│MacTalla │Sydney, Cape Breton │1892 │ │ │Supplement to _Life and Work_ │Glasgow │1879– │ │ │Scottish Celtic Review │ „ │1881–85│ 4│ │The Celtic Monthly │ „ │1892– │ │ └──────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────┴───────┴────────┘ Of these it will be seen the most died in their infancy. The only survivors in Scotland to-day are the Church Quarterly _An Fhianuis_, the Monthly Supplement to _Life and Work_, and the _Celtic Monthly_. There have been about twenty monthly periodicals tried since the beginning of last century. Of the _Gaelic Messenger_, to take a single example, Dr. Nigel Macneill says that the late Mr. W. R. Macphun, the publisher, informed him in 1873 that the parcels of _Messengers_ sent to the Highlands and Islands came back at the end of the year, _after they had been read_, without any accompanying payment. Dr. Macleod, the editor, and his enterprising publisher saw then that it was time to give up the business. “Some who have lost time and money in recent times over Gaelic affairs,” adds Dr. Macneill sententiously, “may find some cold comfort in this incident in the experience of our greatest of prose writers.” Further comment on that score is surely unnecessary. Yet is it not suggestive of much that the only paper at present wholly written in Scottish Gaelic is one published in Cape Breton, 3000 miles without and beyond the Celtic fringe of the Old World? Taken as a whole, we may see from this survey that the printed Gaelic books extant belong to the past. They represent a type of thought which has been largely superseded. And no modern outside the world of Gaelic dream could live and thrive on them exclusively. Nevertheless they represent the literature of a people, ancient and venerable, and as such they will have a value and interest for the future historian, litterateur, philologist, and ethnologist far exceeding what they have to-day; and in translations the best of the bards will be read when the language in which they breathed their poetry is no longer heard on the lips of men. CHAPTER XVIII THE MASTER GLEANERS OF GAELIC POETRY The work of the gleaner—Authors of the three most precious relics of Celtic literature, Leabhar Na h’Uidhre, Book of Hymns, and Book of Leinster—of the three Highland treasures, Book of the Dean of Lismore, Fernaig MS., and Book of Clanranald—Advent of Macpherson—Collections and collectors between 1750 and 1820—First printed gleaning—Four nineteenth-century monuments, Campbell’s Leabhar na Feinne, Mackenzie’s Beauties of Gaelic Poetry, Sinclair’s Songster, and Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica—Other recent gleaners and their books.