  Dougal Buchanan was born at the Mill of Ardoch, in the beautiful valley of Strathyre, and parish of Balquhidder, in the year 1716. His parents were in circumstances to allow him the education of the parish school; on which, by private application, he so far improved, as to be qualified to act as teacher and catechist to the Highland locality which borders on Loch Rannoch, under the appointment of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Never, it is believed, were the duties of a calling discharged with more zeal and efficiency. The catechist was, both in and out of the strict department of his office, a universal oracle,[102] and his name is revered in the scene of his usefulness in a degree to which the honours of canonization could scarcely have added. Pious, to the height of a proverbial model, he was withal frank, cheerful, and social; and from his extraordinary command of the Gaelic idiom, and its poetic phraseology, he must have lent an ear to many a song and many a legend[103]—a nourishment of the imagination in which, as well as in purity of Gaelic, his native Balquhidder was immeasurably inferior to the Rannoch district of his adoption. The composition of hymns, embracing a most eloquent and musical paraphrase of many of the more striking inspirations of scriptural poetry, seems to have been the favourite employment of his leisure hours. These are sung or recited in every cottage of the Highlands where a reader or a retentive memory is to be found. Buchanan's life was short. He was cut off by typhus fever, at a period when his talents had begun to attract a more than local attention. It was within a year after his return from superintending the press of the first version of the Gaelic New Testament, that his lamented death took place. His command of his native tongue is understood to have been serviceable to the translator, the Rev. James Stewart of Killin, who had probably been Buchanan's early acquaintance, as they were natives of the same district. This reverend gentleman is said to have entertained a scheme of getting the catechist regularly licensed to preach the gospel without the usual academical preparation. The scheme was frustrated by his death, in the summer of 1768. We know of no fact relating to the development of the poetic vein of this interesting bard, unless it be found in the circumstance to which he refers in his "Diary,"[104] of having been bred a violent Jacobite, and having lived many years under the excitement of strong, even vindictive feelings, at the fate of his chief and landlord (Buchanan of Arnprior and Strathyre), who, with many of his dependents, and some of the poet's relations, suffered death for their share in the last rebellion. While he relates that the power of religion at length quenched this effervescence of his emotions, it may be supposed that ardent Jacobitism, with its common accompaniment of melody, may have fostered an imagination which every circumstance proves to have been sufficiently susceptible. It may be added, as a particular not unworthy of memorial in a poet's life, that his remains are deposited in perhaps the most picturesque place of sepulture in the kingdom—the peninsula of Little Leny, in the neighbourhood of Callander; to which his relatives transferred his body, as the sepulchre of many chiefs and considerable persons of his clan, and where it is perhaps matter of surprise that his Highland countrymen have never thought of honouring his memory with some kind of monument. The poetic remains of Dougal Buchanan do not afford extensive materials for translation. The subjects with which he deals are too solemn, and their treatment too surcharged with scriptural imagery, to be available for the purposes of a popular collection, of which the object is not directly religious. The only exception that occurs, perhaps, is his poem on "The Skull." Even in this case some moral pictures[105] have been omitted, as either too coarsely or too solemnly touched, to be fit for our purpose. A few lines of the conclusion are also omitted, as being mere amplifications of Scripture—wonderful, indeed, in point of vernacular beauty or sublimity, but not fusible for other use. Slight traces of imitation may be perceived; "The Grave" of Blair, and some passages of "Hamlet," being the apparent models.
A CLAGIONN. THE SKULL. As I sat by the grave, at the brink of its cave
Lo! a featureless skull on the ground;
The symbol I clasp, and detain in my grasp,
While I turn it around and around.
Without beauty or grace, or a glance to express
Of the bystander nigh, a thought;
Its jaw and its mouth are tenantless both,
Nor passes emotion its throat.
No glow on its face, no ringlets to grace
Its brow, and no ear for my song;
Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death
The raised features hath flatten'd along.
The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam—
The intelligent sight, are no more;
But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil,
Come hither their dwellings to bore.
No lineament here is left to declare
If monarch or chief art thou;
Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave
That on dunghill expires, is as low.
Thou delver of death, in my ear let thy breath
Who tenants my hand, unfold;
That my voice may not die without a reply,
Though the ear it addresses is cold.
Say, wert thou a May,[106] of beauty a ray,
And flatter'd thine eye with a smile?
Thy meshes didst set, like the links of a net,
The hearts of the youth to wile?
Alas every charm that a bosom could warm
Is changed to the grain of disgust!
Oh, fie on the spoiler for daring to soil her
Gracefulness all in the dust!
Say, wise in the law, did the people with awe
Acknowledge thy rule o'er them—
A magistrate true, to all dealing their due,
And just to redress or condemn?
Or was righteousness sold for handfuls of gold
In the scales of thy partial decree;
While the poor were unheard when their suit they preferr'd,
And appeal'd their distresses to thee?
Say, once in thine hour, was thy medicine of power
To extinguish the fever of ail?
And seem'd, as the pride of thy leech-craft e'en tried
O'er omnipotent death to prevail?
Alas, that thine aid should have ever betray'd
Thy hope when the need was thine own;
What salve or annealing sufficed for thy healing
When the hours of thy portion were flown?
Or—wert thou a hero, a leader to glory,
While armies thy truncheon obey'd;
To victory cheering, as thy foemen careering
In flight, left their mountains of dead?
Was thy valiancy laid, or unhilted thy blade,
When came onwards in battle array
The sepulchre-swarms, ensheathed in their arms,
To sack and to rifle their prey?
How they joy in their spoil, as thy body the while
Besieging, the reptile is vain,
And her beetle-mate blind hums his gladness to find
His defence in the lodge of thy brain!
Some dig where the sheen of the ivory has been,
Some, the organ where music repair'd;
In rabble and rout they come in and come out
At the gashes their fangs have bared.
*****
Do I hold in my hand a whole lordship of land,
Represented by nakedness, here?
Perhaps not unkind to the helpless thy mind,
Nor all unimparted thy gear;
Perhaps stern of brow to thy tenantry thou!
To leanness their countenances grew—
'Gainst their crave for respite, when thy clamour for right
Required, to a moment, its due;
While the frown of thy pride to the aged denied
To cover their head from the chill,
And humbly they stand, with their bonnet in hand,
As cold blows the blast of the hill.
Thy serfs may look on, unheeding thy frown,
Thy rents and thy mailings unpaid;
All praise to the stroke their bondage that broke!
While but claims their obeisance the dead.
*****
Or a head do I clutch, whose devices were such,
That death must have lent them his sting—
So daring they were, so reckless of fear,
As heaven had wanted a king?
Did the tongue of the lie, while it couch'd like a spy
In the haunt of thy venomous jaws,
Its slander display, as poisons its prey
The devilish snake in the grass?
That member unchain'd, by strong bands is restrain'd,
The inflexible shackles of death;
And, its emblem, the trail of the worm, shall prevail
Where its slaver once harbour'd beneath.
And oh! if thy scorn went down to thine urn
And expired, with impenitent groan;
To repose where thou art is of peace all thy part,
And then to appear—at the Throne!
Like a frog, from the lake that leapeth, to take
To the Judge of thy actions the way,
And to hear from His lips, amid nature's eclipse,
Thy sentence of termless dismay.
*****
The hardness of iron thy bones shall environ,
To brass-links the veins of thy frame
Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow
Like the anvil that melts not in flame!
But wert thou the mould of a champion bold
For God and his truth and his law?
Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and each sense
Is broken—each gem with a flaw—
Be comforted thou! For rising in air
Thy flight shall the clarion obey;
And the shell of thy dust thou shalt leave to be crush'd,
If they will, by the creatures of prey.
AM BRUADAR. THE DREAM. We submit these further illustrations of the moral maxims of "The Skull." In the original they are touched in phraseology scarcely unworthy of the poet's Saxon models. As lockfasted in slumber's arms
I lay and dream'd (so dreams our race
When every spectral object charms,
To melt, like shadow, in the chase),
A vision came; mine ear confess'd
Its solemn sounds. "Thou man distraught!
Say, owns the wind thy hand's arrest,
Or fills the world thy crave of thought?
*****
"Since fell transgression ravaged here
And reft Man's garden-joys away,
He weeps his unavailing tear,
And straggles, like a lamb astray.
"With shrilling bleat for comfort hie
To every pinfold, humankind;
Ah, there the fostering teat is dry,
The stranger mother proves unkind.
"No rest for toil, no drink for drought,
For bosom-peace the shadow's wing—
So feeds expectancy on nought,
And suckles every lying thing.
"Some woe for ever wreathes its chain,
And hope foretells the clasp undone;
Relief at handbreadth seems, in vain
Thy fetter'd arms embrace—'tis gone!
"Not all that trial's lore unlearns
Of all the lies that life betrays,
Avails, for still desire returns—
The last day's folly is to-day's.
"Thy wish has prosper'd—has its taste
Survived the hour its lust was drown'd;
Or yields thine expectation's zest
To full fruition, golden-crown'd?
"The rosebud is life's symbol bloom,
'Tis loved, 'tis coveted, 'tis riven—
Its grace, its fragrance, find a tomb,
When to the grasping hand 'tis given.
"Go, search the world, wherever woe
Of high or low the bosom wrings,
There, gasp for gasp, and throe for throe,
Is answer'd from the breast of kings.
"From every hearth-turf reeks its cloud,
From every heart its sigh is roll'd;
The rose's stalk is fang'd—one shroud
Is both the sting's and honey's fold.
"Is wealth thy lust—does envy pine
Where high its tempting heaps are piled?
Look down, behold the fountain shine,
And, deeper still, with dregs defiled!
"Quickens thy breath with rash inhale,
And falls an insect[107] in its toil?
The creature turns thy life-blood pale,
And blends thine ivory teeth with soil.
"When high thy fellow-mortal soars,
His state is like the topmost nest—
It swings with every blast that roars,
And every motion shakes its crest.
"And if the world for once is kind,
Yet ever has the lot its bend;
Where fortune has the crook inclined,
Not all thy strength or art shall mend.
"For as the sapling's sturdy stalk,
Whose double twist is crossly strain'd,
Such is thy fortune—sure to baulk
At this extreme what there was gain'd.
"When Heaven its gracious manna hail'd,
'Twas vain who hoarded its supply,
Not all his miser care avail'd
His neighbour's portion to outvie.
"So, blended all that nature owns,
So, warp'd all hopes that mortals bless—
With boundless wealth, the sufferer's groans;
With courtly luxury, distress.
"Lift up the balance—heap with gold,
Its other shell vile dust shall fill;
And were a kingdom's ransom told,
The scales would want adjustment still.
"Life has its competence—nor deem
That better than enough were more;
Sure it were phantasy to dream
With burdens to assuage thy sore.
"It is the fancy's whirling strife
That breeds thy pain—to-day it craves,
To-morrow spurns—suffices life
When passion asks what passion braves?
"Should appetite her wish achieve,
To herd with brutes her joy would bound;
Pleased other paradise to leave,
Content to pasture on the ground.
"But pride rebels, nor towers alone
Beyond that confine's lowly sphere—
Seems as from the Eternal Throne
It aim'd the sceptre's self to tear.
"'Tis thus we trifle, thus we dare;
But, seek we to our bliss the way,
Let us to Heaven our path refer,
Believe, and worship, and obey.
"That choice is all—to range beyond
Nor must, nor needs; provision, grace,
In these He gives, who sits enthroned,
Salvation, competence, and peace."
The instructive vision pass'd away,
But not its wisdom's dreamless lore;
No more in shadow-tracks I stray,
And fondle shadow-shapes no more.
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