The Dwellings of Her Dead.

Family and clan tradition, and her reading, long before ever she saw the homeland of her fathers, implanted convictions that made her a crusader for the Celt:—

“Lo and lo, mine ancient people!
Cairn and cromlech hold them sleeping—
Mine though the world divide!”

This dreamy early love of kin and ancient glens grew “by the bright unstoried waters” round the world where the children of the clansmen found new life and room to grow. The story of the infamous Highland clearances and the eviction of the clans from their native straths and glens set the indignant grief-song ringing in two of her greatest poems. “For Love of Appin” is indeed a heart cry as poignant and pathetic as the tear-bringing “Lochaber No More” of the pipes.

It is a kupu irirangi of the Celt. The Maori was in spirit a very Celt himself. He heard that unearthly message in the upper air, the voice of the dead, or soon to be dead, that sang to the awed and weeping people below.