entered on a new phase, we are told,
with Mary MacLeod (Mairi ni'n Alastair Ruaidh), who was born at Harris
in 1569, and died a centenarian in Skye in 1674. Mairi was as perfect
an example of the folk-minstrel as Celtic literature can provide; for
she could not even write, although her prosody is elaborate, and her
metres often intricate and original to a degree. The first of the
distinctively Jacobite bards, who flourished at the end of the
seventeenth and through the eighteenth century, was John MacDonald,
whose 'Battle of Inverlochy' has been vigorously translated by
Professor Blackie. Hector Maclean; Roderick Morrison, called _An
Clarsair Dall_, or the Blind Harper; John Maclean, whose songs were
heard by Dr. Samuel Johnson and Boswell on their journey to the
Hebrides; and John MacCodrum (a poet whose wit and satiric powers
remind us not a little of more than one of the Welsh satirical bards),
are among the poets of this time who specially deserve note.

In the eighteenth century, Gaelic Scotland produced some remarkable
religious poets, including David MacKellar, author of the well-known
'MacKellar's Hymn'; John Mackay; Donal Matheson, who had satirical as
well as religious power; Lauchlan Maclauchlan; and Dugald Buchanan.

The great link between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries
is Duncan Ban Macintyre, "a name loved throughout the Highlands and
Islands." The Hunter Bard of Glenorchy, as he is often called,--though
his best title is the affectionate Gaelic "Duncan of the Songs,"--was
born on the 20th of March, 1724, at Druimliaghart in Glenorchy,
Argyll. His first song was composed on a sword with which he was armed
at the battle of Falkirk--where he served on the Royalist side as
substitute for a neighboring gentleman.

"This sword," says his biographer, Thomas Pattison, "the
poet lost or threw away in the retreat. On his return home
therefore the gentleman to whom it belonged, and whose
substitute he had been, refused to pay the sum for which
he had engaged Duncan Ban to serve in his stead. Duncan
consequently composed his song on 'The Battle of the
Speckled Kirk'--as Falkirk is called in Gaelic--in which he
good-humoredly satirized the gentleman who had sent him to
the war, and gave a woful description of 'the black sword
that worked the turmoil,' and whose loss, he says, made its
owner 'as fierce and furious as a gray brock in his den.' The