A BALLAD OF CHARLIE’S MEN
Duncan and I at the kirk would wed,
And soon should our bridal vows be said;
But a pibroch thrilled through the morning air,
And a white cockade gleamed brightly there;
’Twas Charlie Stuart bowed low at my side:
“O, lend me your lover now,” he cried,
“And when I march homeward adown the glen
You shall wed the bravest of Charlie’s men.”
Duncan my lover was good to see,
Straight and tall as the dark pine tree;
Black was his eye as the deep midnight;
His arm was strong and his step was light;
His words were kind and his laugh rang free,—
And oh! he was all in the world to me!
But he marched away through the narrow glen
To fight for Scotland with Charlie’s men.
The days were long and the nights were drear,
My heart grew sick with its weight of fear;
For the battle was fought and the battle was lost,
And the hearts of the living must count the cost;
And Charlie Stuart’s an outlaw now
With a price in gold on his bonnie brow;
And never the watchers in brae and glen
Shall welcome the coming of Charlie’s men.
And Duncan, my lover, my life, my light,
Was the first to fall in that bitter fight;
With Scotland’s banner clasped close in his hand
They laid him to sleep in that stranger land;
Narrow and lonely and low is his bed,
And the gorse of the Southland blooms thick o’er his head;
But still I roam through the mournful glen
And wait for the marching of Charlie’s men.
The mavis and merle in the thicket pipe clear,
But the wail of the pibroch is all I can hear;
The heather a-bloom takes the tint of his plaid,
And the foam on the burn shows the Stuart cockade;
The moonlight that falls on the rocks of Ben More
Is alive with the gleam of his targe and claymore—
And still in my heart and the haunted glen
There echoes the marching of Charlie’s men.