Hear once more the battle-song
Swell within their glens and valleys
As the clansmen march along!
The Highland Regiments have always enjoyed a world-wide popularity quite apart from the quality of their achievements. This popularity is due to the appeal of imagination and romance. The spectacle of a Highland regiment, its pipes playing, and the kilts swinging file by file, recalls the old days when the clans rose for the Stuarts. The Highland dress is not only linked for all time with Lucknow, Balaclava, and Quatre Bras, but, stepping farther backward, with Culloden, Killiecrankie, and Glencoe. People unacquainted with uniforms find a difficulty in recognising certain English line regiments whose records are the glory of our military history. But the Highlander, beyond his distinctive regiment, carries in the memories aroused a passport to popular favour.
Fortunately the Highland Regiments have earned by more than glamour the admiration of Britain. In campaigns extending over the last hundred and fifty odd years the Highlanders have borne their share of the fighting, and whenever the call has come have proved themselves ‘second to none.’
It was in the eighteenth century that the Jacobites rose for the last time against the King of England, and whatever the rights or wrongs of the rebellion, the loyalty and bravery of the clans will for ever remain undimmed by time. Loyalty may make mistakes, but it is none the less noble for that, and when the ‘45 was over it was the sons of the men who died for Prince Charlie who were ready to fight for King George.
It is most important to understand, no matter how simply, the broad characteristics of the clan system, an established order of things that, in mid-eighteenth century times, the Government considered most dangerous to the peace of England. Their reason for thinking so is not hard to seek. Instead of a peaceful, pastoral country, the Highlands were an armed camp. In the twentieth century, when strong active men are needed so badly, such an organisation would have been of the greatest value; then it was rightly regarded as a menace both to the Lowlands and to the English throne.
The clan was composed of a large or sometimes comparatively small number of people bearing the same name, and sworn to obey the Chief, whose word was absolute, and whose greatest ambition was the number of swords he could summon to his side.
The Highlander took little interest in tilling or reaping. He left that chiefly to the women. His bearing and instincts were those of a gentleman, while his ruling desire was to engage in fighting. He was proud, indolent, but faithful to the death. The chiefs, who dreaded the loss of their power more than anything else, and were not so blind as to believe that progress could be indefinitely defied, rose for the cause of the Stuarts with the gambler’s hope that the old days might remain a little longer.
Every one knows how the clans rallied to the standard of Prince Charlie, of their march into England, and of their defeat by the Duke of Cumberland, who was the Prince’s cousin.