 | Lays of the Highlands and Islands |  |
78
ARGYLLSHIRE.
GLENCOE.
A HISTORICAL BALLAD.
I.
The snow is white on the Pap of Glencoe,
And all is bleak and dreary,
But gladness reigns in the vale below,
Where life is blithe and cheery,
Where the old Macdonald, stout and true,
Sits in the hall which his fathers knew,
Sits, with the sword which his fathers drew
On the old wall glancing clearly,
Where the dry logs blaze on the huge old hearth,
And the old wine flows that fans the mirth
Of the friends that love him dearly.
And all is bleak and dreary,
But gladness reigns in the vale below,
Where life is blithe and cheery,
Where the old Macdonald, stout and true,
Sits in the hall which his fathers knew,
Sits, with the sword which his fathers drew
On the old wall glancing clearly,
Where the dry logs blaze on the huge old hearth,
And the old wine flows that fans the mirth
Of the friends that love him dearly.
Heavily, heavily lies the snow
On the old grey ash and the old blue pine,
And the cold winds drearily drearily blow
Down the glen with a moan and a whine;
But little reck they how the storm may bray,
Or the linn may roar in the glen,
Where the bright cups flow, and the light jests play,
And Macdonald is master of men,
Where Macdonald is king of the feast to-night,
And sways the hour with a landlord's right,
And broadens his smile, and opens his breast,
As a host may do to a dear-loved guest;
And many a stirring tale he told
Of battle, and war, and chase,
And heroes that sleep beneath the mould,
The pride of his lordly race;
And many a headlong venture grim,
With the hounds that track the deer,
By the rifted chasm's hanging rim
And the red-scaured mountain sheer.
And many a song did the harper sing
Of Ossian blind and hoary,
That made the old oak rafter ring
With the pulse of Celtic story;
And the piper blew a gamesome reel
That the young blood hotly stirred,
And they beat the ground with lightsome heel
Till the midnight bell was heard.
And then to rest they laid them down,
And soon the strong sleep bound them,
While the winds without kept whistling rout,
And the thick snows drifted round them.
On the old grey ash and the old blue pine,
79
Down the glen with a moan and a whine;
But little reck they how the storm may bray,
Or the linn may roar in the glen,
Where the bright cups flow, and the light jests play,
And Macdonald is master of men,
Where Macdonald is king of the feast to-night,
And sways the hour with a landlord's right,
And broadens his smile, and opens his breast,
As a host may do to a dear-loved guest;
And many a stirring tale he told
Of battle, and war, and chase,
And heroes that sleep beneath the mould,
The pride of his lordly race;
And many a headlong venture grim,
With the hounds that track the deer,
By the rifted chasm's hanging rim
And the red-scaured mountain sheer.
And many a song did the harper sing
Of Ossian blind and hoary,
That made the old oak rafter ring
With the pulse of Celtic story;
And the piper blew a gamesome reel
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And they beat the ground with lightsome heel
Till the midnight bell was heard.
And then to rest they laid them down,
And soon the strong sleep bound them,
While the winds without kept whistling rout,
And the thick snows drifted round them.
II.
But one there was whose eye that nightNo peaceful slumber knew,
Or, if he slept, he dreamt of blood,
And woke by Coe's far-sounding flood,
To make his dreaming true.
A Campbell was he, of a hated clan,
—God's curse be on his name!—
Who to Macdonald's goodly glen
On traitor's errand came.
He had the old man's niece to wife,
(A love that should have buried strife,)
And shook his hand for faithful proof,
And slept beneath his friendly roof;
And he that night had shared the mirth
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And, wise in devil's art,
Had laughed and quaffed, and danced and sung,
And talked with honey on his tongue,
And murder in his heart.
And now, to buy a grace from power
And men the slaves of the venal hour,
Or with the gust of blood to sate
A heart whose luxury was hate,
His hand was on the whetted knife
That thirsts to drink the old man's life;
And soon the blood shall flow,
From which the curse shall grow,
That since the world to sin began
Pursues the lawless-handed man;
And false Glen Lyon's traitor name
Shall live, a blazing badge of shame,
While memory links the crimson crime,
The basest in the book of Time,
With Campbell and Glencoe.
III.
'Tis five o'clock i' the morn; of light82
And the snow that drifted through the night
Shrouds every spot of green.
Not yet the cock hath blown his horn,
But the base red-coated crew
Creep through the silence of the morn
With butcher-work to do.
And now to the old man's house they came,
Where he lived in the strength of his proud old name,
A brave unguarded life;
And now they enter the old oak room,
Where he lay, all witless of his doom,
In the arms of his faithful wife;
And through the grace of his hoary head,
As he turned him starting from his bed,
They shot the deadly-missioned lead,
And reaved his purple life;
Then from the lady, where she lay
With outstretched arms in blank dismay,
They rove the vest, and in deray
They flung her on the floor;
And from her quivering fingers tore
With their teeth the rare old rings she wore;
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Into the cold unkindly air,
And in the snow they left her there,
Where not a friend was nigh,
With many a curse, and never a tear,
Like an outcast beast to die.
IV.
And now the butcher-work went onHotly, hotly up the glen;
For the order was given full sharply then
The lion to slay with the cubs in his den,
And never a male to spare;
And the king's own hand had signed the ban,
To glut the hate of the Campbell clan,
And the spite of the Master of Stair.
From every clachan in long Glencoe
The shriek went up, and the blood did flow
Reeking and red on the wreathèd snow.
Every captain had his station
On the banks of the roaring water,
Watching o'er the butchered nation
Like the demons of the slaughter.
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And laid his breathless twenty low;
At Inveruggen, Campbell grim
Made the floor with gore to swim—
Nine he counted in a row
Brothered in a bloody show,
And one who oft for him had spread
The pillow 'neath his traitor head,
To woo the kindly rest.
At Auchnachoin stern Barker pressed
The pitiless work with savage zest,
And on the broad mead by the water
Heaped ten souls in huddled slaughter.
The young man blooming in his pride,
The old man with crack'd breath,
The bridegroom severed from his bride,
And son with father side by side,
Lie swathed in one red death;
And Fire made league with Murder fell
Where flung by many a raging hand,
From house to house the flaming brand
Contagious flew; and crackling spar
And crashing beam, make hideous jar,
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What horror stalked the glen that day,
What ghastly fear and grim dismay,
No tongue of man may tell;
What shame to Orange William's sway,
When Murder throve with honours decked,
And every traitor stood erect,
And every true man fell!
V.
'Tis twelve o'clock at noon; and stillHeavily, heavily on the hill
The storm outwreaks his wintry will,
And flouts the blinded sun;
And now the base red-coated crew,
And the fiends in hell delight to view
The sanguine slaughter done.
But where be they, the helpless troop,
Spared by red murder's ruthless swoop—
The feeble woman, the maiden mild,
The mother with her sucking child,
And all who fled with timely haste
From hissing shot, and sword uncased?
86
They are fled, some here, some there;
Some have scrambled up the Ben
And crossed the granite ridges bare,
And found kind word and helping hand
On Appin's green and friendly strand;
Some in the huts of lone Glenure
Found kindly care and shelter sure,
And some in face of the tempest's roar,
Behind the shelving Buchailmore,
With stumbling foot did onward press
To thy Ben-girdled nook; Dalness;
And some huge Cruachan's peak behind
Found a broad shield from drift and wind,
And warmed their frozen frames at fires
Kindled by friendly Macintyres.
But most—O Heaven!—a feeble nation,
Crept slowly from the mountain station;
The old, the sickly, and the frail,
Went blindly on with straggling trail,
The little tender-footed maid,
The little boy that loved to wade
In the clear waters of the Coe,
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On them, ere half their way was made,
The night came down, and they were laid,
Some on the scaurs of the jaggèd Bens,
Some in black bogs and stony glens,
Faint and worn, till kindly Death
Numbed their limbs, and froze their breath,
And wound them in the snow.
And there they lay with none to know,
And none with pious kind concern
To honour with a cross or cairn
The remnant of Glencoe.
And on the hills a curse doth lie
That will not die with years;
And oft-times 'neath a scowling sky,
Through the black rent, where the torrent grim
Leaps 'neath the huge crag's frowning rim,
The wind comes down with a moan and a sigh;
And a voice, like the voice of a wail and a cry,
The lonely traveller hears,
A voice, like the voice of Albyn weeping
For the sorrow and the shame
That stained the British soldier's name,
88
And power was honour's foe;
Weeping for scutcheons rudely torn,
And worth disowned and glory shorn,
And for the valiant-hearted men
That once were mighty in the glen
Of lonely bleak Glencoe.
89
SONNETS.
I
KING'S HOUSE INN.
Fair are the trees whose random tresses fling
Rich grace on the green steeps of Ballachulish;
But King's House Inn, though you may deem it foolish,
And its bleak moor, my wilful Muse will sing.
For why? I love the torrent's savage din,
The giant-trailing mist, the snorting Ben,
The wind-swept heath, the long, deer-sheltering glen,
The still black tarn, and far-up-thundering linn.
And here erect with majesty severe
The Buchail More upshoots his Titan cone;
I stand and look and gaze on Him alone,
As if no other mighty Ben were near,
And hear the pewits cry, and the wind blow
Notes of shrill wail up from the steep Glencoe!
90
II
MOONLIGHT AT KING'S HOUSE.
O for the touch that smote the psalmist's lyre,
When the great beauty of the world he saw,
And sang His praise, instinct with holy awe,
Who rides the whirlwind, and who reins the fire!
But not alone proud Lebanon's fulgent face
Hath power the eye of trancèd seer to draw;
Here, too, in Grampian land God rules by law,
Which clothes the awfullest forms in loveliest grace.
The placid moon, the huge sky-cleaving Ben,
The moor loch glancing in the argent ray,
The long white mist low-trailing up the glen,
The hum of mighty waters far away,
All make me wish that worthy words would come;
But all I find is—worship, and be dumb!
91
III
TO
AN OLD LEAFLESS TREE ON THE MOOR,
NEAR KING'S HOUSE.
Poor wreck of the old forest, gaunt and grim,
No leafy fan, no soft green shade is thine,
But thou hast charms will stir a rhymer's whim
To deck thy ruin with a random line.
Where be thy brothers? I have seen them show
Their prostrate roots beneath long-centuried peat
Mile after mile, where nothing now will grow
Verdant, for eye to love or mouth to eat.
But thou alone dost stand, like some old creed,
Erect, to show what price it had before,
When men believed it had a power indeed,
To soothe each sorrow, and to cleanse each sore;
Or, like a statesman by the moving time
Deserted, in his dry old strength sublime.
92
IV
THE BUCHAILL ETIVE.
Thou lofty shepherd of dark Etive glen,
Tall Titan warder of the grim Glencoe,
I clomb thy starward peak not long ago,
And call thee mine, and love thee much since then.
Oft have I marvelled, if mine eye had been
Strange witness to Creation's natal hour,
How wondrous then had showed the flaming scene
When out of seething depths thy cone with power
Was shot from God. But now upon thy steep
Fair greenness sleeps on old secure foundations,
And on thee browze the innocent-bleating sheep
And timorous troops of the high-antlered nations;
And I am here, Time's latest product, Man,
To work thy will, O Lord, and serve thy stately plan.
93
SONG OF BEN CRUACHAN.
Ben Cruachan is king of the mountains,
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe,
Loch Etive is fed from his fountains,
By the stream of the dark-rushing Awe.
With his peak so high,
He cleaves the sky,
That smiles on his old grey crown,
While the mantle green,
On his shoulders seen,
In many a fold flows down.
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe,
Loch Etive is fed from his fountains,
By the stream of the dark-rushing Awe.
With his peak so high,
He cleaves the sky,
That smiles on his old grey crown,
While the mantle green,
On his shoulders seen,
In many a fold flows down.
He looks to the North, and he renders
A greeting to Nevis Ben,
And Nevis, in white snowy splendours,
Gives Cruachan greeting again.
O'er dread Glencoe
The greeting doth go,
And where Etive winds fair in the glen;
And he hears the call,
In his steep North wall,
“God bless thee, old Cruachan Ben!”
A greeting to Nevis Ben,
And Nevis, in white snowy splendours,
Gives Cruachan greeting again.
O'er dread Glencoe
The greeting doth go,
94
And he hears the call,
In his steep North wall,
“God bless thee, old Cruachan Ben!”
When the North winds their forces muster,
And Ruin rides high on the storm,
All calm, in the midst of their bluster,
He stands, with his forehead enorm.
When block on block,
With thundering shock,
Comes hurtled confusedly down,
No whit recks He,
But laughs to shake free
The dust, from his old grey crown.
And Ruin rides high on the storm,
All calm, in the midst of their bluster,
He stands, with his forehead enorm.
When block on block,
With thundering shock,
Comes hurtled confusedly down,
No whit recks He,
But laughs to shake free
The dust, from his old grey crown.
And while torrents on torrents are pouring
In a tempest of truculent glee,
When louder the loud Awe is roaring,
And the soft lake rides like a sea;
He smiles through the storm,
And his heart grows warm,
As he thinks how his streams feed the plains;
And the brave old Ben
Grows young again,
And swells with enforcèd veins.
In a tempest of truculent glee,
When louder the loud Awe is roaring,
And the soft lake rides like a sea;
He smiles through the storm,
And his heart grows warm,
As he thinks how his streams feed the plains;
95
Grows young again,
And swells with enforcèd veins.
For Cruachan is king of the mountains,
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe,
Loch Etive is fed from his fountains,
By the stream of the dark-rushing Awe.
Ere Adam was made,
He reared his head
Sublime o'er the green-winding glen;
And, when flame wraps the sphere,
O'er Earth's ashes shall peer
The peak of the old Granite Ben!
That gird in the lovely Loch Awe,
Loch Etive is fed from his fountains,
By the stream of the dark-rushing Awe.
Ere Adam was made,
He reared his head
Sublime o'er the green-winding glen;
And, when flame wraps the sphere,
O'er Earth's ashes shall peer
The peak of the old Granite Ben!
96
THE ASCENT OF CRUACHAN.
I.
Dwellers in the sounding city,Peoplers of the peaceful glen,
Come with me, the day is pleasant,
I would scale the tway-coned Ben.
Not with fly to lure the salmon,
Where the torrent scoops the glen
Makes me pleasure, but I dearly
Love to climb a peakèd Ben;
Not with shot and mortal vollies
To bring moorcock down, or hen,
Is my glory, but I triumph,
Perched upon a cloud-capt Ben.
Come with me, the day is pleasant,
Soon the mist may veil again
97
Up, and let us scale the Ben!
II.
See her rising proud before you,In the beauty of the morn,
Queen of all the heights that grandly
Fence the storied land of Lorn;
Land of Campbells and MacDougalls,
Where full many a practised hand,
Nerved with high heroic purpose,
Poised the spear, and waved the brand.
I am ready; profits neither
Dull delay, nor puffing haste;
Let your foot be lightly booted,
Grasp your plaid about your waist;
Fill your pouch with lusty viands;
On the breezy top we dine;
Brim your flask with strength-inspiring
Usquebeatha or fervid wine.
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Swift, dark-rushing mountain flood,
Sweeping the broad base of Cruachan,
In his untamed lustihood;
Brush we o'er the tufted heather,
Light with nimble unconcern,
Plunge we through the plumy forests
Of the broad and branching fern!
Leap the brook that bounces lightly,
Scale the scaur that gleams so red,
Grasp the rowan tree whose berries
Shine like rubies overhead;
Creep beneath the hoary-frosted
Crag, where crusted lichens spread,
By the dark pool where the troutling
Glances from his stony bed.
But not rashly; hear my counsel;
Though ye be right valiant men,
None can storm by rude assaulting
Such a huge, sheer-sided Ben.
99
Map the mountain in your mind,
And with cunning engineering
Surely rise and wisely wind;
As a gunner near and nearer,
With a cool courageous breath,
Round some proud, broad-bastioned fortress,
Draws the circling lines of death.
III.
Ha! look there where right above usPeers the grey and blasted cone,
Like a jag of high Olympus,
'Neath the dark-browed Thunderer's throne!
Onward through the grim disorder
Of each grey embedded stone,
Ruin, which a thousand winters,
Shivered from the splintered cone!
Here's for tender shins no mercy;
If you stumble, there you lie;
Like a goat be tough and springy,
Like a fox be sure and sly;
Have no flaunting tags about you;
100
Oft a sudden whiff will fling you
Like a whirling straw below.
Now, by Heaven! it looks full surly;
From the East the white mists sally,
Sweeping far from lofty Lomond,
Drifting up from fair Dalmally.
Thick and thicker, swift and swifter,
On the blinding rack is borne,
Like a race of Furies driving
Madly with their mantles torn.
Softly, softly! fear no peril
Where we creep from block to block,
Any stiffest blast can only
Nail us stiffer to the rock.
Foot it firmly, o'er the jointed
Frost-split slabs that mark the line
Through the mist, along the edges
Of the black Ben's jaggy spine.
If you turn from this brave venture,
Now you have the broad-browed Ben
By the forelock, I will never
Call you bearded man again!
101
IV.
Now we've done it! here I'm seated,With light-hearted unconcern,
Sheltered from the rude South-Easter
By the huge Ben's topmost cairn.
Here's my hand! spring up beside me,
Though the way be black and rough,
Take a lesson from your shaggy
Friend, the valiant-hearted Muff.
All along the ledge he followed,
Close with frequent pant and puff,
Running, leaping, scraping, tumbling,
Made of genuine Highland stuff.
Ha! thank heaven! the mist is clearing,
Lo! beneath the curtained cloud,
Gleams in glory of the sunshine
Emerald field, and silver flood!
Northward, at your feet dark Etive
Mildly shines with lucid sheen,
Land of Macintyres behind you
Glistens vivid with the green.
Through the giant gap where downward
Sheer the madded torrent pours,
102
When the tempest raves and roars.
Southward, like a belt of silver,
Flooded from a thousand rills,
Stretches far Loch Awe the lovely,
Through a land of dark-brown hills.
Eastward, lo! the lofty Lomond
And Balquidder's purple braes,
Land of stout strong-armed MacGregors,
Strangely loom through saffron haze;
Look! O look, that burst of splendour
In the West, that blaze of gold
Tells where round Mull's terraced headlands,
Broad the breasted waves are rolled
At thy base, thou huge-aspiring,
Triple-crested proud Ben More,
Known to Staffa's rock-ribbed temple,
To Iona's hallowed shore.
Speak not here of painted pictures,
Which the hand of man may limn;
All their grandest lines are dwarfish,
All their brightest hues are dim.
Thou alone hast living pictures
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Pulsing through the vasty splendour
With thine all-informing soul.
V.
Hear me now, stout-footed comrades;In the scaling of the Ben
We have done our tasking bravely,
With the thews of Scottish men.
We have gazed and we have wondered,
We have mapped the pictured scene;
But we cannot feed on wonder
Where the air is sharp and keen.
Ope your stores, unlock your wallet,
Pour the strength-inspiring wine;
With the granite slab for table,
On the summit here we dine.
If there be who rashly pledged him
To abstain from usquebeatha,
I do grant a free indulgence,
From his chilly vow to day.
Nectar drink in fields Elysian,
But where biting airs have sway,
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Who is lined with usquebeatha.
Bravely started! crown your glasses
Now with the untainted flood,
Of this glorious old Oporto,
That makes rich the British blood!
Fill a bumper to Breadalbane,
And the men that hunt the deer;
Let the wise Argyll be honoured,
Mild of heart, of thought severe!
Let his gallant son be toasted,
Lorn, whose lofty love broke down
Walls of ancient harsh partition,
'Twixt the people and the crown;
Let the billow of your pæans
To Dunolly's tower be borne:
Praise the good and gentle lady,
Praise the deedful maid of Lorn!
Praise the land of mist and mountain,
Grassy glen, and purple brae,
Crystal well, and foamy fountain,
Ruddy pine, and birchen spray.
Praise all men who foot it bravely
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Where Titanic Nature broadens
Out in beautiful display.
Now 'tis finished look how darkly
Mount the rolling mists again;
Here to bide would bribe the ague,
We must turn and gain the glen.
Then fare-thee-well, thou tway-coned Cruachan;
'Mid the busy haunts of men
Thou shalt live a joy for ever
In our hearts, thou queenly Ben!
This word is a good example of how the Scottish Celts take the bones out of their words by elision of medial or final consonants. Beatha is just the Latin vita; and usque, as is well known, is aqua; but the last element of the compound is pronounced as if written pai.
The river Awe, famous for salmon. In the autumn, when I climbed the Ben, John Bright, the famous reformer, was living in the neighbourinn of Taynuilt, lashing the flood with the salmon-rod, and teaching his brain to repose with a wise vacuity.
106
SONNETS.
I
ON THE MONUMENT TO NELSON AT TAYNUILT.
Stranger, if thou hast wondering seen the grey
Huge-planted stones on Sarum's breezy downs,
Where once the Druid reigned with awful sway
Above the might of croziers and of crowns,
See here their antitype—a crude block raised
By sweatful smelters on this wooded strand
To him, whose valour, like a meteor, blazed
O'er the wide ocean. With more curious hand
Sculptor and mason oft did league their skill
To memorize his name; but this rude stone,
Perched in his unhewn ruggedness alone,
Stands, a stout witness of heroic will,
In face of thee, fair Cruachan, and all
Thy subject Bens, and Heaven's blue vaulted hall.
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II
BEN CRUACHAN IN A DARK EVENING.
As a fair mountain when the day hath run
His course, and scanty stars are faintly seen,
Swathes him in folds of sombre mantle dun,
Shorn of the purple glories and the green;
So a fair lady—saddest of sad sights—
Who yields her humour to a peevish whim,
Casts out the radiant Phœbus, and for him
Brings in a devil, who blows out all the lights.
O, if ye knew, all dames with lovely faces,
How much ye mar your beauty with your spleen,
You'd covet more than finest silks and laces
The spirit-power that paints the fleshly screen!
Manners are masks; but keep the fountain bright,
And thy whole body shall be full of light.
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III
JOHN BRIGHT AT TAYNUILT.
(I).
Sayst thou?—and he was truly seated hereThat stout broad-breasted, firmly-planted man,
Who with brave heart, blithe look, and jovial cheer,
To victory led the democratic clan.
There are who deem there is no truth in history,
Lies count by hundredweights, and truth by grains;
But I'll speak plainly out and say, the mystery
Lies only in their lack of sense and brains;
This fact I know, by one strong word, REFORM,
Bright hotly stirred the people's fretful mind,
Till Whig and Tory grew with envy warm,
And spurred with him, not to be left behind;
Some served their party bravely, some betrayed,
And all danced well as this proud piper played.
108
IV.
JOHN BRIGHT AT TAYNUILT.
(II).
What? lodged he here and sat in that same chair,The thunder-tongued, high-purposed democrat;
He was an honest man, I'll stand for that—
And where he sate I'll sit well seated there.
No doubt his hand a seething broth did brew,
Perhaps too strong for old John Bull's digestion,
But 'twas a needful purge beyond all question
He deemed, life's crazy framework to renew.
If he was wrong, and history tells no tales,
Then who was right, if false then who was true,
When Whig and Tory spread their rival sails
To catch sweet favour from the gale he blew?
All sinned: but they transgressed all honest rules
Who knocked the workman down, then made bread with his tools.
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