Autumnal Night--Meteors--The Spanish Mackerel--Professor Blackie's
Translations from the Gaelic--The "Translations" of the Gaelic
Society of Inverness.
"On the Rialto, every night at twelve,
I take my evening's walk of meditation."
So says the love-sick knight in Venice Preserved. We have never, much
as we should like it, had an opportunity of enjoying a Rialto midnight
meditation ramble. There is poetry and romance in the very thought of
it; but we know something more poetical and in every way better still,
namely, a midnight meditative stroll along our own beautiful silvery
sanded beach, what time the sea is so calm that its breathings are low
and soft as the respirations of a child whose sleep is undisturbed
save by angel-whispered dreams; the cloudless sky above, with its
waning moon and thousands of sparkling stars, each star a living
intelligence; its sparkling speech, and no sound to disturb the solemn
silence, except now and again the wakeful sea-bird's eerie scream,
and the voice of many waters, as the mountain torrents leap adown
their channels to the sea, a voice so mellowed by the distance that
it becomes solemn and musical as the fast-falling concluding notes
of a grand organ hymn--the Pentecostal "Veni, Creator Spiritus,
for example. During the fine weather of this exceptionally fine
season [August 1875] we have rarely gone to bed before midnight,
more frequently, indeed, long after, and our last thing at night
has been a sea-shore stroll, a half or quarter hour so thoroughly
enjoyable that we have come to miss it sadly, if by adverse weather,
absence from home, or any other cause, we are obliged to forego it. In
addition to all the other attractions of a midnight sea-side stroll in
such weather as the tropics themselves might be proud of, the reader
must remember that August is one of our meteor months--the second
week particularly being remarkable for the number and brilliancy of
the Perseides, so called from their seeming mainly to radiate from
the direction of the constellation Perseus. Never was there a finer
season to observe them than this; and although they have, perhaps,
been less numerous than usual, the brilliancy of many of them was so
remarkable, and their paths throughout so easily followed, that their
very infrequency only added to the eagerness and interest with which
one watched and waited for them. The finest display of the season was
from midnight on to nearly two A.M. on the night of the 11th and 12th,
in which time we counted thirty-three noticeable meteors--of which
seven were what might be called first-class meteors of a nucleus
brilliancy equal to or exceeding that of first magnitude stars,
with broad, bright, well-defined trains, that wholly or in part, in
three or four instances, remained in sight, mapping out the meteor's
trajectory for several seconds after the disappearance or extinction
of the parent orb or meteor proper itself. Mr. W. B. Symington,
who was among the Hebrides at the time on a yachting cruise, writes
on the subject as follows:--"Notwithstanding your injunction to be
on the qui vive as to the August meteors, I am sorry to say that
I forgot all about it on the nights of the 9th and 10th, although
the weather was beautifully clear. On the 11th, 12th, and 13th,
however, the sailing-master and myself were sharply on the look-out,
and our watchfulness was rewarded by the sight of some really very
splendid examples. There were on each night scores and scores of the
more common, lesser, and fainter meteors, but our attention was of
course principally directed to the more brilliant ones. Of these
latter we had, during about an hour and a quarter's observation,
four very fine ones, with long bright tails, on the 11th; nine on
the 12th; and one magnificent fellow, that lighted up the deck,
sails, and rigging of the yacht with a strange greenish glare, on
the 13th. This last was at 11.5 P.M. One of the men said that before
daybreak on the 12th there were some very large and bright meteors. As
far as my observations went, the course of these meteors seemed to
be mainly to the west and south-west, although two at least of the
larger ones rushed in a directly opposite path, namely, to east and
north-east. As I am likely to be at sea in November, though in a very
different kind of craft, I will endeavour to give you a more careful
and satisfactory account of the meteor display of that month. I may
tell you that one of the men caught a scad of large size, the biggest,
I believe, I ever saw. It weighed nearly four pounds. I thought it not
bad eating, though the rest of them in the cabin said it was coarse
and tasteless. It was caught by a long line and herring baited hook,
that was allowed to drag after the ship in a breeze that gave us at
the time a speed of at least eight knots an hour."
The fish referred to by our correspondent is also called the Spanish
mackerel, it being very common on some parts of the Spanish coast. It
belongs to the order Scomberidæ, and is a cousin of our own better
known mackerel proper, though a considerably larger fish, and not
nearly so good for the table as its beautiful congener. The Spanish
differs from the mackerel proper in one very remarkable particular;
it has an air bladder which the true mackerel of our shores has not,
and yet the latter is one of the readiest and swiftest swimmers,
and at all depths, of any fish in the sea. The fact is that the real
use of the air bladder in the economy of fish still continues an
unresolved and seemingly an unresolvable puzzle.
Lovers of living, healthy poetry--healthy as the mountain breeze,
and free and sparkling as the mountain stream, and more especially
our Celtic friends who have been taught to honour and reverence
the "kilted" muse--will be glad to know that Professor Blackie
has in preparation the materials of what cannot fail to prove a
very interesting volume, consisting of translations of some of the
most admired compositions of our modern Gaelic bards. Macintyre's
Ben. Dorain, Alasdair Macdonald's Berliun, with many of such lesser
popular lyrics, as Am Breacan Wallach, Failte na Mor-Thir, A Bhanarach
Dhoun a Cruidh, &c., will thus appear for the first time in a becoming
Saxon garb; not--to use the milliner's phrase--too tight a fit,
observe, but natural and easy, though "made to measure," and we venture
to predict that our English readers, who as yet know them not at all,
and our Gaelic friends, who know them well and have long known them,
will alike be pleased with the results of the learned Professor's
gallant raid into bard-land. The Professor has been visiting us
here lately, and we can honestly say that such specimens of his
work as he was good enough to read to us--and there are few better
readers than Professor Blackie--seemed to us admirably done. His
version of Ben. Dorain particularly, which we had an opportunity of
hearing twice, and of which we can thus speak most positively, is
thoroughly well done; so well, so faithfully, and with such spirit
and verve as must delight not only the ordinary reader, but the very
"ghost" of the original author--Macintyre himself--if, like the
Ossianic departed heroes, he is permitted to know and appreciate
sublunary affairs from out the bosom of "his cloud." The Professor
translates these Gaelic poems into English verse just as, in our
opinion, they should be translated; not too literally, but with all
necessary freedom and elbow room, and yet so literally that any one
knowing the English version may rest assured that he knows also the
original quite as intimately and correctly as it is possible in the
circumstances for any mere outsider to know it. Johnson, in his Life
of Dryden, referring to the latter's version of the Æneid, &c., has a
paragraph which is worth quoting in this connection:--"When languages
are formed upon different principles, it is impossible that the same
modes of expression should always be elegant in both. While they
run on together, the closest translation may be considered the best;
but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course. Where
correspondence cannot be obtained, it is necessary to be content
with something equivalent. 'Translation, therefore,' says Dryden,
'is not so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase.'" With all
this we entirely concur, more especially when such widely different
languages as the English and Gaelic have to be dealt with. We do not
know that Professor Blackie ever read the paragraph quoted, or, even
if he did read it, that he now remembers it; but to his translations
from the Gaelic, to so much of them, at all events, as were submitted
to our notice, Dryden's dictum is entirely applicable--they are not
so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase. They strike a
golden mean very difficult of attainment in such efforts; and on
the appearance of the volume itself, we shall be disappointed if
nine-tenths at least of the many readers it is sure to command do
not entirely agree with us. But nous verrons, if we live we shall see.
The Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness for 1873-4 and
1874-5, have reached us. The Secretary's paper on "Coinneach Odhar,"
the Brahan seer, is most interesting, containing as it does the best
account that we have met with of that uncanny Ross-shire worthy. That
he was an impostor, and a vulgar impostor too, there can be no doubt;
but the story of a man--clever, shrewd rascal as he was--in whom the
people so thoroughly believed, is worth the telling, and Mr. Mackenzie
tells it very well. He should, we think, give us, if possible,
a second paper, containing the many other wonderful vaticinations
attributed to his hero, who seems to have latterly been too clever
by half; for he who could foresee the misfortunes of others--the
death even of a cow--couldn't evidently foresee the well-merited fate
that awaited himself; for he was hanged, and we have no doubt at all
that he richly deserved that species of exaltation. What Thomas the
Rhymer--him of Ercildoune--was in the south of Scotland at a much
earlier period, this Coinneach Odhar, comparing small things with
great, seems to have been in the North-West Highlands during the
latter half of the seventeenth century. "True Thomas," however, was
a gentleman and a scholar; whereas Coinneach was, of course, utterly
illiterate, conducting his scheme of imposture solely by the aid of
natural talents, which must have been considerable, and a large and
ever-ready stock of impudence and cunning, nicely calculated to impose
upon the vulgar. He made his grand mistake when he flew at such high
game as Lady Seaforth and her domestic affairs. She was too clever,
too intelligent and well-educated to be imposed upon. She ordered
him to be hanged, a doom to which many were led at that period
who probably less richly deserved it than such a prying, meddling,
mischief-maker as was Kenneth the Seer.