Yonder your bonnets nod, your tartans wave;
The rugged form may mark the mountain band,
And harsher features and a mien more grave.
But ne’er in battle throbbed a heart so brave,
As that which beats beneath the Scottish plaid;
And when the pibroch bids the battle rave,
And level for the charge your arms are laid,
Where lives the desperate foe that for such onset stayed!”
These redoubtable musicians exhibited occasionally a sort of grim humour in the tunes which they selected. When the 92nd and 71st surprised General Gérard with three thousand of the finest French troops in Spain, at the village of Aroys des Molinos, and took or destroyed more than two-thirds of them, the first intimation of their presence was given by the pipers playing, “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are you waukin’ yet?” a highly appropriate tune, composed originally on the occasion of the defeat of Sir John Cope by the followers of the Pretender at the battle of Prestonpans. There is an old song sung to the same air, of which we remember only one verse—
“Charlie wrote a letter from Dunbar,