The word is apparently another remnant of the old Druidical chants sung by the priests when they walked in procession round their sacred circles of Stonehenge and others, and clearly traceable to the Gaelic--_Riomball_, a circle; _riomballach_, circuitous; _riomballachd_, circularity. The perversion of so many of these once sacred chants to the service of the street ballad, suggests the trite remark of Hamlet to Horatio:-- To what base uses we may come at last! . . . . . . Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, May stop a hole to keep the winds away. The hymns once sung by thousands of deep-voiced priests marching in solemn procession from their mystic shrines to salute with music and song, and reverential homage, the rising of the glorious orb which cheers and fertilises the world, the gift as well as the emblem of Almighty Power and Almighty Love, have wholly departed from the recollection of man, and their poor and dishonoured relics are spoken of by scholars and philosophers, as trash, gibberish, nonsense, and an idle farrago of sounds, of no more philological value than the lowing of cattle or the bleating of sheep. But I trust that all attentive readers of the foregoing pages will look upon the old choruses--so sadly perverted in the destructive progress of time, that demolishes languages as well as empires and systems of religious belief--with something of the respect due to their immense antiquity, and their once sacred functions in a form of worship, which, whatever were its demerits as compared with the purer religion that has taken its place, had at least the merit of inculcating the most exalted ideas of the Power, the Love, and the Wisdom of the Great Creator. ON VISITING _DRUIM-A LIATH_, THE BIRTH-PLACE OF DUNCAN _BAN_ MACINTYRE. The homes long are gone, but enchantment still lingers, These green knolls around, where thy young life began, Sweetest and last of the old Celtic singers, Bard of the _Monadh-dhu'_, blithe _Donach Bàn_! Never mid scenes of earth, fairer and grander, Poet first lifted his eyelids on light; Free mid these glens, o'er these mountains to wander, And make them his own by the true minstrel right. Thy home at the meeting and green interlacing Of clear-flowing waters and far-winding glens, Lovely inlaid in the mighty embracing Of sombre pine forests and storm-riven Bens. Behind thee these crowding Peaks, region of mystery, Fed thy young spirit with broodings sublime; Each cairn and green knoll lingered round by some history, Of the weird under-world, or the wild battle-time. Thine were Ben-Starrav, Stop-gyre, Meal-na-ruadh, Mantled in storm-gloom, or bathed in sunshine; Streams from Corr-oran, Glash-gower, and Glen-fuadh Made music for thee, where their waters combine.