brown or chestnut, was born in the Strathmore of Sutherlandshire, about
the year 1714.

His calling, with the interval of a brief military service in the
fencibles, was the tending of cattle, in the several gradations of herd,
drover, and bo-man, or responsible cow-keeper--the last, in his pastoral
county, a charge of trust and respectability. At one period he had an
appointment in Lord Reay's forest; but some deviations into the
"righteous theft"--so the Highlanders of those parts, it seems, call the
appropriation of an occasional deer to their own use--forfeited his
noble employer's confidence. Rob, however, does not appear to have
suffered in his general character or reputation for an _unconsidered
trifle_ like this, nor otherwise to have declined in the favour of his
chief, beyond the necessity of transporting himself to a situation
somewhat nearer the verge of Cape Wrath than the bosom of the deer
preserve.

Mackay was happily married, and brought up a large family in habits and
sentiments of piety; a fact which his reverend biographer connects very
touchingly with the stated solemnities of the "Saturday night," when the
lighter chants of the week were exchanged at the worthy drover's
fireside for the purer and holier melodies of another inspiration.[87]
As a pendant to this creditable account of the bard's principles, we are
informed that he was a frequent guest at the presbytery dinner-table; a
circumstance which some may be so malicious as to surmise amounted to
nothing more than a purpose to enhance the festive recreations of the
reverend body--a suspicion, we believe, in this particular instance,
totally unfounded. He died in 1778; and he has succeeded to some rather
peculiar honours for a person in his position, or even of his mark. He
has had a reverend doctor for his editorial biographer,[88] and no less
than Sir Walter Scott for his reviewer.[89]

The passages which Sir Walter has culled from some literal translations
that were submitted to him, are certainly the most favourable specimens
of the bard that we have been able to discover in his volume. The rest
are generally either satiric rants too rough or too local for
transfusion, or panegyrics on the living and the dead, in the usual
extravagant style of such compositions, according to the taste of the
Highlanders and the usage of their bards; or they are love-lays, of
which the language is more copious and diversified than the sentiment.
In the glean