Glory and honour, all that men can crave,
Be thine, O piper, bravest of the brave!”
We have several stories of Waterloo which point the same moral. One piper was shot in the leg before he got properly started with his music, and this so roused his Highland blood that, dashing his pipes to the ground, he drew his broadsword and fought with the fury of a lion until he died from many wounds. A pipe-major of the Gordons placed himself on an eminence, amid a shower of shot, and proudly sounded the battle charge, and Piper Kenneth Mac Kay, a native of Tongue, and one of the 79th Cameron Highlanders, specially distinguished himself at Quatre Bras a few days earlier. During the formation of the regiment, while the brigade was threatened by a body of French cavalry, Piper Mac Kay calmly stepped outside the bayonets and played Cogadh na Sith with inspiring effect, almost right in front of the enemy. The incident is best told in a poem by Alice C. Mac Donnell, of Keppoch, contributed to the Celtic Monthly of June, 1895:—
“As roe-deer reared within the forests,
At Quatre Bras they bounded o’er,
Graceful, poised, with scarce an effort,
The fifteen feet of bank before.
Then their famous charge was driven
Home to the advancing force;
Back upon the bridge they huddled,