song immediately became popular, and incensed his employer so
much that he suddenly fell upon the poor poet one day with
his walking-stick, and striking him on the back, bade him
'go and make a song about that.' He was however afterward
compelled by the Earl of Breadalbane to pay the bard the sum
of 300 merks Scots (L16, 17_s._ 6_d._), which was his legal
due."

Duncan ended his days in Edinburgh, where he died in 1812,--one of the
last links of the moving record of the early eighteenth century and
its Jacobite associations.

Duncan was a contemporary of Macpherson's, and with Macpherson and his
'Ossian,' to which a special article is devoted elsewhere, we may well
leave our chronicle, forbearing to touch on the debatable ground of
later and contemporary Celtic literature in Scotland. Enough to say
that Duncan Ban Macintyre has no lack of worthy followers in Gaelic
poetry, and that with the Anglo-Celtic development, associated with
such names as Dr. Norman Macleod, Professor Blackie, Robert Buchanan,
George MacDonald, William Black, and, among new-comers, Miss Fiona
Macleod and Mr. Neil Munro, there seems every prospect that the Gaelic
spirit promises to achieve greatly in the new centuries to come.

The first selection is from the 'Sean Dana,' or Ancient Poems,
collected, or rather written (from oral legendary lore and ballads),
by Dr. John Smith, late in the eighteenth century.

PROLOGUE TO GAUL

How mournful is the silence of Night
When she pours her dark clouds over the valleys!
Sleep has overcome the youth of the chase:
He slumbers on the heath, and his dog at his knee.
The children of the mountain he pursues
In his dream, while sleep forsakes him.

Slumber, ye children of fatigue;
Star after star is now ascending the height.
Slumber! thou swift dog and nimble--
Ossian will arouse thee not from thy repose.
Lonely I keep watch,--
And dear to me is the gloom of night
When I travel from glen to glen,
With no hope to behold a morning or brightness.

Spare thy light, O Sun!
Waste not thy lamps so fast.
Generous is thy soul as the King of Morven's:
But thy renown shall yet fade;--
Spare thy lamps of a thousand flames
In thy blue hall, when thou retirest
Under thy dark-blue gates to sleep,
Beneath the dark embraces of the storm.
Spare them, ere thou art forsaken for ever,
As I am, without one whom I may love!