The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875

Mhathaisith fhrògach dhubh,
Fhrògach dhubh, fhrògach dhubh,
Mhathaisith fhrògach dhubh,
'S mòr rinn thu chall domh.

Rinn thu m' eòrna a mhilleadh,
'S mo chuid ghòrag air sileadh,
'Us cha d' fhàg thu sguab tioram
Do na chinnich do bhàrr dhomh.

Mhathaisith, &c.

Cha robh lochan no caochan,
A bha ruith leis an aonach,
Nach do chruinnich an t-aon lan
A thoirt aon uair do shàth dhuit.

Mhathaisith, &c.

Rinn thu òl an tigh Bheathain
Air leann 's uisge-beatha,
'S garbh an tuilm sin a sgeith thu
'S a' ghabhail-rathaid Di-màirt oirnn

Mhathaisith, &c.

Eulogy on Mathaisith

Mhathaisith bhòidheach gheal,
Bhòidheach gheal, bhòidheach gheal,
Mhathaisith bhòidheach gheal,
B' ait leam bhi làimh riut.

'N uair a rachainn a' m' shiubhal
B' e sud mo cheann uidhe
Na bh' air bràigh Choire-bhuidhe
Agus ruigh Alt-na-ceàrdaich.

Mhathaisith, &c.

Gu 'm bu phailt bha mo bhuaile
Do chrodh druim-fhion 'us guaill-fhionn,
Mar sud 's mo chuid chuachag
Dol mu 'n cuairt dhoibh 's an t-samhradh.

Mhathaisith, &c.

    SEANCHAIDH.

HIGHLAND NOTES AND COMMENTS

[In this Column we shall, from month to month, notice the most important business coming before our Highland Representative Institutions—such as the local Parliament of the Highland Capital, Gaelic and other Celtic Societies, and passing incidents likely to prove interesting to our Celtic readers. We make no pretence to give news; simply comments on incidents, information regarding which will be obtained through the usual channels.]

We make no apology for referring to the doings of the Town Council of the Capital of the Highlands. Anything calculated to interest the Highlander is included in our published programme; and surely the composition, conduct, dignity, and patriotism of the local Parliament of the Highland Capital, and the general ability, eloquence, intelligence, and independence of spirit displayed by its members is of more than mere local interest. We take it that the Scottish Gael, wherever located, is interested in the Capital of his native Highlands, and will naturally concern himself with the history and conduct of those whose duty it is as its leading men to shine forth as an example to places of lesser importance.

Last year a Gas and Water Bill was carried through Parliament, involving an expenditure of something like £80,000, and at least double taxation. We have no doubt whatever very good and satisfactory reasons will be given for this large expenditure, but hitherto not the slightest explanation has been vouchsafed to the public, and we are, in common with five-sixths of the community, at present quite ignorant of the reasons given for this enormous expenditure: that there must be unanswerable reasons we have no doubt whatever, for have not the Council been unanimous to a man throughout. Not a single protest was entered. Not a single speech was publicly made against it. But more wonderful still, not a single speech was made publicly in the Council in its favour. This did not arise from want of debating power on the part of the members. It must have arisen from the unanswerable nature of the arguments delivered in private committees, where, practically, no one heard them, or of them, except the members themselves. The only objection which can be raised to this theory is, that if the matter is so very clear and simple, and the expenditure so imperatively called for, it is most wonderful that some ingenuous simple-minded member had not thought of making himself popular at one bound, by giving a little information to the public as the matter proceeded, and so silence all the grumbling and general dissatisfaction felt outside.

The Gaelic Society of Inverness entered on its fifth session last month. The Society has of late shown considerable signs of popularity and progress; for close upon fifty members have been added to the roll during the first eight months of the Society's year, while only eighteen were added during the whole of the previous one. In 1873, seventy new members were elected. The following five Clans are the best represented—Mackenzies, 23 members; Frasers, 22; Mackays, 19; Macdonalds, 18; Mackintoshes, 14. This is not as it should be; for while the Mackays only occupy a little over a page of the Inverness Directory, the Mackintoshes two, and the Mackenzies about three and a-half; the Macdonalds occupy over four, and the Frasers seven pages. We would like to see the Clans taking their proper places, by the "levelling-up" process of course.

We regret to announce the sudden death, on the 19th of August, of Dr Hermann Ebel, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Berlin. He superintended the new edition of Zeuss's Grammatica Celtica, and was one of the four or five leading Celtic scholars of the age.

It will be seen that Logan's "Scottish Gael"—a book now getting very scarce, and which was never, in consequence of its high price, within the reach of a wide circle of readers—is to be issued by Mr Hugh Mackenzie, Bank Lane, in 12 monthly parts at 2s each, Edited, with Memoir and Notes, by the Rev. Mr Stewart, "Nether-Lochaber." In this way the work will be much easier to get. It only requires to be known to secure the demand such an authority on the Celt—his language, literature, music, and ancient costume—deserves.

We take the following from the late Dr Norman Macleod's "Reminiscences of a Highland Parish" on Highlanders ashamed of their country. We believe the number to whom the paragraph is now applicable is more limited than when it first saw the light, but we could yet point to a few of this contemptible tribe, of whom better things might be expected. We wish the reader to emphasize every line and accept it as our own views regarding these treacle-beer would-be-genteel excrescences of our noble race. A wart or tumour sometimes disfigures the finest oak of the forest, and these so-called Highlanders are just the warts and tumours of the Celtic races—they have their uses, no doubt:—"One class sometimes found in society we would especially beseech to depart; we mean Highlanders ashamed of their country. Cockneys are bad enough, but they are sincere and honest in their idolatry of the Great Babylon. Young Oxonians or young barristers, even when they become slashing London critics, are more harmless than they themselves imagine, and after all inspire less awe than Ben-Nevis, or than the celebrated agriculturist who proposed to decompose that mountain with acids, and to scatter the debris as a fertiliser over the Lochaber moss. But a Highlander born, who has been nurtured on oatmeal porridge and oatmeal cakes; who in his youth wore home-spun cloth, and was innocent of shoes and stockings; who blushed in his attempts to speak the English language; who never saw a nobler building for years than the little kirk in the glen, and who owes all that makes him tolerable in society to the Celtic blood which flows in spite of him through his veins;—for this man to be proud of his English accent, to sneer at the everlasting hills, the old kirk and its simple worship, and despise the race which has never disgraced him—faugh! Peat reek is frankincense in comparison with him; let him not be distracted by any of our reminiscences of the old country; leave us, we beseech of thee!"

THE SUNSET OF THE YEAR

(OCTOBER.)

Sweet Summer's scowling foe impatient stands
On the horizon near of Nature's view.
At the sad sight the sweetly-coloured lands
Filled with the glowing woodlands' dying hue,
For Winter's darkening reign prepare the way.
In the green garden the tall Autumn flowers,
Filling with fragrant breath the beauteous bowers,
With resignation wait their dying day;
Bending their heads submissive to the will
Of Him, at whose command the sun stands still,
Nor dares to send to earth his gladd'ning ray.
Filled with the feeling of the coming doom
Of Nature's beauteous deeds, the heavenly hill
Hides its sad, shuddering face in cloudy gloom.
A whispering silence overhangs the scene,
As if awaiting the dark Winter storm
That fills with fear Hope's slowly-withering form.
Sinking to wintry death—till, pure and green,
Spring shall descend in song from sunny skies,
Smiling her into life. The sad wind sighs
Through flowerless woods, glowing towards their death,
In Winter's cruel, poison-breathing breath.
Fierce grows the murmur of the woodland rill,
Foaming in fury thro' the pensive trees,
Down the steep glen of the mist-mantled hill;
Deeper the roar of death-presageful seas;
While in the changeful woods the rivers seem
Wandering for ever in a Winter dream!

    DAVID R. WILLIAMSON.
Maidenkirk, 1875.