Ballads of the War :: :: University of Virginia Library

You know the way the Gordons fought at Elands-laagte Hill,
How they charged the blazing kopje, how they cheered;
How the pipes were always skirling with a Gordon piper's will
Till the laagers and the rifle-pits were cleared.

There are lassies o'er the Border who are weeping sore to-day
For the flowers of bonnie Scotland lost and dead;
For the lads of our own Highlands on those highlands cast away
By the foemen and their torrent-rain of lead.

There is one brave Highland piper who is sad as sad can be,
Just to think his pipes had played no victor's part;
And this is what the piper of the Gordons told to me,
When I found him after battle out of heart.

“Well, you see, I had no business to be playing at the front;
Little use in showing Doctor such an arm;
‘Serve you right, man,’ he would answer—he is straight as he is blunt;
‘Keep your pipes behind the boulders out of harm.’

“I hardly felt the bullet, tho' my pipes were drenched with blood;
Was I going out of action like a girl?
So I took a dead man's shirt and tore it strip-wise where I stood,
Bound the wound up tight and finished out the skirl.

“Finished out and played another, cocked the reeds and let them drone,
Gave the bag a clip the tighter as I blew.

The shall pay for it, and dearly shall they hear the time and tune;
And with gallant Gordons round me, on I flew.

“Oh the rattle of the Maxim! Oh the live shells screaming o'er!
Oh the cry, ‘What price Majuba!’ Oh the shout!
If I live to be a hundred I shall not forget the roar,
As we stormed the ridge to turn the beggars out.

“I played what Gordons love most, and my bag of wind was full,
When, bayonets all aflame, the ridge we topped;
And I thought I still was playing, then there came a moment's lull,
And I listened and I heard the pipes had stopped.

“They—my brand-new Edinboro' pipes, with Gordon colours grand!
And a hole right through my bag of Highland breath!
If you never won a battle, sir, you scarce can understand,
But I almost wish that ball had been my death.

“It's not the bullet thro' my arm that makes me sad to-day—
With bone unbroke the wound will soon be right;
I am down at heart for thinking that my pipes just ceased to play
When the Boers at Elands-Laagte turned to flight.

Note.—The following extract is from a private letter written after the battle of Elands-Laagte: “I went round the Gordons' camp on the day following the battle, and I don't think I saw one man who did not bear some mark, either on his body or on his clothes, of the enemy's bullets. Some of them had their helmets riddled. The most pathetic of all the sights was a piper of the Gordons, who was sitting with a Boer's shirt tied round his arm, which was saturated with blood. He had been shot through the arm, and had bound up the wound himself. When I asked him to go and get the doctor to dress his wound, he simply replied that the doctor would only tell him he had no business to get wounded. He didn't seem to mind his wound a bit, but he wailed over his bagpipes, which were a new set just sent out from Edinburgh. He had got a bullet right through the bag, which rendered them useless.”