Rise up, my boy, make ready My horse, for I forth would ride, To follow the modest damsel, Where she walks on the green hillside. For, ever since our youth were we plighted, In faith, troth, and wedlock true-- She is sweeter to me nine times over Than organ or cuckoo! For, ever since my childhood I loved the fair and darling child; But our people came between us, And with lucre our pure love defiled; Oh, my woe it is, and my bitter pain, And I weep it night and day, That the _cooleen bawn_ of my early love Is torn from my heart away. Sweetheart and faithful treasure, Be constant still, and true, Nor for want of herds and houses Leave one who would ne'er leave you; I pledge you the blessed Bible, Without and eke within, That the faithful God will provide for us, Without thanks to kith or kin. Oh, love, do you remember, When we lay all night alone, Beneath the ash in the winter-storm, When the oak-wood round did groan? No shelter then from the blast had we, The bitter blast or sleet, But your gown to wrap about our heads, And my coat round our feet. The main literary work of Sir Samuel Ferguson was devoted to this revivification of the spirit of ancient Celtic poetry, in spite of a highly successful début as an English poet in The Forging of the Anchor, which at once took its place among those poems that are the familiar treasures of the people, and in this he was doubtless governed by something of patriotic spirit as well as by natural predilection. His work is not great in quantity, and he treasured his inspiration and perfected his workmanship with careful pains. Its result is to give a reproduction of the pervading elements of Irish Celtic poetry in English form with almost absolute perfection, and imbued with a spirit of original genius. In his poems, rather than in Macpherson's Ossian or in the literal translations, will the modern reader find the voice of the ancient Celtic bards speaking to the intelligence of to-day in their own tones without false change and dilution, or the confusion and dimness of an ancient language. The value of this work has not yet been fully appreciated by literary critics, but there is no doubt in my mind but that it eventually will be, WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. |One of the most extraordinary and painful lives in literary history was that of William Thom of Inverury,