there! But he is far distant, on Morven, beneath the
sword of foreign foe.'

"Lorma sat in Aldo's hall. She sat at the light of a
flaming oak. The night came down, but he did not
return. The soul of Lorma is sad. 'What detained thee,
hunter of Cona? thou didst promise to return. Has the
deer been distant far? Do the dark winds sigh round
thee on the heath? I am in the land of strangers; who
is my friend but Aldo? Come from the sounding hills, O
my best beloved.'

"Her eyes are turned towards the gate. She listens to
the rustling blast. She thinks it is Aldo's tread. Joy
rises in her face! But storm returns again, like a
thin cloud on the moon.... His thin ghost appeared on a
rock, like a watery beam of feeble light, when the
moon rushes sudden from between two clouds, and the
midnight shower is on the field. She followed the
empty form over the heath. She knew that her hero
fell. I heard her approaching cries on the wind, like
the mournful voice of the breeze, when it sighs on the
grass of the cave!

"She came. She found her hero! Her voice was heard no
more. Silent she rolled her eyes. She was pale, and
wildly sad! Few her days on Cona. She sank into the
tomb. Fingal commanded his bards; they sang over the
death of Lorma. The daughters of Morven mourned her
for one day in the year, when the dark winds of autumn
returned."

In Ossianic times there were prophets and prophetesses, who were
consulted by the chiefs of armies and by the common people on
important occasions. Even a thousand years after the time of Ossian,
the bards uttered their prophetic sayings. We have the story of five
bards passing an October night in the house of a chief, who, like his
guests, was a poet, entertaining their hearers with poetic
descriptions of the night. The first bard delivered himself thus:

"Night is dull and dark. The clouds rest on the hills.
No star with green trembling beam; no moon looks from
the sky. I hear the blast in the wood, but I hear it
distant far. The stream of the valley murmurs, but its
murmur is sullen and sad. From the tree, at the grave
of the dead, the long-howling owl is heard. I see a
dim form on the plain! It is a ghost! it fades, it
flies. Some funeral shall pass this way: the meteor