Scenes and Impressions in

Connemara,

CHAPTER I.

"It is night, I am alone, forlorn on the hill of storms. The wind is heard on the mountain. The torrent pours down the rock. No hut receives me from the rain; forlorn on the hill of winds!

"Rise, moon! from behind thy clouds. Stars of the night, arise! Lead me, some light, to the place where my love rests from the chase alone! his bow near him unstrung; his dogs panting around him. But here I must sit alone, by the rock of the mossy stream. The stream and the wind roar aloud. I hear not the voice of my love! Why delays my Salgar, the chief of the hills, his promise? Here is the rock, and here the tree! here is the roaring stream.

gone?

Ah! whither is my Salgar

"Cease a little while, O wind! stream, be thou silent awhile! let my voice be heard around. Let my wanderer hear me! Salgar, it is Colma who calls. Why delayest thou thy coming? Lo! the calm moon comes forth. The flood is bright in the vale. The rocks are gray on the steep. I see him not on the brow. His dogs come not before him, with tidings of his near approach. Here I must sit alone.

"Who lie on the heath beside me? Are they my love and my brother? Speak to me, O my friends!-to Colma they give no reply. Speak to me; I am alone! my soul is tormented with fears! Ah! they are dead! Their swords are red from the fight. O my brother! my brother! why hast thou slain my Salgar! Why, O Salgar! hast thou slain my brother? Dear

were ye both to me, what shall I say in your praise? Thou wert fair on the hill among thousands! he was terrible in fight. Speak to me, hear my voice: * * * They are silent; silent for ever! Cold, cold are their breasts of clay! Oh! from the rock on the hill, from the top of the windy steep, speak, ye ghosts of the dead! speak, I will not be afraid! Whither are ye gone to rest? In what cave of the hill shall I find the departed? No feeble voice is on the gale. No answer half drowned in the storm! Rear the tomb, ye friends of the dead, close it not till Colma come. * * * Here shall I rest with my friends, by the stream of the sounding rock. When night comes on the hill; when the loud winds arise; my ghost shall stand in the blast, and mourn the death of my friends. The hunter shall hear my voice! *** For sweet shall my voice be for my friends; pleasant were her friends to Colma."-Songs of Selma, Ossian.

While traversing the wild and mountainous district of Connemara, visions of Ossian constantly arose before us; his voice seemed to float in the air; to speak from the mountain tops; and the figures of the shades of fallen heroes seemed faintly visible in the mists which hung upon them. So truly is the scenery pourtrayed, that we immediately transferred the events recorded to have taken place in the Highlands of Scotland to this region; and as we advance, we shall, perhaps, find more reason for believing, than we were at the time aware of, that the resemblance did not exist wholly in our own imagination.

It was not a chain of mountains that arose before us, but a confused heap of huge rocks towering

one above another; and presenting, as we thought, an impassable barrier to our progress. When we were children, we used to wish to climb to the top of the mountains to see what was behind them, and something very like the same feeling returned to us now. As we were assured we should find ourselves on the other side before night, we advanced; half wishing for an adventure, and not doubting but many were in store for us. We passed several lakes, and one beautiful villa surrounded with pleasure grounds in a valley; we wondered who lived there, and felt half vexed to find that people of taste had been there before us. The cultivation of this little spot, however, had its limits; the rest was all uncultivated nature; beautiful, however, though a bog. Wherever the water was not of so decided a character as to prevent vegetation, and wherever the rocks were not so sharp as to repel its advances, the ground was covered with the most luxuriant heaths; the edges of the lakes, too, were fringed with large white floating lilies, reposing on their broad leaves. It was getting dusk; a turn of the road brought before us another landscape; a long clear lake extended before us on the right as far as we could see, from which the Twelve Pins, the highest of the Connemara mountains,

rose almost perpendicularly. On our left was a small green plain, a chapel, and a graveyard, as we perceived by the gleaming of wooden crosses in the ground here and there, to point out where the lowly dead were laid; they were three or four feet high; a few looked white and new, and near one of them we saw a woman kneeling, and a little child beside her; others were slanting in the ground, evidently neglected. The occupant of this grave had been sometime dead, and was comparatively forgotten; another had fallen on the ground. We had got into a train of thought, perhaps not very complimentary to human nature; when the beauty of the scene on our right attracted our notice; we were close on the edge of the lake; the full moon had risen; the mountains were reflected on its clear and glassy surface, and seemed to be hanging, as it were, from their own base into the depths of the waters below. All was serene and quiet

"All was tranquil and still, save the spirit of man;

All was peaceful and pure, save the dream of his breast."

We had a little while before engaged a pedestrian we had overtaken on the road to be our guide to the village of Roundstone, where we were to sleep. His loquacity had disturbed the equilibrium