The road leads over lonely Drumossie moor through a plantation of firs, to a wild and naked spot—where all that was Scotland and nothing else was burned out of the world by the withering fire of Cumberland, and the remnant that would not save itself but fought to the last was cut to pieces by his order.
I do not suppose that even on a hot sweet afternoon could any one with a drop of Scotch blood come hither and not feel in his face the rain and sleet of that seventeenth of April day, 1746. If one comes on that day the cairn is hung with flowers, white roses of course, for there are still Jacobites left in the world who have given to no other king their allegiance. "Pretender!" cried Lady Strange to one who had mis-spoken in her presence, "Pretender and be dawmned to ye!"
BATTLEFIELD OF CULLODEN.
No, it was not the Pass of Thermopylæ, nor a Pickett's charge. Nor was it even war.
Nevertheless it was one of the brave moments in human history. If hopeless and even meaningless, does not bravery give it meaning? The Highlanders—they were the last Jacobites left, as the army of the Butcher, Cumberland, George Second's fat son swept northward and stopped for their larder to be well-filled before they went on—had had only a biscuit, the day before! They were five thousand to the English ten thousand.
At eleven in the morning the Highlanders moved forward, the pipers playing brave music, and they recked not that the English had the chosen ground; theirs was not even a forlorn hope. Not if the Macdonalds, sulky because they were on the left when since Bannockburn they had been on the right, had fired a shot would the end have been different.
On the battlefield, looking at these mounds, the long trench of the dead, one realizes that Scotland lies buried here. M'Gillivray, M'Lean, M'Laughlin, Cameron, Mackintosh, Stuart of Appin—so many brave names.
"The lovely lass of Inverness,
Nae joy nor pleasure can she see,
For e'en and morn she cries, alas!
And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e—
"Drumossie muir, Drumossie day!
A waefu' day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear, and brothers three.
"Their winding sheet the bluidy clay—
Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman's e'e.
"Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord!
A bluidy man I trow thou be;
For mony a heart thou hast made sair
That ne'er did wrong to them or thee."