John Roy Stuart was a distinguished officer in the Jacobite army of 1745. He was the son of a farmer in Strathspey, who gave him a good education, and procured him a commission in a Highland regiment, which at the period served in Flanders. His military experiences abroad proved serviceable in the cause to which he afterwards devoted himself. In the army of Prince Charles Edward, he was entrusted with important commands at Gladsmuir, Clifton, Falkirk, and Culloden; and he was deemed of sufficient consequence to be pursued by the government with an amount of vigilance which rendered his escape almost an approach to the miraculous. An able military commander, he was an excellent poet. His "Lament for Lady Macintosh" has supplied one of the most beautiful airs in Highland music.[146] In the second of his pieces on the battle of Culloden, translated for the present work, the lamentation for the absence of the missing clans, and the night march to the field, are executed with the skill and address of a genuine bard, while the story of the battle is recited with the fervour of an honourable partisan. Stuart died abroad in circumstances not differing from those of the best and bravest, who were engaged in the same unhappy enterprise.
LAMENT FOR LADY MACINTOSH.
This is the celebrated heroine who defended her castle of Moy, in the absence of her husband, and, with other exploits, achieved the surprisal of Lord Loudon's party in their attempt to seize Prince Charles Edward, when he was her guest. Information had been conveyed by some friendly unknown party, of a kind so particular as to induce the lady to have recourse to the following stratagem. She sent the blacksmith on her estate, at the head of a party of other seven persons, with instructions to lie in ambush, and at a particular juncture to call out to the clans to come on and hew to pieces "the scarlet soldiers," as were termed the royalist troops. The feint succeeded, and is known in Jacobite story as the "Route of Moy." The exploit is pointedly alluded to in the Elegy, which is replete with beauty and pathos.
Does grief appeal to you, ye leal,
Heaven's tears with ours to blend?
The halo's veil is on, and pale
The beams of light descend.
The wife repines, the babe declines,
The leaves prolong their bend,
Above, below, all signs are woe,
The heifer moans her friend.
The taper's glow of waxen snow,
The ray when noon is nigh,
Was far out-peer'd, till disappear'd
Our star of morn, as high
The southern west its blast released,
And drown'd in floods the sky—
Ah woe! was gone the star that shone,
Nor left a visage dry
For her, who won as win could none
The people's love so well.
O, welaway! the dirging lay
That rung from Moy its knell;
Alas, the hue, where orbs of blue,
With roses wont to dwell!
How can we think, nor swooning sink,
To earth them in the cell?
Silk wrapp'd thy frame, as lily stem,
And snowy as its flower,
So once, and now must love allow,
The grave chest such a dower!
The fairest shoot of noble root
A blast could overpower;
'Tis woman's meed for chieftain's deed,
That bids our eyes to shower.
Beseems his grief the princely chief,
Who reins the charger's pride,
And gives the gale the silken sail,
That flaps the standard's side;
Who from the hall where sheds at call,
The generous shell its tide,
And from the tower where Meiners'[147] power
Prevails, brought home such bride.