ffort was attended
with more lasting popularity than the sole oration of that celebrated
person. The clan song of the Mackenzies is the composition in question,
and its author is now ascertained to have been a gentleman, or farmer of
the better class, of the name of Norman Macleod, a native of Assynt[130]
in Sutherland. The most memorable particular known of this person,
besides the production of his poetic effort, is his having been the
father of a Glasgow professor,[131] whom we remember occupying the chair
of Church History in the university in very advanced age, about 1814,
assisted by a helper and successor; and of another son, who was the
respected minister of Rogart till towards the end of last century.

The date of "Caberfae" is not exactly ascertained. It was composed
during the exile of Lord Seaforth, but, we imagine, before the '45, in
which he did not take part, and while Macshimei (Lord Lovat) still
passed for a Whig. In Mackenzie's excellent collection (p. 361), a
later date is assigned to the production.

The Seaforth tenantry, who (after the manner of the clans) privately
supported their chief in his exile, appear to have been much aggrieved
by some proceedings of the loyalist, Monro of Fowlis, who, along with
his neighbour of Culloden and Lovat, were probably acting under
government commission, in which the interests of the crown were seconded
by personal or family antagonism. The loyal family of Sutherland, who
seem by grant or lease to have had an interest in the estates, also come
in for a share of the bard's resentment.

All this forms the subject of "Caberfae," which, without having much
meaning or poetry, served, like the celebrated "Lillibulero," to animate
armies, and inflame party spirit to a degree that can scarcely be
imagined. The repetition of "the Staghead, when rises his cabar on,"
which concludes every strophe, is enough at any time to bring a
Mackenzie to his feet, or into the forefront of battle,--being a simple
allusion to the Mackenzie crest, allegorised into an emblem of the stag
at bay, or ready in his ire to push at his assailant. The cabar is the
horn, or, rather, the "tine of the first-head,"--no ignoble emblem,
certainly, of clannish fury and impetuosity. The difficulty of the
measure compels us to the use of certain metrical freedoms, and also of
some Gaelic words, for which is craved the reader's indulgence.

[130] In Stat. Ac. said to be of Lochbroom, vol. xiv., p. 79.