Beyond Lecknamban, where the time by the shadow on Tom-an-Uarader was three hours of the afternoon, a crazy old cailleach, spared by some miracle from starvation and doom, ran out before us wringing her hands, and crying a sort of coronach for a family of sons of whom not one had been spared to her. A gaunt, dark woman, with a frenzied eye, her cheeks collapsed, her neck and temples like crinkled parchment, her clothes dropping off her in strips, and her bare feet bleeding in the snow.
Argile scoffed at the superstition, as he called it, and the Lowland levies looked on it as a jocular game, when we took a few drops of her blood from her forehead for luck—a piece of chirurgy that was perhaps favourable to her fever, and one that, knowing the ancient custom, and respecting it, she made no fraca about.
She followed us in the snow to the ruins of Camus, pouring out her curses upon Athole and the men who had made her home desolate and her widowhood worse than the grave, and calling on us a thousand blessings.
Lochow—a white, vast meadow, still bound in frost—we found was able to bear our army and save us the toilsome bend round Stronmealchan. We put out on its surface fearlessly. The horses pranced between the isles; our cannon trundled on over the deeps; our feet made a muffled thunder, and that was the only sound in all the void. For Cruachan had looked down on the devastation of the enemy. And at the falling of the night we camped at the foot of Glen Noe.
It was a night of exceeding clearness, with a moon almost at the full, sailing between us and the south. A certain jollity was shed by it upon our tired brigade, though all but the leaders (who slept in a tent) were resting in the snow on the banks of the river, with not even a saugh-tree to give the illusion of a shelter. There was but one fire in the bivouac, for there was no fuel at hand, and we had to depend upon a small stock of peats that came with us in the stores-sledge.
Deer came to the hill and belled mournfully, while we ate a frugal meal of oat-bannock and wort. The Low-landers—raw lads—became boisterous; our Gaels, stern with remembrance and eagerness for the coming business, thawed to their geniality, and soon the laugh and song went round our camp. Argile himself for a time joined in our diversion. He came out of his tent and lay in his plaid among his more immediate followers, and gave his quota to the story or the guess. In the deportment of his lordship now there was none of the vexatious hesitancy that helped him to a part so poor as he played in his frowning tower at home among the soothing and softening effects of his family’s domestic affairs. He was true Diarmaid the bold, with a calm eye and steadfast, a worthy general for us his children, who sat round in the light of the cheerful fire. So sat his forebears and ours on the close of many a weary march, on the eve of many a perilous enterprise. That cold pride that cocked his head so high on the causeway-stones of Inneraora relinquished to a mien generous, even affectionate, and he brought out, as only affection may, the best that was of accomplishment and grace in his officers around.
“Craignure,” he would say, “I remember your story of the young King of Easaidh Ruadh; might we have it anew?” Or, “Donald, is the Glassary song of the Target in your mind? It haunts me like a charm.”
And the stories came free, and in the owercome of the songs the dark of Glen Noe joined most lustily.
Songs will be failing from the memory in the ranging of the years, the passions that rose to them of old burned low in the ash, so that many of the sweetest ditties I heard on that night in Glen Noe have long syne left me for ever—all but one that yet I hum to the children at my knee. It was one of John Splendid’s; the words and air were his as well as the performance of them, and though the English is a poor language wherein to render any fine Gaelic sentiment, I cannot forbear to give something of its semblance here. He called it in the Gaelic “The Sergeant of Pikes,” and a few of its verses as I mind them might be Scotticed so—
When I sat in the service o’ foreign commanders,
Selling a sword for a beggar man’s fee,
Learning the trade o’ the warrior who wanders,
To mak’ ilka stranger a sworn enemie;
There was ae thought that nerved roe, and brawly it served me.
With pith to the claymore wherever I won,—
‘Twas the auld sodger’s story, that, gallows or glory,
The Hielan’s, the Hielan’s were crying me on!
I tossed upon swinging seas, splashed to my kilted knees,
Ocean or ditch, it was ever the same;
In leaguer or sally, tattoo or revally,
The message on every pibroch that came,
Was “Cruachan, Cruachan, O son remember us,
Think o’ your fathers and never be slack!”
Blade and buckler together, though far off the heather,
The Hielan’s, the Hielan’s were all at my back!
The ram to the gate-way, the torch to the tower,
We rifled the kist, and the cattle we maimed;
Our dirks stabbed at guess through the leaves o’ the bower,
And crimes we committed that needna be named:
Moonlight or dawning grey, Lammas or Lady-day,
Donald maun dabble his plaid in the gore;
He maun hough and maun harry, or should he miscarry,
The Hielan’s, the Hielan’s will own him no more!
And still, O strange Providence! mirk is your mystery,
Whatever the country that chartered our steel
Because o’ the valiant repute o’ our history,
The love o’ our ain land we maistly did feel;
Many a misty glen, many a sheiling pen,
Rose to our vision when slogans rang high;
And this was the solace bright came to our starkest fight,
A’ for the Hielan’s, the Hielan’s we die!
A Sergeant o’ Pikes, I have pushed and have parried O
(My heart still at tether in bonny Glenshee);
Weary the marches made, sad the towns harried O,
But in fancy the heather was aye at my knee:
The hill-berry mellowing, stag o’ ten bellowing,
The song o’ the fold and the tale by the hearth,
Bairns at the crying and auld folks a-dying,
The Hielan’s sent wi’ me to fight round the earth!
O the Hielan’s, the Hielan’s, praise God for His favour,
That ane sae unworthy should heir sic estate,
That gi’ed me the zest o the sword, and the savour
That lies in the loving as well as the hate.
Auld age may subdue me, a grim death be due me,
For even a Sergeant o’ Pikes maun depart,
But I’ll never complain o’t, whatever the pain o’t,
The Hielan’s, the Hielan’s were aye at my heart!