however, felt conscious that his effort possessed some small merit, and was anxious to submit it to the local critics, which he did in the following manner :-Taking into his confidence a young friend, who was an excellent song-singer, Evan taught him his first attempt, without however letting him so far into the secret as to name the author. The same evening a ceilidh “ of lads and lasses" was held in the house of a poor widow who lived rentfree on the farm of Kenmore-that on which our bard was born-and Evan's friend engaged to sing the song during the evening, while the bard decided to remain outside, and hear, through the chinks and crevices with which the walls of the primitive domicile was pretty freely riddled, not only the singing of the song but the criticism which was sure to follow. His nerves were strung to the highest pitch, waiting the result, which to him was of the utmost consequence. The song was sung; it was received with loud and unanimous applause, and its unknown author, whom every one became anxious to discover, was praised without stint. Evan heard the whole; he felt himself a bard, and became supremely happy, and the genius of which this was the first-fruit broke forth from that moment with the result so well known to the lovers of genuine poetry throughout the length and breadth of the land, wherever Highlanders are located, and to all of whom the name of Evan MacColl is long since a household word.

Of his educational opportunities in early life the bard,

in a letter recently received from him, gives the following interesting account:

"My earliest schoolboy days were spent in a most miserable apology for a school existing quite close to where I lived, and conducted by a dominie of whose scholastic acquirements you may judge from the fact that he was content to be paid for his services at the rate of, £10 per annum, besides board and lodging—the last being secured to him at the expense of a constant round of house to house billeting, one day at a time for each child attending school. Here, in a building little better than a hovel, and where the discipline was such as I even now shudder to think of, I first learned to master the A B C the ab abs, and so forth. This important preliminary being once through, I, in common with all little ones of similar standing, were made to grope our way through the Shorter Catechism-the English version, mind youfor to be taught at that stage of our progress to read a word of Gaelic was a thing never dreamt of. So much for our First Book of Lessons! Our next was the Book of Proverbs, then the New Testament, and afterwards the Old-all in English, of course, and the same as Greek to most of us. These were followed by some English Collection, or it might be Goldsmith's History of Rome, in the case of children whose parents could afford to buy such books; and where that could not be done, I have known an odd volume of Dean Swift's writings doing duty instead! Last of all came in the Gaelic Psalmbook for such of us as might wish to attain to a know

ledge of reading our native tongue. When it is considered how very little English any of us knew, I think it must be allowed that a total reversal of all this would have been the infinitely-more sensible procedure. In those days, and in such schools, a boy caught speaking a word of Gaelic was pretty sure to be made to mount the back of some one of his sturdier schoolmates, and then, moving in a circuit around the master, tawse in hand, get his hips soundly thrashed, You may well guess what a terror was inspired by such a mode of punishment in the case of little urchins wearing the kilt, as most, if not all of us then did. Another barbarous mode of forcing us to make English our sole vehicle of speech at school was, to make all trespassers on that rule carry on their breasts, suspended by a gad made to go round the neck, the skull of some dead horse! and which he was by no means to get rid of until some other luckless fellow might be overheard whispering a word in the prohibited tongue. How Highland parents, with the least common sense, could approve of all this is to me now inexplicable. Little wonder if, under such circumstances, we could often devoutly wish that the Saxon and his tongue had never existed! It is to be hoped that no such foul, shortsighted means of killing off my good mother tongue are still allowed to exist in any part of the Highlands. If it must die—though I see no good reason why it should— let it have at least a little fair play in the fight for its life.

"The nearest parish school being separated from my father's house by a considerable extent of rough moorland, which made his children's attendance there a thing scarcely to be thought of, it was lucky for me that, after picking up all the little knowledge possible at the school just described, my father, while on a visit to some relations in Appin, there fell in with and engaged as a teacher in our family a young man, to whom I am indebted for almost all the education, worthy of the name, ever received by me during my schoolboy days. My worthy tutor had been for several years a teacher under the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in the Highlands, but was, at the time of making this engagement with my father, waiting for a promised situation as book-keeper in one of Mr. Malcolm of Poltalloch's estates in Jamaica, to which island, after a year spent with us, he went, and where within a period of two short years he died. Poor Alexander Mackenzie Macleod-for that was his name—was a man of rare, ripe Celtic scholarship—a man who well merited being held by me in most loving remembrance."

MacColl's mind is of a peculiarly delicate and sensitive texture; and the strongest impression of his early childhood still remaining, he informs us, is his recollection of his extreme sensitiveness to pain inflicted on any creature even among the lower animals. This characteristic peculiarity of his nature made the day set apart for killing the Mullag-gheamhraidh," or any other occasional victim necessary to furnish the household with animal food, to

him a day of special horror and anguish. On all such occasions it became necessary to send him out of the way until the necessary proceedings were over, It led him also, often at the expense of much rough treatment from boy companions older than himself, to become a regular littte knight-errant in the defence of his favourite wildbirds and their brood from the harrying propensities so common to most boys; and a lapwing could not more successfully wile away from her nest the searcher after it than he often did from their mark the would-be-despoilers of some poor robin's cuach, as yet undiscovered by them. With a boy so constituted, we may well believe him when he writes in his poem on "Creag-a-gharaidh," given to the public a few years ago, that

These were the days a planet new

Would joy its finder less than there I
To find some blackbird's nest, known to
Myself alone in Creag-a-gharrie.

Like most Highland boys brought up in rural life, MacColl was early trained to all the various duties and labour ineidental to that sphere of life-the spade, the plough, and the sickle, being, for many years, implements far more familiar to him than the pen. The herring fishing season in Lochfyne was also to him for several years of his early manhood a period of more than ordinary activity—himself and his wherry, "Mairi Chreagh-a-gharaidh," the praises of which have been already sounded in excellent Gaelic verse in these pages, being generally foremost in opening the fishing campaign, and seldom missing a fair share of