But what one least forgets is the figure of the aged pastor taking farewell of his flock. Blind he was, and lost his bearings in the pulpit, till the beadle, old Rory, who had accompanied him from Skye fifty years before, went up and turned him round so as to face the congregation.
And then stood up that venerable man, a Saul in height among the people, with his pure white hair falling back from his ample forehead over his shoulders. Few and loving and earnest were the words he spoke, amidst the silence of a passionately devoted people, which was broken only by their low sobs when he told them that they should see his face no more.
All Morven is in the book,--scenery from the heather to the waves, life from the manse to the shieling, mixed with strange old legends and romantic tales.
Was Norman Macleod a poet? Pre-eminently so, said Principal Shairp, relying on Wordsworth’s paradox. But that is a broken reed. Expression is the final cause of poetry, _the form’s the thing_. Now, from Macleod’s habit of misquoting the finest lines it would seem that his love for poetry was not a poet’s love. Still in his verse he could stumble on such rhythm as this--
‘Ah, where is he now, in what mansion, In what star of the infinite sky?’
and in the conclusion of a piece about a grey-headed father seeing his children dance, there is a gleam of real poetry--
‘But he hears a far-off music Guiding all the stately spheres, _In his father-heart it echoes_, So he claps his hands and cheers.’
The hymn ‘Courage, brothers,’ has a telling ring, though only of rhetoric; and in a song that had the honour of a place in Maga he has roughly rendered the spirit and atmosphere of the roaring game. But his cleverest achievement in rhyme is ‘Captain Frazer’s Nose,’ which we are told was written during violent pain.
Oh, if ye’re at Dumbarton fair, Gang to the castle when ye’re there, And see a sicht baith rich and rare-- The nose o’ Captain Frazer.
Unless ye’re blin’ or unco glee’t, A mile awa’ ye’re sure to see’t, And nearer han’ a man gauns wi’t That owns the nose o’ Frazer.
It’s great in length, it’s great in girth, It’s great in grief, it’s great in mirth, Tho’ grown wi’ years, ‘twas great at birth-- It’s greater far than Frazer!