spirit of night, when he cloaths, on hills, his wild gestures with mist, and, Issuing forth, on the troubled ocean, mounts the car

of winds.

Now

Nor settled, from the storm, is Erin's sea of war! they glitter, beneath the moon, and, low-humming, still roll on the field. Alone are the steps of Cathmor, before them on the heath; he hangs forward, with all his arms, on Morven's flying host. had he come to the mossy cave, where Fillan lay in night. One tree was bent above the stream, which glittered over the rock. There shone to the moon the broken shield of Clatho's son; and near it, on grass, lay hairy-footed Bran.* He had missed the chief on Mora, and searched him along the wind. He thought

I remember to have met with an old poem, wherein a story of this sort is very happily introduced. In one of the invasions of the Danes, Ullin-clundu, a considerable chief, on the western coast of Scotland, was killed in a rencounter with a flying party of the enemy, who had landed, at no great distance, from the place of his residence. The few followers who attended him were also slain. The young wife of Ullin-clundu, who had not heard of his fall, fearing the worst, on account of his long delay, alarmed the rest of his tribe, who went in search of him along the shore. They did not find him; and the beautiful widow became disconsolate. At length he was discovered, by means of his dog, who sat on a rock beside the body, for some days. The stanza concerning the dog, whose name was Du-chos, or Blackfoot, is descriptive.

"Dark-sided Du-chos! feet of wind! cold is thy seat on rocks. He (the dog) sees the roe: his ears are high; and half he bounds away. He looks around; but Ullin sleeps; he droops again his head. The winds come past; dark Du-chos thinks that Ullin's voice is there. But still he beholds him silent, laid amidst the waving heath. Dark-sided Du-chos, his voice no more shall send thee over the heath!"

that the blue-eyed hunter slept; he lay upon his shield. No blast came over the heath, unknown to bounding Bran.

Cathmor saw the white-breasted dog; he saw the broken shield. Darkness is blown back on his soul;~ he remembers the falling away of the people. They come, a stream; are rolled away; another race succeeds. "But some mark the fields, as they pass, with their own mighty names. The heath, through dark-brown years, is theirs; some blue stream winds to their fame. Of these be the chief of Atha, when he lays him down on earth. Often may the voice of future times meet Cathmor in the air: when he strides from wind to wind, or folds himself in the wing of a storm."

Green Erin gathered round the king, to hear the voice of his power. Their joyful faces bend, unequal, forward, in the light of the oak. They who were terrible were removed: Lubar winds again in their host. Cathmor was that beam from heaven which shone when his people were dark. He was honoured

* In order to illustrate this passage, it is proper to lay before the reader the scene of the two preceding battles. Between the hills of Mora and Lona lay the plain of Moi-lena, through which ran the river Lubar. The first battle, wherein Gaul, the son of Morni, commanded on the Caledonian side, was fought on the banks of Luhar. As there was little advantage obtained on either side, the armies, after the battle, retained their former positions.

In the second battle, wherein Fillan commanded, the Irish, after the fall of Foldath, were driven up the hill of Lona; but, upon the coming of Cathmor to their aid, they regained their former situation, and drove back the Caledonians, in their turn: so that Lubar winded again in their host.

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