 | Lyrical Poems |  |
224
A SONG OF GLEN LUI BEG.
With regard to the evils of the one-sided large farm system, and the wholesale expatriation of the Highlanders, I have seen no reason to change the opinions expressed by me in the Notes to my Lays and Legends, p. 360. The articles on this subject which appeared in the Edinburgh Review and elsewhere, merely played dexterously with the accidents of the question, and left the essence untouched. The impolicy of the large farm system is ad-mitted by a late practical writer, “Mackay on the Management of Landed Property in the Highlands of Scotland. Blackwood, 1858.”
O the rare old pines of Glen Lui!
With a shout I hailed them then,
When first to the high Muichdhui
I clomb, through the wild mountain glen.
But where be the men that should people the glen?
Where be the kilted brave Highlandmen?
The men, to their king and their country true,
Who stood like a wall at red Waterloo,
And, with firm-rooted spears,
Checked the mailed cuirassiers,
When thrice to the charge, like a tempest, they flew?
O where is the cot, with its smoke curling blue
Through the rare old pines of Glen Lui?
With a shout I hailed them then,
When first to the high Muichdhui
I clomb, through the wild mountain glen.
But where be the men that should people the glen?
Where be the kilted brave Highlandmen?
The men, to their king and their country true,
Who stood like a wall at red Waterloo,
And, with firm-rooted spears,
Checked the mailed cuirassiers,
When thrice to the charge, like a tempest, they flew?
O where is the cot, with its smoke curling blue
Through the rare old pines of Glen Lui?
225
O the rare old pines of Glen Lui!
Right blithely I greeted them then,
When I whistled my way to Muichdhui,
Through the folds of the green-winding glen.
But where be the men that should people the glen?
Woe's me for the kilted brave Highlandmen!
Banished they live from their dear native shore,
Beyond the Atlantic's broad billowy roar;
For the Law hath a care
Of a stag and a hare,
And the red grouse that whirrs o'er the measureless moor;
But the cottar it drives to a far foreign shore,
From his home 'mid the pines of Glen Lui!
Right blithely I greeted them then,
When I whistled my way to Muichdhui,
Through the folds of the green-winding glen.
But where be the men that should people the glen?
Woe's me for the kilted brave Highlandmen!
Banished they live from their dear native shore,
Beyond the Atlantic's broad billowy roar;
For the Law hath a care
Of a stag and a hare,
And the red grouse that whirrs o'er the measureless moor;
But the cottar it drives to a far foreign shore,
From his home 'mid the pines of Glen Lui!
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