To the proper understanding of this curious composition, a few words of comment and elucidation may be necessary. The lullaby must be understood as sung by a foster-mother to her foster-son, the Gaelic words from which the exigencies of verse oblige us to retain in our paraphrase. In lulling her charge to sleep, the foster-mother fondly anticipates the time when the boy on her knee shall have become a full-grown and perfect man; her beau-ideal of a perfect man, observe, being that, like the heroes of ancient song, he should be brawny limbed, strong of hand, and swift of foot, able and willing at all risks to seize and appropriate his neighbour's goods, especially his cattle, whenever necessity--an empty larder--or honour urged him to the adventure. The coolness with which the old lady commits her foster-son to the immediate care and guardianship of the heavenly powers, in the self-same breath in which she hopes and believes that he will, when he becomes a man, prove an active and expert thief--a stealer of beeves from the pastures of neighbouring tribes, in utter defiance of the decalogue--is ludicrous in the extreme. To understand it aright, we must recollect that in former times it was accounted not only lawful but honourable among hostile tribes to commit depredations on one another; and as hostility among the clans was the rule rather than the exception, every species of depredation was practised,--cattle-lifting raids, however, being accounted the most honourable of all, and in the conduct of which the best gentlemen of the clan might without a blush take an active part. The "lowing of kine," geùmnaich bhà, occurring in this lullaby, was an old toast of the cattle-lifting times, that the late Dr. Macfarlane of Arrochar told us, he himself had often heard when a young man at baptismal feasts and bridals on Loch Lomond side. The secret of it is this: The geùmnaich, or "lowing," implied that the cattle were strangers to the glen, whilst those that belonged to the glen itself, and were the bona fide property of the clan, if such there were, were quiet and staid and well-behaved, as decent cattle should be. The cattle "stolen or strayed," as the advertisements have it, "lowed," and were troublesome; while those born and bred in the glen were content to graze in peace, and to "low" only when they deemed it absolutely necessary. "The lowing of kine," therefore, was a toast that meant neither more nor less than success to the cattle-lifting trade! As ancient Pistol says-- "'Convey,' the wise it call. 'Steal!' foh, a fico for the phrase." CHAPTER XIX. Winter--Auroral Displays in the West Highlands always indicative of a coming Storm--Corvus Corax--Wonderful Ravens--Edgar Allan Poe.