"And thou! when by the blazing oak

I lay, to her and love resign'd, Say, rode ye on the eddying smoke,

Or sail'd ye on the midnight wind!

"Not thine a race of mortal blood, Nor old Glengyle's pretended line; Thy dame, the Lady of the Flood,

Thy sire, the Monarch of the Mine."

He mutter'd thrice St Oran's rhyme,
And thrice St Fillan's powerful prayer ;
Then turn'd him to the eastern clime,
And sternly shook his coal-black hair.

And, bending o'er his harp, he flung

His wildest witch-notes on the wind; And loud, and high, and strange, they rung, As many a magic change they find.

Tall wax'd the Spirit's altering form,
Till to the roof her stature grew;

Then, mingling with the rising storm,
With one wild yell, away she flew.

Rain beats, hail rattles, whirlwinds tear:
The slender hut in fragments flew ;
But not a lock of Moy's loose hair
Was waved by wind, or wet by dew.

Wild mingling with the howling gale, Loud bursts of ghastly laughter rise ; High o'er the Minstrel's head they sail, And die amid the northern skies.

The voice of thunder shook the wood, As ceased the more than mortal yell; And, spattering foul, a shower of blood

Upon the hissing firebrands fell.

Next, dropp'd from high a mangled arm; The fingers strain'd an half-drawn blade: And last, the life-blood streaming warm, Torn from the trunk, a gasping head.

Oft o'er that head, in battling field,

Stream'd the proud crest of high Benmore; That arm the broad claymore could wield, Which dyed the Teith with Saxon gore.

Woe to Moneira's sullen rills!

Woe to Glenfinlas' dreary glen!

There never son of Albin's hills

Shall draw the hunter's shaft agen!

E'en the tired pilgrim's burning feet
At noon shall shun that sheltering den,
Lest, journeying in their rage, he meet

The wayward Ladies of the Glen.

And we behind the Chieftain's shield, No more shall we in safety dwell; None leads the people to the field— And we the loud lament must swell.

O hone a rie ! O hone a rie!

The pride of Albin's line is o'er, And fallen Glenartney's stateliest tree; We ne'er shall see Lord Ronald more!

NOTES

ON

GLENFINLAS.

Well can the Saxon widows tell.-P. 120. v. 2. The term Sassenach, or Saxon, is applied by the Highlanders to their Low-country neighbours.

How blazed Lord Ronald's beltane tree.-P. 120. v. 3. The fires lighted by the Highlanders on the first of May, in compliance with a custom derived from the Pagan times, are termed, The Beltane Tree. It is a festival celebrated, with various superstitious rites, both in the north of Scotland and in Wales.

The seer's prophetic spirit found, &c.-P. 121. v. 2. I can only describe the second sight, by adopting Dr Johnson's definition, who calls it "An impression, either by the 66 mind upon the eye, or by the eye upon the mind, by which "things distant and future are perceived and seen as if they