errors of Scaliger, than a sharer in all the wisdom of Clavius. Even so, we had rather err with the optimists than be ranked with the pessimists, even when their predictions turn out the truest. In our forenoon ramble on Friday last did we not find a merle's nest in the close and well-guarded embrace of an old thorn root, with its pretty treasure of four brown-spotted, greyishgreen eggs and with our wild-flower bouquet before us, are we not better employed in crooning one of Burns' sweetest lyrics than in predicting evil, even if we were certain that our prediction should become true-said lyric being that entitled The Posie, which, dear reader, if you do not know it already, you should incontinently get by heart. Here is a verse or two : "Oh, luve will venture in where it daurna weel be seen; "The primrose I will pu', the firstling o' the year, For she's the pink o' womankind, and blooms without a peer- "The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair, And in her lovely bosom I'll place the lily there; "The hawthorn I will pu', wi' its locks o' siller grey, Mark that line in italics, and ponder its exquisite tenderness. How it must have irradiated, like a sudden flood of sunshine over a mountain landscape, the poet's heart as he penned it! Here you have the germ of the doctrine afterwards more broadly taught by Coleridge in the well-known lines of the Ancient Mariner :— PRIMROSES AND DAISIES. "Farewell, farewell, but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding Guest, All things, both great and small; 3 We love The Posie of Burns for its own sake, but we love it all the more, perhaps, because our attention was first directed to its sweet simplicity and tender beauty by one of our earliest and kindest friends, himself a poet of no mean order, the late Professor William Tennant, author of Anster Fair, in all its fantastical gaiety and homely mirth the most original poem, perhaps, to be found in the literature of our country. A gentleman who resides at present in Cheltenham, a cadet of one of the oldest and most respectable families on the West Coast, and himself the head of a house not unknown in Highland story, has been so good as to send us a short Gaelic poem in manuscript, with a request that we should give an English version of it. With this request we very readily comply, such a task being to us a labour of love; the poem itself, besides, being very beautiful, and the history of its composition extremely interesting, as throwing some light on the manners and customs of the olden times. The following prefatory note from the MS. itself sufficiently explains the origin of this quaint and curious Hebridean Epithalamium :-"It was the custom in the West Highlands of Scotland in the olden time to meet the bride coming forth from her chamber with her maidens on the morning after her marriage, and to salute her with a poetical blessing called Beannachadh Bàird. On the occasion of the marriage of the Rev. Donald Macleod of Durinish, in the Isle of Skye, this practice having then got very much into desuetude, and none being found prepared to salute his bride agreeably to it, he himself came forward and received her with the following beautiful address." We present our readers with the original lines verbatim et literatim, precisely as they stand in the MS., only omitting two lines that are partly illegible from their falling into the sharp foldings of the sheet. The sense and tenor of these lines, however, we have ventured to guess at and to incorporate with our English version: BEANNACHADH BÀIRD. Mile fàilte dhuit le'd bhrèid, Fad' a rè gu'n robh thu slàn, Le d' mhaitheas as le d' nì 'bhith fas. O thionnseain thu fhein 'san treubh. An tùs do choiruith 's tu dg, An tùs gach lò iarr Righ nan Dùl; Cha'n' eagal nach dean e gu ceart Gach dearbh-bheachd a bhios 'nad rùn, Bith misneachail-ach bith stolt. 'S ged labhras ort, na taisbean fuath. Na bith gearannach fo chrois, Falbh socair le cupan làn; Chaoidh dh' an olc na tabhair spèis As le 'd bhrèid ort, mìle fàilt! Whether with the sense of the above we have succeeded in catching anything of its quaint beauty and tenderness in the following lines, is for the reader to judge: A BARD'S BLESSING. A BARD'S BLESSING. Comely and kerchief'd, blooming, fresh and fair, Be shower'd upon thee from the hand divine. Thou in thy beauty's strength did'st steal my heart from me. Though young in years thou 'rt now a wedded wife; With aid from Him, the rugged path of life May still be trod with pleasure and delight; Be open-hearted, but be eident too, Be strong and full of courage, but be staid; Be faultless wife as thou wast faultless maid ! Guard thy good name and mine from smallest stain; If thou 'rt reviled, revile not thou again; And when thy cup is full, walk humbly still, A careless, proud, rash step the blissful cup may spill! With this bard's blessing on thy wedded morn, All at thy bridal chamber-door we greet thee; May every joy of truth and goodness born Through all thy life-long journey crowd to meet thee; A blessing on thy kerchief-cinctured head! 5 The word breid in the original, which we have rendered kerchief and coif, was in the olden times the peculiar head-dress of married females, while virgins wore their braided locks uncovered, a simple ribbon to bind the hair, and occasionally a sprig of heather or modest flower by way of ornament, being the only head-dress that could with propriety be worn by a maiden in the good old anti-chignon days of our grandmothers. The Highland maiden's narrow ribbon for binding the hair was in the south of Scotland called a snood, probably from the old English snod-"neat, handsome "—a word still in use in the English border counties. In the south, even more pointedly than in the north, the emblematical character of the maiden ribbon or snood was recognised. It was only when a maiden became an honest, lawful wife that the coif-also called curch and toy-could be worn with propriety. If a damsel was so unfortunate as to lose pretentions to the name of maiden, without acquiring a right to that of matron, she was neither permitted to wear that emblem of virgin purity, the snood, nor advanced to the graver dignity of the coif or curch. In old Scottish songs there occur many sly allusions to such misfortunes, as in the original words of the popular tune of "Ower the muir amang the heather" "Down amang the broom, the broom, Down among the broom, my dearie, The lassie lost her silken snood, That gart her greet till she was wearie." And in a verse of a curious old ballad that we took down some years ago from the recitation of a grey-headed Paisley weaver "And did ye say ye lo'ed me weel? Then, kind sir, ye maun marrie me ; Aft brings the saut tear to my ee." The reverend author of the above lines was probably born about the year 1700, or perhaps ten or twenty years earlier, for we find that he died a man well advanced in years in 1760. In the Scots Magazine of that year there is the following notice of Mr Macleod's death :"Jan. 12th.-At Durinish, in the Isle of Skye, the Rev. Donald Macleod, minister of that parish, a gentleman, says our correspondent, |