'

'Not less than they interest me, lady fair. To-day your joint
composition, for I insist you had a share in it, has cost me the last
silver cup in the castle, and I suppose will cost me something else next
time I hold cour pleniere, if the muse descends on Mac-Murrough; for you
know our proverb,--"When the hand of the chief ceases to bestow, the
breath of the bard is frozen in the utterance."--Well, I would it were
even so: there are three things that are useless to a modern
Highlander,--a sword which he must not draw, a bard to sing of deeds
which he dare not imitate, and a large goat-skin purse without a
louis-d'or to put into it.'

'Well, brother, since you betray my secrets, you cannot expect me to keep
yours. I assure you, Captain Waverley, that Fergus is too proud to
exchange his broardsword for a marechal's baton, that he esteems
Mac-Murrough a far greater poet than Homer, and would not give up his
goat-skin purse for all the louis-d'or which it could contain.'

'Well pronounced, Flora; blow for blow, as Conan [Footnote: See Note 23.]
said to the devil. Now do you two talk of bards and poetry, if not of
purses and claymores, while I return to do the final honours to the
senators of the tribe of Ivor.' So saying, he left the room.

The conversation continued between Flora and Waverley; for two
well-dressed young women, whose character seemed to hover between that of
companions and dependants, took no share in it. They were both pretty
girls, but served only as foils to the grace and beauty of their
patroness. The discourse followed the turn which the Chieftain had given
it, and Waverley was equally amused and surprised with the account which
the lady gave him of Celtic poetry.

'The recitation,' she said, 'of poems recording the feats of heroes, the
complaints of lovers, and the wars of contending tribes, forms the chief
amusement of a winter fire-side in the Highlands. Some of these are said
to be very ancient, and if they are ever translated into any of the
languages of civilised Europe, cannot fail to produce a deep and general
sensation. Others are more modern, the composition of those family bards
whom the chieftains of more distinguished name and power retain as the
poets and historians of their tribes. These, of course, possess various
degrees of merit; but much of it must evaporate in translation, or be
lost on those who do not sympathise with the feelings of the poet.'

'And your bard, whose effus