BAGPIPES AT LUCKNOW—A BEWILDERED BÂBOO—THE FORCED MARCH TO
CAWNPORE—OPIUM—WYNDHAM'S MISTAKE
Since commencing these reminiscences, and more particularly during my late visit to Lucknow and Cawnpore, I have been asked by several people about the truth of the story of the Scotch girl and the bagpipes at Lucknow, and in reply to all such inquiries I can only make the following answer.
About the time of the anniversary dinner in celebration of the relief of Lucknow, in September, 1891, some writers in the English papers went so far as to deny that the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders had their bagpipes with them at Lucknow, and in The Calcutta Statesman of the 18th of October, 1891, I wrote a letter contradicting this assertion, which with the permission of the editor I propose to republish in this chapter. But I may first mention that on my late visit to Lucknow a friend showed me a copy of the original edition of A Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow, by L. E. R. Rees, one of the surviving defenders, which I had never before seen, and on page 224 the following statement is given regarding the entry of Havelock's force. After describing the prevailing excitement the writer goes on to say: "The shrill tones of the Highlanders' bagpipes now pierced our ears; not the most beautiful music was ever more welcome or more joy-bringing," and so on. Further on, on page 226: "The enemy found some of us dancing to the sounds of the Highlanders' pipes. The remembrance of that happy evening will never be effaced from my memory." While yet again, on page 237, he gives the story related by me below about the Highland piper putting some of the enemy's cavalry to flight by a blast from his pipes. So much in proof of the fact that the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders had their bagpipes with them, and played them too, at the first relief of Lucknow.
I must now devote a few remarks to the incident of Jessie Brown, which Grace Campbell has immortalised in the song known as Jessie's Dream. In the Indian Empire, by R. Montgomery Martin, vol. ii. page 470, after denying that this story had its origin in Lucknow, the author gives the following foot-note: "It was originally a little romance, written by a French governess at Jersey for the use of her pupils; which found its way into a Paris paper, thence to the Jersey Times, thence to the London Times, December 12th, 1857, and afterwards appeared in nearly all the journals of the United Kingdom." With regard to this remark, I am positive that I heard the story in Lucknow in November, 1857, at the same time as I heard the story about the piper frightening the enemy's sowars with his bagpipes; and it appears a rather far-fetched theory about a French governess inventing the story in Jersey. What was the name of this governess, and, above all, why go for its origin to such an out-of-the-way place as Jersey? I doubt very much if it was possible for the news of the relief of Lucknow to have reached Jersey, and for the said French governess to have composed and printed such a romance in time for its roundabout publication in The Times of the 12th of December, 1857. This version of the origin of Jessie's Dream therefore to my thinking carries its own refutation on the face of it, and I should much like to see the story in its original French form before I believe it.
Be that as it may, in the letters published in the home papers, and quoted in The Calcutta Statesman in October, 1891, one lady gave the positive statement of a certain Mrs. Gaffney, then living in London, who asserted that she was, if I remember rightly, in the same compartment of the Residency with Jessie Brown at the very time the latter said that she heard the bagpipes when dull English ears could detect nothing besides the accustomed roar of the cannon. Now, I knew Mrs. Gaffney very well. Her husband, Sergeant Gaffney, served with me in the Commissariat Department in Peshawur just after the Mutiny, and I was present as his best man when he married Mrs. Gaffney. I forget now what was the name of her first husband, but she was a widow when Sergeant Gaffney married her. I think her first husband was a sergeant of the Company's Artillery, who was either killed in the defence of the Residency or died shortly after. However, she became Mrs. Gaffney either in the end of 1860 or beginning of 1861, and I have often heard her relate the incident of Jessie Brown's hearing the bagpipes in the underground cellar, or tykhâna, of the Residency, hours before any one would believe that a force was coming to their relief, when in the words of J. B. S. Boyle, the garrison were repeating in dull despair the lines so descriptive of their state:
No news from the outer world!
Days, weeks, and months have sped;
Pent up within our battlements,
We seem as living dead.
No news from the outer world!
Have British soldiers quailed
Before the rebel mutineers?—
Has British valour failed?
If the foregoing facts do not convince my readers of the truth of the origin of Jessie's Dream I cannot give them any more. I am positive on the point that the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders had their bagpipes and pipers with them in Lucknow, and that I first heard the story of Jessie's Dream on the 23rd of November, 1857, on the Dilkooshá heights before Lucknow. The following is my letter of the 18th of October, 1891, on the subject, addressed to the editor of The Calcutta Statesman.
Sir,—In an issue of the Statesman of last week there was a letter from Deputy-Inspector-General Joseph Jee, V.C., C.B., late of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs), recopied from an English paper, contradicting a report that had been published to the effect that the bagpipes of the Seventy-Eighth had been left behind at Cawnpore when the regiment went with General Havelock to the first relief of Lucknow; and I write to support the assertion of Deputy-Inspector-General Jee that if any late pipe-major or piper of the old Seventy-Eighth has ever made such an assertion, he must be mad! I was not in the Seventy-Eighth myself, but in the Ninety-Third, the regiment which saved the "Saviours of India" (as the Seventy-Eighth were then called), and rescued them from the Residency, and I am positive that the Seventy-Eighth had their bagpipes and pipers too inside the Residency; for I well remember they struck up the same tunes as the pipers of the Ninety-Third, on the memorable 16th of November, 1857. I recollect the fact as if it were only yesterday. When the din of battle had ceased for a time, and the roll of the Ninety-Third was being called outside the Secundrabâgh to ascertain how many had fallen in that memorable combat, which Sir Colin Campbell said had "never been surpassed and rarely equalled," Pipe-Major John McLeod called me aside to listen to the pipers of the Seventy-Eighth, inside the Residency, playing On wi' the Tartan, and I could hear the pipes quite distinctly, although, except for the practised lug of John McLeod, I could not have told the tune. However, I don't suppose there are many now living fitter to give evidence on the subject than Doctor Jee; but I may mention another incident. The morning after the Residency was evacuated, I visited the bivouac of the Seventy-Eighth near Dilkooshá, to make inquiries about an old school chum who had enlisted in the regiment. I found him still alive, and he related to me how he had been one of the men who were with Dr. Jee collecting the wounded in the streets of Lucknow on the 26th of September, and how they had been cut off from the main body and besieged in a house the whole night, and Dr. Jee was the only officer with the party, and that he had been recommended for the Victoria Cross for his bravery in defending the place and saving a large number of the wounded. I may mention another incident which my friend told me, and which has not been so much noticed as the Jessie Brown story. It was told to me as a fact at the time, and it afterwards appeared in a Glasgow newspaper. It was as follows: When Dr. Jee's detachment and the wounded were fighting their way to the Residency, a wounded piper and three others who had fired their last round of ammunition were charged by half-a-dozen rebel sowars[27] in a side street, and the three men with rifles prepared to defend themselves with the bayonet; but as soon as the sowars were within about twenty paces of the party, the piper pointed the drones of his bagpipes straight at them and blew such a wild blast that they turned tail and fled like the wind, mistaking the bagpipes for some infernal machine! But enough of Lucknow. Let us turn to more ancient history. Who ever heard of a Highland regiment going into action without their bagpipes and pipers, unless the latter were all "kilt"? No officer who ever commanded Highlanders knew the worth of a good piper better than Colonel John Cameron, "the grandson of Lochiel, the valiant Fassifern." And is there a Highland soldier worthy of the name who has not heard of his famous favourite piper who was shot at Cameron's side when playing the charge, while crossing the Nive in face of the French? The historian of the Peninsula war relates: "When the Ninety-Second Highlanders were in the middle of the stream, Colonel Cameron's favourite piper was shot by his side. Stooping from his saddle, Fassifern tried to rescue the body of the man who had so often cheered the regiment to victory, but in vain: the lifeless corpse was swept away by the torrent. 'Alas!' cried the brave Cameron, dashing the tears from his eyes, 'I would rather have lost twenty grenadiers than you.'" Let us next turn to McDonald's Martial Music of Scotland, and we read: "The bagpipes are sacred to Scotland and speak a language which Scotchmen only know, and inspire feelings which Scotchmen only feel. Need it be told to how many fields of danger and victory the warlike strains of the bagpipes have led? There is not a battlefield that is honourable to Britain where their war-blast has not sounded! When every other instrument has been silenced by the confusion and the carnage of the scene, the bagpipes have been borne into the thick of battle, and many a devoted piper has sounded at once encouragement to his clansmen and his own coronach!"
In the garb of old Gaul, with the fire of old Rome,
From the heath-covered mountains of Scotia we come;
Our loud-sounding pipe breathes the true martial strain,
And our hearts still the old Scottish valour retain.