Highland
poetry, and that Mac-Murrough admires your version of his songs upon the
same principle that Captain Waverley admires the original,--because he
does not comprehend them. Will you have the goodness to read or recite
to our guest in English, the extraordinary string of names which
Mac-Murrough has tacked together in Gaelic?--My life to a moorfowl's
feather, you are provided with a version; for I know you are in all the
bard's councils, and acquainted with his songs long before he rehearses
them in the hall.'

'How can you say so, Fergus? You know how little these verses can
possibly interest an English stranger, even if I could translate them as
you pretend.'

'Not less than they interest me, lady fair. To-day your joint
composition, for I insist you had a share in it, has cost me the last
silver cup in the castle, and I suppose will cost me something else next
time I hold COUR PLENIERE, if the muse descends on Mac-Murrough; for
you know our proverb,--When the hand of the chief ceases to bestow, the
breath of the bard is frozen in the utterance.--Well, I would it were
even so: there are three things that are useless to a modern Highlander,
a sword which he must not draw,--a bard to sing of deeds which he dare
not imitate,--and a large goatskin purse without a louis d'or to put
into it.'

'Well, brother, since you betray my secrets, you cannot expect me to
keep yours.--I assure you, Captain Waverley, that Fergus is too proud
to exchange his broadsword for a marechal's baton; that he esteems
Mac-Murrough a far greater poet than Homer, and would not give up his
goat skin purse for all the louis d'or which it could contain.'

'Well pronounced, Flora; blow for blow, as Conan [See Note 19.] said to
the devil. Now do you two talk of bards and poetry, if not of purses and
claymores, while I return to do the final honours to the senators of the
tribe of Ivor.' So saying, he left the room.

The conversation continued between Flora, and Waverley; for two
well-dressed young women, whose character seemed to hover between that
of companions and dependants, took no share in it. They were both
pretty girls, but served only as foils to the grace and beauty of their
patroness. The discourse followed the turn which the Chieftain had given
it, and Waverley was equally amused and surprised with the account which
the lady gave him of Celtic poetry.

'The recitation,' she said, 'of poems, recording the feats of heroes,
the com