the battle of
Culloden, translated for the present work, the lamentation for the
absence of the missing clans, and the night march to the field, are
executed with the skill and address of a genuine bard, while the story
of the battle is recited with the fervour of an honourable partisan.
Stuart died abroad in circumstances not differing from those of the best
and bravest, who were engaged in the same unhappy enterprise.

[146] See the Rev. Patrick Macdonald's Collection, No. 106.

LAMENT FOR LADY MACINTOSH.

This is the celebrated heroine who defended her castle of Moy, in the
absence of her husband, and, with other exploits, achieved the surprisal
of Lord Loudon's party in their attempt to seize Prince Charles Edward,
when he was her guest. Information had been conveyed by some friendly
unknown party, of a kind so particular as to induce the lady to have
recourse to the following stratagem. She sent the blacksmith on her
estate, at the head of a party of other seven persons, with instructions
to lie in ambush, and at a particular juncture to call out to the clans
to come on and hew to pieces "the scarlet soldiers," as were termed the
royalist troops. The feint succeeded, and is known in Jacobite story as
the "Route of Moy." The exploit is pointedly alluded to in the Elegy,
which is replete with beauty and pathos.

Does grief appeal to you, ye leal,
Heaven's tears with ours to blend?
The halo's veil is on, and pale
The beams of light descend.
The wife repines, the babe declines,
The leaves prolong their bend,
Above, below, all signs are woe,
The heifer moans her friend.

The taper's glow of waxen snow,
The ray when noon is nigh,
Was far out-peer'd, till disappear'd
Our star of morn, as high
The southern west its blast released,
And drown'd in floods the sky--
Ah woe! was gone the star that shone,
Nor left a visage dry
For her, who won as win could none
The people's love so well.
O, welaway! the dirging lay
That rung from Moy its knell;
Alas, the hue, where orbs of blue,
With roses wont to dwell!
How can we think, nor swooning sink,
To earth them in the cell?

Silk wrapp'd thy frame, as lily stem,
And snowy as its flower,
So once, and now must love allow,
The grave chest such a dower!
The fairest shoot of noble root
A blast could overpower;