loquent a faculty in prose and
verse. Their adjectival energy is greater; they are more given to
extravagances of style, both in point of sentiment and of humor. The
Scotch are on the other hand more simple and more terse, and they
touch the deeper notes of pathos and of mystery more often. Nothing
more instructive can be devised for the Celtic student than to take
the volumes in verse and prose representing the three Celtic lands,
Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and to compare their style, method, and
literary idiosyncrasies. For this comparison Mr. Campbell's wonderful
'Tales of the West Highlands,' in prose, and in verse his 'Leabhar na
Feinne,' may be cited, with works of Dr. Hyde, Mr. Standish Hayes
O'Grady, Dr. Joyce, in Irish; and in Welsh, the 'Mabinogion' in Lady
Guest's exquisite English version, or the 'Myvyrian Archaeology.'

In the fourteenth century, which gave Dafydd ap Gwilym to Wales, we
find Gaelic becoming more definitely a conscious literary language.
But the Dafydd of Scotland came more than a century earlier, being
born at the end of the twelfth century. This was the famous Muireadach
Albannach (Murdoch the Scot), several of whose poems figure in the
Dean of Lismore's book, and whose effect on succeeding bards was only
less powerful than Dafydd's on his Welsh successors. The Dean's book
has poems, too, by two woman poets: Efric, wife of the last of the
famous MacNeills of Castle Sween, and Isabel, Countess of Argyle.
Efric's lament for her husband contains some touching lines;
_e. g._:--

"There's no heart among our women;
At the sport, no men are seen;
Like the sky when windless, silent
Is the music of Dun Sween!"

Sir Duncan Campbell, "Duncan Mac Cailem, the good knight," son of Sir
Colin, is another of the poets in Dean Macgregor's collection; but
perhaps we ought to pause here to say a word of the Dean himself.
"Sailing in among the inner Hebridean Isles," says Mr. MacNeill, "we
find in the fertile island of Lismore--'the great garden'--a man in
the fifteenth century often referred to in Gaelic literature: the Rev.
Mr. James Macgregor. A native of Perthshire,... with a heart filled
with the enthusiasm and perfervid spirit of his countrymen, he and his
brother got up the collection of songs and ballads" to which we have
had occasion so often to refer. But we must pass on now to the later
period of Gaelic literature, in which the modern developments have
their beginning. The Scots Gael