arrangement or finish of these airs; they are consequently to be regarded rather as germs of sweet music than as perfect melodies. As a rule, they have but one part, which is sung over and over again throughout the whole song-no matter how long it may be. This, in English, would of course be felt extremely tedious, however sweet might sound the little fragment that had to be conned so often. So the air has been less considered in making the following translations than the poetry. In the first one subjoined, however, both music and meaning have been adhered to with scrupulous fidelity. This song is sung to a beautiful and winning air; which, like many other Highland tunes, requires only the delicate and reverential touch of some true genius in that charming art that speaks a language known and felt by all men to become a melody as deep, as noble, and expressive as 'Auld Robin Gray,' or 'The Flowers of the Forest,' or any other of those national and lyric gems we are all so fond and proud of. It is a pity that such a work of interest should not, at least, be attempted, as would be this development of passionate sweet sounds. May it be done some day, and done as it ought to be, discerningly and well! THE GILLE DUBH, CIAR DUBH.* Had no dubh, ciar dubh keeping Its joys far from here. Now, oh that together, Dubh ciar dubh, dubh ciar dubh, On hills bleak and blue! And thou in my view. Thy health-draught, if drinking, My bonny dubh ciar dubh! That knows to be true. No rich old man can please mo Like thee, love! like thee. My gille dubh! kind one! I never will leave thee; I'd choose thee, believe me, Should they stand on the heather, All ranged there together, Like thee should I find none With whom I could live. In sadness oft sleeping, I wake up, half weeping, Such wild dreams come creeping Over me, dear! *Pronounced 'Gillie doo, keear doo.' 'Gille' means a young man; and 'dubh, ciar dubh,' dark, dusky dark. I've heard the old folks say That grief makes the hair gray; Then, gille dubh! this love may Make mine so, I fear. This song was composed by a lady. I don't know whether it spoils the sentiment, or gives it another interest rather, to be told that one who sung so sweetly and loved so well did actually marry her ‘gille dubh ciar dubh' in the end. Such is said to have been the fact, at all events. The love of place is a marked characteristic of the Scottish people. Perhaps in no other country in the world, except Palestine, has the scenery of the native land been ever sung of with so much impassioned ardour. Almost all our distinguished poets have done something in this line; and I dare say every one of our nameless bards has at least added his mite to this treasury of national glory. It was one of Burns' principles of composition to 'sing auld Coila's plains and fells;' and nobly has he done so, Whatever place he and Sir Walter have touched, they may be said to have made interesting for ever. I am very happy to be able to give the following verses in this place, as they celebrate a fair and beautiful island -the ancient home of the Macdonalds, and the home of many a brave and worthy man and kind good woman since-though it has, so far as I know, been till now unknown to song, by name at least. It has been said, I believe, that Islay never produced a bard. This is by no means the case. Though none of the more celebrated poets, whose works have been collected and published, were born there, some of the sweetest songs and finest music now floating ownerless in the Highlands first saw the light in Islay. I myself heard a native of that island -a poor man, a keeper of cattle-sing, more than once, a most spirited song of his own, full of poetical description, and overflowing with cordial affection. composed in honour of his master's son, absent in India; and was alike creditable to the head and heart of its humble author. Nor is this a rare exception. Whether the author of the song now given deserved to be called a bard or not, I do not feel called upon to determine. At any rate, he loved his mother Islay' warmly. Let his affection, then, consecrate the little lyric that enshrines it. In Gaelic, the name of this island is spelled without an s-Ila. How the s came into it in our English spelling I am not aware; but I adhere to our ordinary orthography at present. O Islay sweet Islay ! O Islay! fair Islay! Thou dear mother Islay! O Islay dear Islay ! Dear Islay! good Islay! O Islay! kind Islay! It was That dear dust, awaiting The great day of God. Old Islay! God bless thee, Thou good mother Islay! Bless thy wide ocean! And bless thy sweet lea! And Islay, dear Islay! My heart's best emotion For ever and ever Shall centre in thee! The following extract, from Mr. Campbell's 'West Highland Tales,' may be read with some interest in connection with the above: 'No Highlander, if his friends can help it, is buried anywhere but at home. Coffins may be seen on board the steamers, conveying to the outer islands the bodies of those who have died on the mainland. It is a poetic wish to be buried amongst friends, and one that is in full force in the Highlands to this day. The curse of Scotland may occasionally intrude even on such solemn occasions; but a funeral is almost always decorously conducted. In some places, as I am told, a piper may still be seen at the head of the funeral procession, playing a dirge. There is no want of reverence; but death is treated as an ordinary event. I have seen a man's tombstone, with a blank for the date, standing at the end of his house while he was quite well. It was lately said of a man who went home to die, he took his own body home," and so he did.'-Vol. i., p. 235. There is a much-admired production of the Celtic muse that goes by the name of Mali bheag Og,' which may be rendered 'Young little May.' Who the author of it was, I don't think has been well ascertained. Its story is nearly the same as that of the ballad of Kirkconnel Lea,' and resembles in some respects the Laureate's 'Oriana!' The slaying of young and lovely women accidentally, forms the theme of several of Ossian's episodes; one of which, at least-that of Fainasollis and Mayro Borb, the King of Sorcha's Son,' or 'Stormy Borbar,' as Macpherson calls him -has all the appearance of considerable antiquity, as may be plainly enough seen from a version of it published in Appendix 15 to the Highland Society's Report on the Poems of Ossian. Indeed, this most heart-rending misfortune is one which we might expect sometimes to hear of in a state of society where the red genius of war appeared armed and openly at the board, the hearth, the trysting tree, the hunting field, as well as in his own more legitimate scenes, where the softer sex might escape meeting with his valourship. What can we conceive more natural than wrath driving fiery and inflamed spirits, with the tools of death always at their command, into instant and ill-placed strife; and women, as they would be sure to do, shrieking, and throwing themselves before the weapons? More than one strong man must, in past days, have felt his angry soul frozen into despair from hot fury in a moment when he saw the tender breast his hand had blindly wounded sobbing out its life-blood; and the poor pale face he liked the most to look upon turned forgivingly upon him, in the last gleam of life's reflection, full of love and pity that were inextinguishable by death. The hero of this melancholy Gaelic song we have now to do with met his mistress clandestinely on a Sunday evening, in a lonely glen near her father's house. Her kinsmen waylaid him; and, furious at his attempt to carry off their relative, attacked him with their swords in her presence. She rushed between her friend and her angry brethren, and was killed by a chance blow of her lover's hand. He was immediately taken prisoner, confined, and condemned to death. The night before his execution he sang as follows: figures, the number of packages of fish, fruit, game, and good cheer generally conveyed this week on the 'up-lines' and the down-lines.' The barrels, boxes, and bundles would, we are sure, if collected into a heap, make Ossa like a wart.' If to these we add the clothes, the blankets, and the coals-not to speak of the tea, the tobacco, and the snuff-liberally distributed-these last mostly in the workhouses--wo may be able to form some tolerable notion of the amount of comfort diffused among those who, as old Wither sings, 'Hardly all the year Had bread to eat or rags to wear.' period of the Reformation, the Christmas customs were denounced as Popish and sinful. Ye will say, sirs,' exclained an old Presbyterian divine, 'good old youl-day; I tell you, good old fool-day. You will say it is a brave holiday; I tell you it is a brave bellyday!' In those venerable times reputed 'good,' it may be that there were excesses. But manners, even more than customs, have undergone a change. The mummings and maskings are seen chiefly in stage pantomimes, but the hearth-warmth and the heartwarmth remain. Christmas is still riddles, and forfeits, fill the hearts of the young with plum-pudding, and snap-dragon, and hot-cockles, and Long may it be so; and long may all classes, even the a delight which it makes the old happy to witness. poorest, be enabled to sing 'Christmas, the joyous period of the year.' The boar's head, the wassail-bowl, and the holly are For the moment, therefore, our Christmas is of sovereign efficacy to transform the country at large and redden grandly in the squire's hall; still are not wholly extinct. Still does the fire crackle cheerily into the semblance of one wide many-featured house-madcap girls kissed under mistletoe-boughs; and still hold. Industry in some places is dead, but Christmas is everywhere alive. And so even this dark year will, if the oracles lie not, go out like an overturned candle at blind man's buff, amid the liberated glee of children. It will be chased to death by hobbyhorses. Penny trumpets will bray at its funeral. Pop-guns will bury it with military honours. Jumping-jacks will dance upon its grave. Its memory will be drank from beakers with beaded bubbles winking at the brim,' and from bowls bobbing with roasted apples and odorous with spices. The ancient custom of placing an enormous log of wood on the fire on Christmas-eve, was of course intended as a comfortable security against the drear nighted December' out of doors. Charles Lamb contends for a huge, heaped-up, over heaped-up, all-attracting fire,' as the proof positive and crowning glory of the season. Sometimes the yule-log, or yule-block, was a large lump of coal-anything, for light and heat. In the houses of the wealthy, candles were burned, turning,' as the chroniclers have it, 'night into day.' Then, how buxom, pudding-making housewives would bustle about; and children, let loose from school, dance and clap their hands in the very ecstacy of anticipated delight! No wonder there was merriment then. The wintry weather served to whet the appetite; and hence the jolly feasting which formed so large a part of the festivities. Hearken to a lay of the times:'Now thrice-welcome Christmas, Which brings us good cheer, Minced pies and plum porridge, Good ale and strong beer; With pigs, goose, and capon, And our stomachs agree!' In the old English manorhouse, Christmas must have been a time when the heart was apt to get the better of the more sober judgment. Every mansion had its 'lord of misrule' or 'master of merry disports,' whose business it was to get up all sorts of disguisings, masks, and mummeries to amuse the beholders. Songs, dances, and revels were indulged in with a kind of furor of joviality which knew no bounds; and many, we may well suppose, were the mad pranks played at these mirthful gatherings. In Scotland, at the "Without the door let sorrow lie; To the promotion of this wise end, we dedicate the present entire number of our 'Miscellany.' Science tells us that the snow of winter serves to keep the earth warm. We need not science to tell us that darkness burnishes the face of the stars. The brightest eyes, moreover, are those which are fringed with the darkest lashes. Wherefore it comes about that the clear spirit shines forth most triumphantly amid the darkest surroundings. Men may build themselves cells, and clothe themselves in sackcloth; but the world itself is not a cloister, nor does the deepest shade of December possess, to the intelligent eye, Christmas brightens our home-fires, it is only in any any tinge of ascetic gloom. If, therefore, the merry noble sense that we may read sacred precepts by their light. The year closes that human hearts may open. In the grasp of every neighbour's hand new impulses are awakened within-thoughts as of gray hairs stirred-emotions of a common frailty and a as of wings lifting above all selfishness, implantedcommon brotherhood quickened into life-sensations, high-souled aspirations kindled to be nearer heaven and God! To the sessions of such sentiments we beseechingly summon our readers, and wish them, one and all, a merry Christmas'-not, we confess, without a hope that the perusal of the pages which follow may serve to make it merrier and better. ALL I DARE TELL ABOUT IT. BY ALLAN PARK PATON. CHAPTER I. NOT worth a farthing in the world! less truth-that you were never at such a low ebb as I trust, kind reader-as you are called, with more or this. I have been. I may not tell you how, save that it was connected with the error of my youth, and was born chiefly of foolish pride; but I shall tell you when and where, and some remarkable things that came of it. What I am about to relate happened in a certain year, in the month of December. I was, at the time, staying in a small country village, in that county of England which is renowned for 'wood and water, law and gospel, el maids and mustard;' and the name of mine inn was 'The Seven Stars.' In my wanderings through the northern counties, staff in hand and knapsack aback, I had passed or put up at many a hostelry, and been struck and amused with their various names. Of what may be called the national and noble kind, I had seen The Royal Tent,' 'The Crown and Rose,' 'The Crown and Mitre,' 'The Duke of York, and 'The Granby Arms;' and of the zoological there were 'The Old Red Lion,' 'The Black Lion,' 'The White Bear,' The Spread Eagle,' 'The Buffalo,' and 'The Dolphin.' I Lad marked several of a sporting sort, such as The Bull and Dog,' 'The Fox and Partridge,' 'The Hare and Hounds,' and 'The Fighting-Cocks;' some of a social and satisfying character, as 'The Punch - Bowl' and 'The Shoulder of Mutton;' and two or three facetious ones, among which were 'The Gaping Goose,' and the veritable 'Cat and Bagpipes.' I had met, also, many of names so thoroughly English, and in keeping with the dear old fair land, its legends and its people, that they were songs and pictures to me; and belonging to this class were 'The George and Dragon,' 'The Robin Hood,' 'The Elm Tree,' 'The Bush,' 'The Green,' 'The Three Blue-Bells,' 'The Beehive,' 'The Grapes,' 'The Wheat-Sheaf,' 'The BarleyShed, The Spotted Cow,' 'The Bay Horse,' 'The Fleece,''The Golden Cock,' 'The Plough,' 'The Woodman,' and 'The Jolly Waggoner.' Three only had I found amed after heavenly bodies-"The Sun,' 'The Half-Moon,' and the 'Seven Stars;' and, under the roof of the last of these, the strange adventure I have here to tell began. The Seven Stars.-A cheery steady place, you sayits gleaming windows shining a far welcome along the winter road to the wearied traveller; its ever open door sending into the surrounding gloom a hospitable and seeking-looking ray-the eyes of its buxom landlady and pretty maid sparkling with kindness, and its quaint old glass and furniture glinting with happy lights. Nothing of the kind. "There's soomthin' in a nemm," as Shakspere says,' a Shrewsbury shopkeeper the other day remarked to me, on my inquiring what was the meaning of 'glischorine,' displayed in his window (used for very fine machinery); but nothing in this astral name agreed with the subject of it. Save for its kitchen or public room (of which more hereafter), I had never crossed the threshold of a more unhomely lodging. It was evidently an ancient house; but, with newly whitened front and frequently closed door, resembled some cunning old man remembering or meditating murder. Its rooms were small, low-roofed, pannelled with black oak, and uneven and patched in the floors. A stair which led to the bed-chambers was also of black oak, and had a heavy balustrade, grotesquely carved. It sloped to the left, the other side having apparently sunk; firm clinging was required to manage up; and at every mounting step, the old dark monster creaked and whined in the most unearthly manner. Equally communicative were the floors, however lightly trodden; and with no bolting and stuffing could I succeed in keeping the window and door of my own room from shaking. It was certainly a dreary little place. I shudder as I recall it. Still, it was not there I saw a hospitable spectre, and am able to tell of some ghosts celebrating Christmas. The public room or kitchen which I have mentioned was the redeeming feature in "The Seven Stars' It wore of nights almost a blithesome air. It was clay-floored, with open rafters overhead, along which several guns and rods were ranged. There was a fireplace, nearly the width of the room, and which those of the company who required a light had to approach with hand-shaded faces. Its glow, however, seemed to have no effect upon the landlady-a silent, sour, stout, and coarse-looking woman, whose duty it was to superintend the square boiler, and to mix at it, in due proportions, the whisky punch,' which was almost the universal drink. A large vacant space was kept before the furnace; along the sides of the apartment, and at the far end of it, were settles and benches of plain wood; and in one corner, opposite the boiler, was a tall straightbacked cushioned chair. Well do I remember the last night that I spent in 'The Seven Stars.' I had been its inmate for about a week, during which my days had been passed in waiting anxiously for a letter of forgiveness and assistance from home, and in wandering about its neighbourhood (visiting, among other things, its remains of a Roman camp, its old chapel with oaken pews and gaudy hatchments, and its churchyard, on one of whose simple tombstones I saw, for the first time out of Shakspere, the name Ophelia); and my evening hours being spent in the said kitchen; the company assembled wherein was generally a strange one-for regular attenders, the gamekeeper and his boy, the sexton, one or two of the villagers, and the squire-and for casual visitors, a pedlar, a tramp, or traveller, like myself. On the night in question, I recollect clearly who were there. There were the gamekeeper and his boy; and, at a bench opposite to them, one whose 'Delight on a shiny night In the season of the year' was well known, but who had been cunning enough to avoid hitherto the snares of the law; there was a little wizened Newcastle man, who sang songs in what seemed to me Arabic, and called the hostesshinny;' there was one of our hardly entreated brothers;' one of our 'conscripts upon whom the lot fell,' in slouched gray hat and clay-coloured clothes, whom I had seen that noon by the roadside devouring his dinner-a junk of brown bread and slice after slice of a raw leek; there was myself; and, in the tall straight-backed cushioned chair, ever reserved for him, there sat the squire. The party was an odd one, but the last-mentioned of its members was its strangest feature. Here was Sir John Brynton, principal proprietor in the neighbourhood, and lord of Danby Hall-a place encrusted with knightly his tory, surrounded by natural beauty, containing love and respect for him, and enlivened by youth and accomplishments; and yet, almost every evening, at a set hour, were his nag's hoofs heard at the door, and he made his appearance, leaning on the arm of one of his waiting men, in the kitchen of 'The Seven Stars,' to take his seat in the chair beside the large fire, to smoke his long pipe (which his servitor took from the mantelpiece and filled for him), to drink his glass of ale, and to chat and gossip with all comers. He was a tall slim old gentleman, with long narrow head, silver hair, and 'wide blue eyes as in a picture,' dressed in the fashion of a quarter of a century before; and in everything that he did and said there was that which showed natural dignity and high birth. He spoke comparatively little; and, when his voice was heard, it was generally listened to with a strange deference. During my sojourn, I conceived a great admiration for |