Every bird will praise its own nest, And why shall not I think mine the best? Land of strong men and healthy food, And kindly cheer, and manners good. A land that faces the ocean wild, But with summer sweetness, mellow and mild, Calves, lambs, and kids, full many a score, Bread, milk, and honey piled in the store. A dappled land full sunny and warm, Secure and sheltered from the storm, With ducks and geese and ponds not scanted, And food for all that live to want it, etc. The poet, apparently, made the most of his own rugged island, and now lies buried in an old churchyard not far from the village of Houghary, where a rough boulder of gneiss, of uneven, battered surface, spotted with nodules, but without any inscription, marks his grave. He himself, while living, had picked it out from the beach and destined it for this purpose. The Highland bards before the Forty-five were thus a goodly company, and they had this in common, that they were independent for the most part of writing, in some cases even of education; yet they had a wonderful command of their native Gaelic, and an extraordinary ear for the beauties of sound that may be expressed through the medium of language. They were all more or less attached to chiefs, whose praises they sang, and almost without exception these early bards lived into an extreme old age, and died in the land they had never left, and among the friends they had never forsaken. CHAPTER XV THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH ON GAELIC LITERATURE The origins of Celtic literature—Two streams—The Pagan—The Christian—Influence of the early Celtic Church as patron of letters—Originates a written literature—Attitude towards the ancient sagas—Medieval obscurantism—The Dialogues between Ossian and Patrick quoted and discussed—Their significance—Bishop Carsewell and the Reformation—The rival influences of Naturalism and the Church—Decline of Gaelic oral literature—The Nineteenth, a century of gleaning rather than of great creative work—Reasons—Present-day return to nature—Splendid services of individual Churchmen. As we work our way back through history towards the origins of Celtic literature, we recognise two streams issuing from two very different sources. One has its rise in pre-Christian times, welling up from the pagan heart of the race from a remote antiquity. It is represented by the sagas and the poetry that is mingled with them. These sagas breathe the spirit of the Celtic people in the long past, and are the most characteristic of all their literary products. So old are they, that very few of them deal with events posterior to the eighth century, and those that do are the less meritorious.