The life by Kelpie loch was dull,
The homeward slothful work was done,
We followed where the world was full,
To dree the weird our fates had spun.
We built the brig, we reared the town,
We spanned the earth with lightning gleam,
We ploughed, we fought, ’mid smile and frown,
Where all the world’s four corners team.
But under all the surge of life,
The mad race-fight for mastery,
Though foremost in the surgent strife,
Our hearts went back, went back to thee.’
For the Scotsman’s speech is wise and slow,
And the Scotsman’s thought it is hard to ken,
But through all the yearnings of men that go,
His heart is the heart of the northern glen.
His song is the song of the windy moor,
And the humming pipes of the squirling din;
And his love is the love of the shieling door,
And the smell of the smoking peat within.
And nohap how much of the alien blood
Is crossed with the strain that holds him fast,
‘Mid the world’s great ill and the world’s great good,
He yearns to the Mother of men at last.
For there’s something strong and something true
In the wind where the sprig of heather is blown;
And something great in the blood so blue,
That makes him stand like a man alone.
Yea, give him the road and loose him free,
He sets his teeth to the fiercest blast,
For there’s never a toil in a far countrie,
But a Scotsman tackles it hard and fast.
He builds their commerce, he sings their songs,
He weaves their creeds with an iron twist,
And making of laws or righting of wrongs,
He grinds it all as the Scotsman’s grist.
Yea, there by crag and moor she stands,
This mother of half a world’s great men,
And out of the heart of her haunted lands
She calls her children home again.