That a degenerate Lord might boast his sheep;
Fair these broad meads, etc.
Come foreign rage—let Discord burst in slaughter!
O then for clansmen true, and stern claymore—
The hearts that would have given their blood like water,
Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar.
Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand;
But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.
The authorship of these verses is uncertain, but it probably lies between John Galt, author of Annals of the Parish, and Lockhart, son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott. The verses were quoted by Professor Wilson (Christopher North) in his Noctes Ambrosianae in Blackwood, Sept., 1829, but, because Wilson was not the author, they are not reproduced in his collected works (Blackwood, 1855).
A degenerate Lord, &c. This refers to the eviction of the Highland crofters and cottars. In 1829 the Duke of Hamilton had just cleared the population out of the Isle of Arran.