“Ho gur toigh leam! he gur toigh leam! Ho gur toigh leam féin a’ Ghàilig! ’S toigh leam i ’sgach àit am bi mi; Bheir i ann am chuimhn’ a’ Ghàidlh’ltachd.” —CHORUS OF POPULAR SONG. ENGLISH: _Ho, I love the sweet old Gaelic!_ _It reminds me of the Highlands,_ _Hay, I love that tongue of heroes,_ _Everywhere in far or nigh lands._ Considerable activity was shown in the beginning of this century in collecting the floating mass of poetry then extant in the Highlands. Celtic patriots who dreaded the immediate decease of the ancient language of Albin set themselves in praiseworthy fashion to the task of rescuing this popular literature from the devouring jaws of time and change. A brief survey of the various publications which were the practical outcome of this happy determination will exhibit no unworthy results. These results, in many cases achieved at great self-sacrifice, are more deserving of notice when it is remembered how expensive it was then to publish bulky volumes, especially in the Gaelic language, and how limited was the constituency to whose support the persistent patriots appealed. Their devotion to their venerable mother-tongue, supposed to be on her death-bed, deserves our gratitude; and if their ghosts occasionally revisit in the glimpses of the moon, the scenes of their self-denying labours, they must be gratified to hear still the echoes of their much-loved tongue resounding as of yore through the glens and by the seashore as well as in crowded halls in our large centres of population. Peace be to their names! and long may the torch of Gaelic enthusiasm, which they kept lighted, and handed down to us, be preserved a burning power in the bosoms of our Highland countrymen. It is not proposed to do here much more than the mere enumeration of some of these collections of poetry. This itself will be sufficient, along with the array of Gaelic bards that have already passed in review before us, to show further how unfounded is the general dictum that there is no Gaelic literature—no books in the language of the Highlander.