Note 5 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Mr Stevenson was very fond of this quotation, which appeals so truly to Caledonia's sons and daughters. He found it in an old volume of Good Words, and never knew its source. Like many other people he quoted it incorrectly. According to information kindly supplied by Mr W. Keith Leask, the lines, which have an interesting history, stand thus in the original—
'From the lone sheiling on the misty island Mountains divide us and a waste of seas, Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.'
In Tait's Magazine for 1849 it is given as 'Canadian Boat Song, from the Gaelic.' The author of the English version was Burns' 'Sodger Hugh,' the 12th Earl of Eglinton, who was M.P. for Ayrshire from 1784 to 1789, and was the great-grandfather of the present Earl. When in Canada the author is said to have heard a song of lament sung by evicted Hebridean crofters in Manitoba, which gave him the idea for his verses—the first four lines, and chorus, of which are—
'Listen to me as when we heard our father Sing long ago the song of other shores; Listen to me, and then in chorus gather All your deep voices as ye pull your oars. Chorus—Fair the broad meads, these hoary woods are grand, But we are exiles from our fathers' land.'
Professor Mackinnon believes that the Gaelic version, known in the Highlands to this day, is founded upon the Earl of Eglinton's lines, and is not, as might be supposed, an earlier form of the poem which is known and loved by Scotch folk all the world over.