This is the "Faust" of Gaelic poetry, incommunicable except to the
native reader, and, like that celebrated composition, an untranslatable
tissue of tenderness, sublimity, and mocking ribaldry. The heroine is
understood to have been a young person of virtue and beauty, in the
humbler walks of life, who was quite unappropriated, except by the
imagination of the poet, and whose fame has passed into the Phillis or
Amaryllis _ideal_ of Highland accomplishment and grace. Macdonald was
married to a scold, and though his actual relations with Morag were of
the Platonic kind, he was persuaded to a retractation, entitled the
"Disparagement of Morag," which is sometimes recited as a companion
piece to the present. The consideration of brevity must plead our
apology with the Celtic readers for omitting many stanzas of the best
modern composition in their language.