or to the stirring strains of the 'March of the Battle of Harlaw,' or to the crooning, hoping, sobbing of 'Lord Lovat's Lament,' and so went on from hour to hour through the emptiness of Southern Germany. When we thought we had just about reached our camping ground for the night, we came to a guide post which showed it still to be seven kilometres on. But that was at the top of a long hill, and the road ran gently down through woods the whole way. The colonel sent a message to play 'Men of Portree.' The rain had stopped, and an evening sky unveiled a more cheerful light. So, with an easy inconsequent air, we cast off care and tripped away down to the substantial and prosperous bit of Rhineland called Hellenthal, well on our way to Cologne."[11]
The interminable marches are over and their goal has been attained; and the instrument which has a tune for every human emotion can now play "The Desperate Battle" in German towns with a safety which has been long unknown. To many a man, however, as he fingers his chanter, the feeling will come, as he thinks of the good men and true who never reached the 11th November, 1918, that the tune that is most appropriate is "Lochaber no more."
PIPE TUNES
Pipe tunes—as every piper knows—have local associations, associations with particular incidents, particular emotions; and in military piping this is never overlooked. In war everything has changed—everything but the elemental courage and passions of the men who are engaged in it; and, as piob mhor is essentially the instrument on which those elemental passions can be best expressed, it is not uninteresting to observe how individual pipers have resorted to particular tunes, to suit particular occasions. In many, perhaps in most, cases there were traditional or regimental reasons for playing one tune rather than another, and such tunes were often in the highest degree appropriate; but in other cases the individuality of the performer determined the choice.
Of a selection based on tradition the best authenticated instance is that of the Gordon piper who played Cogadh na Sith, "War or peace," during the Somme fighting. The tune itself, a piobaireachd composed by the great M'Crimmon some 400 years ago, was played by the Gordons at Waterloo and by a Cameron piper, Kenneth M'Kay, at Quatre Bras.
"[12]About the middle of June a draft of about a hundred and twenty men arrived in camp for the Gordons—the finest draft the commanding officer declared he had ever seen. On the 18th, they were ordered to the front. I found they had a piper with them, and immediately laid hold on him to play the men down to the station. I brought him up to my tent and provided him with a set of pipes which I had reserved for my own particular work.... I found something more interesting than that. His great-grandfather had been a piper in the regiment in the days of the Napoleonic war, and at the Battle of Waterloo he stood within the square and played the ancient Highland challenge-march 'Cogadh na Sith,' as the French cuirassiers hurled themselves upon the immovable ranks in vain.
"'John,' I said, 'this is the anniversary of Waterloo, and you will lead the men out to that very tune which your great-grandfather played on that great day.' I told the colonel, and his eyes gleamed as he said to me, 'Ah! padre, we'll do better than that. You will tell the men about it, and I will call them to attention, and your piper will play his tune in memory of the men of Waterloo.'
"And so it was done, and a thrilling incident it was as the men stood rigid and silent in full marching order, and the piper strode proudly along the ranks, sounding the wild, defiant challenge that stirred the regiment a hundred years before."
Regimental tunes appeal enormously to the men who hear and know them; it was probably as much the sound of "Blue Bonnets over the Border" as the sight of Piper Laidlaw piping along the parapet that made the men, shaken with shell fire and gas, go straight forward; and red hackles have followed "Highland Laddie" in circumstances when another tune might have failed to exert the same extraordinary influence. But, having played his regulation onset, the piper has an opportunity of suiting his own taste and selecting a tune appropriate musically and emotionally, as well as in name, to the occasion.