Note 6, verse 155. "The horror of night." The Polynesian fear of ghosts and of the dark has been already referred to. Their life is beleaguered by the dead. Note 7, verse 171. "The quiet passage of souls." So, I am told, the natives explain the sound of a little wind passing overhead unfelt. Note 8, verse 208. “The first of the victims fell." Without doubt, this whole scene is untrue to fact. The victims were disposed of privately and some time before. And indeed I am far from claiming the credit of any high degree of accuracy for this ballad. Even in a time of famine, it is probable that Marquesan life went far more gaily than is here represented. But the melancholy of to-day lies on the writer's mind. HIS is the tale of the man ΤΗ who heard a word in the night In the land of the heathery hills, In the days of the feud and the fight. Where never a stranger came, He heard the outlandish name. It sang in his sleeping ears, It hummed in his waking head: The utterance of the dead. IO 1. THE SAYING OF THE NAME On the loch-sides of Appin, When the mist blew from the sea, 20 30 40 The blood beat in his ears, The blood ran hot to his head, And there was the Cameron dead. O, what have I done to mysel', And death at each of the fords, Camerons priming gunlocks And Camerons sharpening swords." But this was a man of counsel, He looked on the blowing mist, He looked on the awful dead, And there came a smile on his face And there slipped a thought in his head. Out over cairn and moss, Out over scrog and scaur, His heart beat in his body, His hair clove to his face, When he came at last in the gloaming |