'From the lone sheiling on the misty island Mountains divide us and a waste of seas, Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.'
In _Tait's Magazine_ for 1849 it is given as 'Canadian Boat Song, from the Gaelic.' The author of the English version was Burns' 'Sodger Hugh,' the 12th Earl of Eglinton, who was M.P. for Ayrshire from 1784 to 1789, and was the great-grandfather of the present Earl. When in Canada the author is said to have heard a song of lament sung by evicted Hebridean crofters in Manitoba, which gave him the idea for his verses--the first four lines, and chorus, of which are--
'Listen to me as when we heard our father Sing long ago the song of other shores; Listen to me, and then in chorus gather All your deep voices as ye pull your oars. _Chorus_--Fair the broad meads, these hoary woods are grand, But we are exiles from our fathers' land.'
Professor Mackinnon believes that the Gaelic version, known in the Highlands to this day, is founded upon the Earl of Eglinton's lines, and is not, as might be supposed, an earlier form of the poem which is known and loved by Scotch folk all the world over.
'... Thy genius mingles strength with grace, ... 'Neath thy spell the world grows fair; Our hearts revive, our inmost souls are stirred, And all our English race awaits thy latest word.' --Sir L. MORRIS' Birthday Ode to the late Lord Tennyson.
Beginning his literary career as a writer of such quaint books of travel as _An Inland Voyage_ and _Through the Cevennes with a Donkey_, such charming essays as _Roads_, _Ordered South_, _El Dorado_, and many others, Mr Stevenson was not long in entering the arena as a story-teller. His first printed stories were _A Lodging for the Night_, which appeared in _Temple Bar_ in October 1877; _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_, in the same magazine in January 1878; and _Will o' the Mill_, in _Cornhill_, also in January 1878.
In _Cornhill_, in 1876 had appeared the series of essays republished as _Virginibus Puerisque_, and in 1877 and 1878 those afterwards collected under the title _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_. There also began, now and then, to be short stories from his pen in _Cornhill_, _Macmillan_, _Longmans_, Mr H. Norman's _Christmas Annual_, _The Court and Society Review,_ and other magazines. These, as they added originality and a certain weirdness of plot to his already recognised beauty of style, still further attracted that cultured public which had at once accepted his earlier work as that of a master of English. As already stated, it was _Will o' the Mill_, a charmingly written story of still life, with a quiet philosophy all its own, that Mr Hamerton had pronounced a masterpiece of style. _Markheim_ was a graphic, but very unpleasant, story of a murder; _Olalla_, a horrible, but powerfully written, sketch of hereditary insanity, with a beautiful setting of Italian scenery to relieve the gloomy picture.