Various

“ MacLeod had married late in life, and his wife dying soon after, while on a visit to her mother, left behind her an only daughter, who was dear as the apple of his eye to the old warrior, but, at the same time, he had no idea of any one connected with him having any freedom of will or exercise of opinion—save what he allowed—nor did he believe women's hearts were less elastic than his own, which he could bend to any needful expedient. ”

“ The man, on the other hand, who does not believe in the authenticity of Ossian must forego all these advantages in succession, and will reduce himself to straits in an hour. He dare not expatiate or admire, or love, or eulogise, or trust, or credit, or contemplate, or sympathise with anything; or admit a fact, or listen to a word, or look at an argument, on the peril of immediate discomfiture. ”

“ The chief—Macrae of Inverinate, readily fell in with the views of MacLeod, and as the time fixed for his marriage with the lovely Lady May drew nigh, gratified triumph over his rival Munro, and hate intense as a being of such fierce passions could feel, glowed like a gleaming light in his fierce grey eyes. ”

“ The Druids were known by name, but scarcely more than by name, to the Greeks, who derived the appellation erroneously from drus, an oak, under the supposition that the Druids preferred to perform their religious rites under the shadows of oaken groves. The Greeks also [Pg 58] called the Druids Saronides, from two Celtic words sar and dhuine, signifying "excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner circle. ”

“ Alas for the mourner—spring succeeded winter, and summer spring, but no change of season lightened May MacLeod's burden! Fifty years! year by year passing away only brought changes to those who lived under her gentle sway, and among the dependents of her home; youth passed into age, young men and maidens filled the places of the valued attendants of her girlhood ”

“ It may be noticed, as an illustration of the tenacity of popular usages and religious rites, how they abide with a people, generation after generation, in spite of changes of the most important kind, nay, after the very opinions out of which they have risen have been repudiated; that even to the present day certain movements are considered of good omen when they follow the course of the sun, and that in some of the remote parts of the country the practice is still retained of seeking good fortune by going thrice round some supposed sacred object from east to west. ”

“ He was discovered to be a gentleman and a scholar, and particularly frank and free in his conversation with the people about everything except his own history and antecedents, and was a walking encyclopædia of all kinds of legendary lore connected with the southern parts of the country. His appearance caused quite a flutter among the assembled rustics. He was, however, heartily welcomed by the old bard and members of the circle, and was offered a seat a little to the left of the oak arm chair. It was soon found that he was a perfect master of Gaelic as well as English. ”

“ Amid the conflicting interests which actuated each neighbouring clan—disagreement on any one of which rendered an immediate appeal to arms, the readiest mode of solving the difficulty—it is not to be wondered at that Cadboll, as a matter of prudence, endeavoured to attach to himself, by every means in his power, those who were most likely to be serviceable and true. ”

“ Whatever is truly grand in Ossian may thus be identified with nature, if it has a counterpart there; and what seems only an imaginary outline at first may be filled up and fixed for ever as among her own still extant properties. A new sense, coherent and intelligible, may thus be imparted to the most familiar figures ”

“ Let any intelligent reader, with the poems which refer to Scotland in his hand, survey the Clyde, the Kelvin, and the Carron, and trace the still remaining footsteps of nature and of civilization through distant centuries on their banks, and he will see that Ossian has been there. ”

“ Mir in Celtic signifies rage or fuss; tonn or thonn, a wave; toinn, waves; and tein, fire; whence those apparently unmeaning syllables may be rendered—"the fury of the waves, the fury of the fire."
Tira lira la. This is a frequent chorus in French songs, and is composed of the Gaelic words tiorail, genial, mild, warm; iorrach, quiet, peaceable; and là, day; and was possibly a Druidical chant, after the rising of the sun, resolving itself into Tiorail-iorra la, warm peaceful day!
Rumbelow was the chorus or burden of many ancient songs, both English and Scotch. ”

“ The good-man is bordering upon five-score. He is a bard of no mean order, often delighting his circle of admiring friends with his own compositions, as well as with those of Ossian and other ancient bards. He holds a responsible office in the church, is ground-officer for the laird as well as family bard. He possesses the only Gaelic New Testament in the district. He lives in the old house with three sons whose ages range from 75 to 68, all full of Highland song and story, especially the youngest two—John and Donald. ”

“ The best known of these choruses is "Down, down, derry down," which may either be derived from the words dun, a hill; and darag or darach, an oak tree; or from duine, a man; and doire, a wood; and may either signify an invitation to proceed to the hill of the oak trees for the purposes of worship, or an invocation to the men of the woods to join in the Druidical march and chant, as the priests walked in procession from the interior of the stone circle to some neighbouring grove upon a down or hill. ”

“ Gardens to test their strength. Forms of challenge vary much. There is the gentlemanly way of throwing down one's glove or gauntlet, the biting of one's thumb as in Romeo and Juliet, and boys have their modes as well as their elders. We remember a common one in Inverness some twenty-five years ago, was to count an opponent's buttons, those of his waistcoat, and then slap him in the face. ”

“ Such, in point of fact, [Pg 36] has been the sum total of assault, reiterated by every new antagonist with increasing boldness for a century, till reasonable readers have become callous to it, and only ignorant or prejudiced listeners are impressed. To be "hopelessly convinced" by it, is perhaps the latest phase of incredulity; to be edified or enlightened by it is impossible.
But, besides the advantage of being able to speak with freedom of an author like Ossian, from any natural point of view, an almost infinitely higher advantage still is to be obtained by actually verifying his text ”

“ But still more remarkable than the fact which Doctor Alexander has stated, is the vitality of the ancient Druidic chants, which still survive on the popular tongue for nearly two thousand years after their worship has disappeared, and after the meaning of these strange snatches and fragments of song has been all but irretrievably lost, and almost wholly unsuspected. ”

“ Castle Cadboll is situated on the sea shore, looking over the broad ocean towards Norway. From that country, in the early ages of Scottish history, came many a powerful Jarl, or daring Vikingr, to the coasts, which, in comparison with their own land, seemed fertile and wealthy. There is a tradition of a Highland clan having sprung from one of those adventurers, who with his brother agreed that whoever should first touch the land would possess it by right. ”

“ In controversy about Ossian, the man on the affirmative side has an immeasurable advantage over all others; and, with an average practical acquaintance with the subject, may exhaust any antagonist. The contents, the connection, and the details; the origin, the tradition, the translation ”

“ He need not, however, be afraid of "strong-winged eagles," for they are gone; nor need he look for "bounding roes" in the valley, for they are probably exterminated; but he may still look westward on one of the sweetest and stillest vales in the bounds of the Island; and when he remembers that he is now within a few miles of Connor, which is the Temora of Ossian, he will have no difficulty in understanding how Ferad-Artho was brought for shelter and for safety to the cave just above him ”

“ An otter has succeeded in taking a salmon, which it has just commenced to devour; an eagle is flying away, having been disappointed of its prey. This last effort of Mr Rolfe's is the most successful which has yet appeared from his studio. ”

“ All who took an interest in such questions congregated in the evening in these centres of song and story. They were also great centres of local industry. Net-making was the staple occupation, at which the younger members of the circle had to take a spell in turn. Five or six nets were attached in different corners of the apartment to a chair, a bedstead or post set up for the purpose, and an equal number of young gossipers nimbly plied their fingers at the rate of a pound of yarn a day. ”

“ There is an old English sea song of which the burden is "with a rumbelowe." In one more modern, in Deuteromelia 1609, the word dance the rumbelow is translated—
Shall we go dance to round, around,
Shall we go dance the round.
Greek—Rhombos, Rhembo, to spin or turn round. [Pg 65]
The word is apparently another remnant of the old Druidical chants sung by the priests when they walked in procession round their sacred circles of Stonehenge and others, and clearly traceable to the Gaelic—Riomball, a circle; riomballach, circuitous; riomballachd, circularity. ”

“ It was, as we learn from various authorities, the practice of the Druidical priests and bards to march in procession round the inner circle of their rude temples, chanting religious hymns in honour of the sunrise, the noon, or the sunset; hymns which have not been wholly lost to posterity, though posterity has failed to understand them, or imagined that their burdens—their sole relics—are but unmeaning words, invented for musical purposes alone, and divested of all intellectual signification. ”

“ Could the bearded warriors, who once thronged these halls awake, they would witness many a wonderful change since the half-forgotten days when they lived and loved, revelled, and fought, conquered, or sustained defeat. ”

“ We do not assert that the sort of facts now adduced by us, and elsewhere systematised and elaborated, are the only facts, or the only kind of facts to be considered in such a controversy; but we do assert that their importance is supreme, and that they have never hitherto been admitted in the controversy. ”

“ Nay, a certain philosophic significance, amounting to scientific revelation, may be honestly associated with some of his loftiest figures; and what the translator himself apologises for as extravagant, may be thus converted into dreamful intuitions of hidden fact and poetic forecasting of future discoveries. Mr Arnold, in his Celtic Literature, seems to glance at such a capacity in Celtic man—"His sensibility gives him a peculiarly near and intimate feeling of nature, and the life of nature ”

“ Gray in Inverness is become acted surety, cautioner and lawburrows for Alexander Cumming, burgess there, that James Cumming, burgess of the said burgh, shall be harmless and skaithless of the said Alexander, in his body, goods and gear, in all time coming, otherwise than by order of Law and Justice, under the pain of 300 merks money, and the said Alexander is become acted for his said cautioner's relief, whereupon took Act of Court. ”

“ Sometimes, however, a person is admitted a burgess without fee, because of the usefulness of his trade or profession, and occasionally as now the honour was conferred on some one of high rank or reputation.
It will be noticed that the newly admitted burgess is to maintain and defend the true religion presently preached within this kingdom. Almost every newly elected burgess had to treat the Magistrates and Town Council to cake and wine, and sometimes to something more substantial, and also to give certain fees to the burgh officers. ”

“ We live plainly but well, on fresh fish, potatoes and herring, porridge and milk, beef and mutton, eggs, butter, and cheese. Modern pickles and spices are as unknown as they are unnecessary. True, our houses are built not according to the most modern principles of architecture. ”

“ Genius, for example, he declares without hesitation to be trickery; poetry to be bombast; pathos, monotonous moaning; the tenderest human love to be sham; the most interesting natural incidents, contemptible inventions ”

“ One of these shattered relics, Castle Cadboll, deserves notice on account of a singular tradition regarding it, once implicitly credited by the people—namely, that although inhabited for ages no person ever died within its walls. ”

“ The MacLeods of Cadboll are cadets of the house of Assynt. But to what branch the Lady May of the legend belonged it is difficult to decide, so many changes having occurred among Highland proprietors.
The cliffs of this part of Ross-shire are wild and precipitous, sinking with a sheer descent of two hundred feet to the ocean. The scenery is [Pg 45] more rugged than beautiful—little verdure and less foliage. Trees are stunted by the bitter eastern blast, and the soil is poor. ”