The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

70 THE LORD OF THE ISLES. [CANTO II.
Now on the bard, now on his Lord,
So Edward glared and grasp'd his swordBut stern his brother spoke,-" Be still.
What! art thou yet so wild of will,
After high deeds and sufferings long,
To chafe thee for a menial's song?Well hast thou framed, Old Man, thy strains,
To praise the hand that pays thy pains;
1 The character of the Highland bards, however high in all
earlier period of society, seems soon to have degenerated.
The Irish affirm, that in their kindred tribes severe laws became necessary to restrain their avarice. In the Highlands
they seem gradually to have sunk into contempt, as well as
the orators, or men of speech, with whose office that of family
poet was often united.-" The orators, in their language
called Isdane, were in high esteem both in these islands and
the continent; until within these forty years, they sat always
among the nobles and chiefs of families in the streah, or
circle. Their houses and little villages were sanctuaries, as
well as churches, and they took place before doctors of
physick. The orators, after the Druids were extinct, were
brought in to preserve the genealogy of families, and to repeat the same at every succession of chiefs; and upon the
occasion of marriages and births, they made epithalamiums
and panegyricks, which the poet or bard pronounced. The
orators, by the force of their eloquence, had a powerful
ascendant over the greatest men in their time; for if any
orator did but ask the habit, arms, horse, or any other thing
belonging to the greatest man in these islands, it was readily
granted them, sometimes out of respect, and sometimes for
fear of being exclaimed against by a satyre, which, in those
days, was reckoned a great dishonour. But these gentlemen
becoming insolent, lost ever since both the profit and esteem
which was formerly due to their character; for neither their
panegyricks nor satyres are regarded to what they have