Brave Cameron heard the wild hurrah
Of conquest as he fell.”
It is a characteristic fact that his last prayers were offered up in his own mountain tongue, and that his last hours were soothed by that mountain music which was blended with his earliest associations and his proudest reminiscences. Other Highlanders have shown on their death-beds the same predilection for that music which, however harsh and unmeaning it may sound in the ears of a stranger, is dear to the heart of every mountaineer, animating him in the hour of danger, and soothing him in sorrow. A singular anecdote is related of Rob Roy, the celebrated freebooter, whose name is familiar to all the readers of Scott’s well-known story. The bold outlaw was often threatened with the gallows, but his cunning and daring enabled him to escape that fate. He died in his own house at an advanced old age. As his end was approaching he learned that a friend who had once been his foe, and was still regarded by him with suspicion, was about to pay him a visit; he roused himself at once, and prepared to meet him. No sign of weakness or approaching dissolution must be witnessed by his former rival; attired in full Highland costume, he seated himself in his arm-chair and ordered his piper to play his favourite tune. When the visit was over, he lay quietly down and died.
At the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, which was captured on the 6th of April, 1812, after a desperate resistance on the part of the French, Lieutenant Alexander Grant, of the 74th Highlanders, leading the advance, was the first to enter the castle, but fell in the moment of victory. John M’Lauchlan, the regimental piper, particularly distinguished himself on this occasion. He was the foremost in the escalade, and on mounting the castle wall, began to play the regimental quick step, “The Campbells are coming.” Animating his comrades by the lively strains of this favourite air, he marched along the ramparts at the head of the advance, with as much coolness as if he had been on the parade ground. A shot from the enemy pierced the bag of his instrument, and stopped his music for a time, but John realized the importance of the occasion, and proved himself equal to it. If the music ceased, the courage of his comrades might flag, and the victory, already half won, might be lost: it should never be said that he failed in his duty; so he quietly seated himself on a gun carriage, and amid a hurricane of shot and shell, began to repair his instrument, which was speedily done. In a few minutes “The Campbells are coming” was heard again amid the roar of battle, and John had the satisfaction of witnessing the surrender of the fortress. If he attributed the success of the day partly to his own almost superhuman efforts, we must not be too hard upon him. “As proud as a piper” has become a proverbial expression in the north, and whoever has witnessed a contest of some score of pipers, and seen them strutting backward and forward on a raised platform, with inflated cheeks and waving tartans, will at once perceive its accuracy.
Much more might be said of our friends, the pipers, and we are almost loth to part with them. We might have told how one who was attacked by a French cuirassier at Waterloo took deliberate aim at him with his pipe, when the Frenchman, believing it to be some infernal machine, turned his horse and rode off at full speed, and how another, assailed by a tiger in India, blew such a blast on his instrument that the animal rushed into the thickest depths of the jungle to escape from the fearful sound.
But space fails us. The golden age of the pipers is gone for ever; the college of Skye has ceased to issue its diplomas, and the wail of the pibroch may be heard more frequently in Canada and Australia than in the Highlands of Scotland. The warlike race who fought our battles and shed their blood so profusely in our defence, has removed to other lands, and the bleating of sheep may be heard in the valleys they once occupied. Lowland lairds, without the shadow of a claim to rank as chiefs, without a drop of Celtic blood in their veins, have gratified their vanity and striven to enhance their importance by surrounding themselves with pipers, and have thus incurred the sarcasm of Bon Gaultier in one of his witty poems:—
“Fhairshon swore a feud
Against the clan M’Tavish,
Marched into their land