Schiehallion


Come charge up your glasses and lets drink a toast,
To the bold Scottish heroes and the proud Scottish host
To the battles weve won and the few that weve lost,
Heres a health tae the back o Schiehallion

The Blue Belle of Scotland is hangin her head
And the lion once rampant is lying like dead
To grieve for their country whose courage has fled
Far awa tae the back o Schiehallion

Chorus:

Schiehallion, Schiehallion, I hear your voice calling
Across the great glen to the coast of Argyle
The Lowlands, the Highlands, the Borders, the Islands
All drink tae the back o Schiehallion

God speed the day when the Scots are awake
The fetters of England to crack and to break
And stand by their freedom their birthright to take
Heres a health tae the back o Schiehallion

Schiehallion, Schiehallion, I hear your voice calling
Across the great glen to the coast of Argyle
The Lowlands, the Highlands, the Borders, the Islands
All drink tae the back o Schiehallion.

Schiehallion, Schiehallion, I hear your voice calling
Across the great glen to the coast of Argyle
The Lowlands, the Highlands, the Borders, the Islands
All drink tae the back o Schiehallion.

Gordon Menzies

Lock the Door, Lariston


LOCK the door, Lariston, lion of Liddisdale,   
Lock the door, Lariston, Lowther come on,   
    The Armstrongs are flying,   
    The widows are crying,   
The Castletown’s burning, and Oliver’s gone!  
         
Lock the door, Lariston,—high on the weather-gleam,   
See how the Saxon plumes bob on the sky,—   
    Yeoman and carbinier,   
    Bilman and halberdier;   
Fierce is the foray, and far is the cry.  
          
Bewcastle brandishes high his broad scimitar;   
Ridley is riding his fleet-footed grey;   
    Hidley and Howard there,   
    Wandale and Windermere,—   
Lock the door, Lariston; hold them at bay.
            
Why dost thou smile, noble Elliot of Lariston?   
Why do the joy-candles gleam in thine eye?   
    Thou bold Border ranger,   
    Beware of thy danger;—   
Thy foes are relentless, determined, and nigh.
            
Jock Elliot raised up his steel bonnet and lookit,   
His hand grasped the sword with a loving embrace;   
    ‘Ah, welcome, brave foemen,   
    On earth there are no men   
More gallant to meet in the foray or chase!
            
‘Little know you of the hearts I have hidden here;   
Little know you of our moss-troopers’ might—   
    Lindhope and Sorbie true,   
    Sundhope and Milburn too,   
Gentle in manner, but lions in fight! 
           
‘I’ve Mangerton, Ogilvie, Raeburn, and Netherbie,   
Old Sim of Whitram, and all his array;   
    Come, all Northumberland,   
    Teesdale and Cumberland,   
Here at the Breaken tower end shall the fray.’  
          
Scowl’d the broad sun o’er the links of green Liddisdale,   
Red as the beacon-light tipp’d he the wold;   
    Many a bold martial eye,   
    Mirror’d that morning sky,   
Never more oped on his orbit of gold!     
       
Shrill was the bugle’s note! dreadful the warriors’ shout!   
Lances and halberds in splinters were borne;   
    Helmet and hauberk then   
    Braved the claymore in vain,   
Buckler armlet in shivers were shorn.      
     
See how they wane—the proud files of the Windermere!   
Howard—ah! woe to thy hopes of the day!   
    Hear the wide welkin rend,   
    While the Scots’ shouts ascend,   
‘Elliot of Lariston, Elliot for aye!’



James Hogg

Clancy of the Mounted Police

    In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear
    That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear;
    Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail --
    In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word as "fail" --
    Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell's top-turrets freeze,
    Half round the world, if need there be, on bleeding hands and knees.
    It's duty, duty, first and last, the Crimson Manual saith;
    The Scarlet Rider makes reply: "It's duty -- to the death."
    
    And so they sweep the solitudes, free men from all the earth;
    And so they sentinel the woods, the wilds that know their worth;
    And so they scour the startled plains and mock at hurt and pain,
    And read their Crimson Manual, and find their duty plain.

    Knights of the lists of unrenown, born of the frontier's need,
    Disdainful of the spoken word, exultant in the deed;
    Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players of the game,
    Props of the power behind the throne, upholders of the name:
    For thus the Great White Chief hath said, "In all my lands be peace",
    And to maintain his word he gave his West the Scarlet Police.

    Livid-lipped was the valley, still as the grave of God;
        Misty shadows of mountain thinned into mists of cloud;
    Corpselike and stark was the land, with a quiet that crushed and awed,
        And the stars of the weird sub-arctic glimmered over its shroud.

    Deep in the trench of the valley two men stationed the Post,
        Seymour and Clancy the reckless, fresh from the long patrol;
    Seymour, the sergeant, and Clancy -- Clancy who made his boast
        He could cinch like a bronco the Northland, and cling to the prongs of the Pole.

    Two lone men on detachment, standing for law on the trail;
        Undismayed in the vastness, wise with the wisdom of old --
    Out of the night hailed a half-breed telling a pitiful tale,
        "White man starving and crazy on the banks of the Nordenscold."

    Up sprang the red-haired Clancy, lean and eager of eye;
        Loaded the long toboggan, strapped each dog at its post;
    Whirled his lash at the leader; then, with a whoop and a cry,
        Into the Great White Silence faded away like a ghost.

    The clouds were a misty shadow, the hills were a shadowy mist;
        Sunless, voiceless and pulseless, the day was a dream of woe;
    Through the ice-rifts the river smoked and bubbled and hissed;
        Behind was a trail fresh broken, in front the untrodden snow.

    Ahead of the dogs ploughed Clancy, haloed by steaming breath;
        Through peril of open water, through ache of insensate cold;
    Up rivers wantonly winding in a land affianced to death,
        Till he came to a cowering cabin on the banks of the Nordenscold.

    Then Clancy loosed his revolver, and he strode through the open door;
        And there was the man he sought for, crouching beside the fire;
    The hair of his beard was singeing, the frost on his back was hoar,
        And ever he crooned and chanted as if he never would tire: --

    "I panned and I panned in the shiny sand, and I sniped on the river bar;
    But I know, I know, that it's down below that the golden treasures are;
    So I'll wait and wait till the floods abate, and I'll sink a shaft once more,
    And I'd like to bet that I'll go home yet with a brass band playing before."

    He was nigh as thin as a sliver, and he whined like a Moose-hide cur;
        So Clancy clothed him and nursed him as a mother nurses a child;
    Lifted him on the toboggan, wrapped him in robes of fur,
        Then with the dogs sore straining started to face the Wild.

    Said the Wild, "I will crush this Clancy, so fearless and insolent;
        For him will I loose my fury, and blind and buffet and beat;
    Pile up my snows to stay him; then when his strength is spent,
        Leap on him from my ambush and crush him under my feet.

    "Him will I ring with my silence, compass him with my cold;
        Closer and closer clutch him unto mine icy breast;
    Buffet him with my blizzards, deep in my snows enfold,
        Claiming his life as my tribute, giving my wolves the rest."

    Clancy crawled through the vastness; o'er him the hate of the Wild;
        Full on his face fell the blizzard; cheering his huskies he ran;
    Fighting, fierce-hearted and tireless, snows that drifted and piled,
        With ever and ever behind him singing the crazy man.

    "Sing hey, sing ho, for the ice and snow,
        And a heart that's ever merry;
    Let us trim and square with a lover's care
        (For why should a man be sorry?)
    A grave deep, deep, with the moon a-peep,
        A grave in the frozen mould.
    Sing hey, sing ho, for the winds that blow,
    And a grave deep down in the ice and snow,
        A grave in the land of gold."

    Day after day of darkness, the whirl of the seething snows;
        Day after day of blindness, the swoop of the stinging blast;
    On through a blur of fury the swing of staggering blows;
        On through a world of turmoil, empty, inane and vast.

    Night with its writhing storm-whirl, night despairingly black;
        Night with its hours of terror, numb and endlessly long;
    Night with its weary waiting, fighting the shadows back,
        And ever the crouching madman singing his crazy song.

    Cold with its creeping terror, cold with its sudden clinch;
        Cold so utter you wonder if 'twill ever again be warm;
    Clancy grinned as he shuddered, "Surely it isn't a cinch
        Being wet-nurse to a looney in the teeth of an arctic storm."

    The blizzard passed and the dawn broke, knife-edged and crystal clear;
        The sky was a blue-domed iceberg, sunshine outlawed away;
    Ever by snowslide and ice-rip haunted and hovered the Fear;
        Ever the Wild malignant poised and panted to slay.

    The lead-dog freezes in harness -- cut him out of the team!
        The lung of the wheel-dog's bleeding -- shoot him and let him lie!
    On and on with the others -- lash them until they scream!
        "Pull for your lives, you devils! On! To halt is to die."

    There in the frozen vastness Clancy fought with his foes;
        The ache of the stiffened fingers, the cut of the snowshoe thong;
    Cheeks black-raw through the hood-flap, eyes that tingled and closed,
        And ever to urge and cheer him quavered the madman's song.

    Colder it grew and colder, till the last heat left the earth,
        And there in the great stark stillness the bale fires glinted and gleamed,
    And the Wild all around exulted and shook with a devilish mirth,
        And life was far and forgotten, the ghost of a joy once dreamed.

    Death! And one who defied it, a man of the Mounted Police;
        Fought it there to a standstill long after hope was gone;
    Grinned through his bitter anguish, fought without let or cease,
        Suffering, straining, striving, stumbling, struggling on.

    Till the dogs lay down in their traces, and rose and staggered and fell;
        Till the eyes of him dimmed with shadows, and the trail was so hard to see;
    Till the Wild howled out triumphant, and the world was a frozen hell --
        Then said Constable Clancy: "I guess that it's up to me."

    Far down the trail they saw him, and his hands they were blanched like bone;
        His face was a blackened horror, from his eyelids the salt rheum ran;
    His feet he was lifting strangely, as if they were made of stone,
        But safe in his arms and sleeping he carried the crazy man.

    So Clancy got into Barracks, and the boys made rather a scene;
        And the O. C. called him a hero, and was nice as a man could be;
    But Clancy gazed down his trousers at the place where his toes had been,
        And then he howled like a husky, and sang in a shaky key:

    "When I go back to the old love that's true to the finger-tips,
    I'll say: 'Here's bushels of gold, love,' and I'll kiss my girl on the lips;
    'It's yours to have and to hold, love.' It's the proud, proud boy I'll be,
    When I go back to the old love that's waited so long for me." 

Robert Service

My Friends
 
    The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief;
    And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief;
    A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief.

    My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple and green and gray;
    The little flesh that clung to my bones, you could punch it in holes like clay;
    The skin on my gums was a sullen black, and slowly peeling away.

    I was sure enough in a direful fix, and often I wondered why
    They did not take the chance that was left and leave me alone to die,
    Or finish me off with a dose of dope -- so utterly lost was I.

    But no; they brewed me the green-spruce tea, and nursed me there like a child;
    And the homicide he was good to me, and bathed my sores and smiled;
    And the thief he starved that I might be fed, and his eyes were kind and mild.

    Yet they were woefully wicked men, and often at night in pain
    I heard the murderer speak of his deed and dream it over again;
    I heard the poor thief sorrowing for the dead self he had slain.

    I'll never forget that bitter dawn, so evil, askew and gray,
    When they wrapped me round in the skins of beasts and they bore me to a sleigh,
    And we started out with the nearest post an hundred miles away.

    I'll never forget the trail they broke, with its tense, unuttered woe;
    And the crunch, crunch, crunch as their snowshoes sank through the crust of the 
    hollow snow;
    And my breath would fail, and every beat of my heart was like a blow.

    And oftentimes I would die the death, yet wake up to life anew;
    The sun would be all ablaze on the waste, and the sky a blighting blue,
    And the tears would rise in my snow-blind eyes and furrow my cheeks like dew.

    And the camps we made when their strength outplayed and the day was pinched 
    and wan;
    And oh, the joy of that blessed halt, and how I did dread the dawn;
    And how I hated the weary men who rose and dragged me on.

    And oh, how I begged to rest, to rest -- the snow was so sweet a shroud;
    And oh, how I cried when they urged me on, cried and cursed them aloud;
    Yet on they strained, all racked and pained, and sorely their backs were bowed.

    And then it was all like a lurid dream, and I prayed for a swift release
    From the ruthless ones who would not leave me to die alone in peace;
    Till I wakened up and I found myself at the post of the Mounted Police.

    And there was my friend the murderer, and there was my friend the thief,
    With bracelets of steel around their wrists, and wicked beyond belief:
    But when they come to God's judgment seat -- may I be allowed the brief.

Robert Service

Breathes There the Man

    from The Lay of the Last Minstrel

    BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
        Who never to himself hath said,
        This is my own, my native land!
    Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
    As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
        From wandering on a foreign strand!
    If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
    For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
    High though his titles, proud his name,
    Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
    Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
    The wretch, concentred all in self,
    Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
    And, doubly dying, shall go down
    To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
    Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

    Sir Walter Scott

 The Working Party

    THREE hours ago he blundered up the trench,
    Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
    Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
    With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
    He couldn't see the man who walked in front;
    Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
    Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing
    Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

    Voices would grunt `Keep to your right -- make way!'
    When squeezing past some men from the front-line:
    White faces peered, puffing a point of red;
    Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks
    And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom
    Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore
    Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.

    A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread
    And flickered upward, showing nimble rats
    And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;
    Then the slow silver moment died in dark.
    The wind came posting by with chilly gusts
    And buffeting at the corners, piping thin.
    And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots
    Would split and crack and sing along the night,
    And shells came calmly through the drizzling air
    To burst with hollow bang below the hill.

    Three hours ago, he stumbled up the trench;
    Now he will never walk that road again:
    He must be carried back, a jolting lump
    Beyond all needs of tenderness and care.

    He was a young man with a meagre wife
    And two small children in a Midland town,
    He showed their photographs to all his mates,
    And they considered him a decent chap
    Who did his work and hadn't much to say,
    And always laughed at other people's jokes
    Because he hadn't any of his own.

    That night when he was busy at his job
    Of piling bags along the parapet,
    He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet
    And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.
    He thought of getting back by half-past twelve,
    And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep
    In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes
    Of coke, and full of snoring weary men.

    He pushed another bag along the top,
    Craning his body outward; then a flare
    Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire;
    And as he dropped his head the instant split
    His startled life with lead, and all went out

        Seigfried Sassoon

 Base Details

    IF I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
        I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
    And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
        You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
    Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
        Reading the Roll of Honour. `Poor young chap,'
    I'd say -- `I used to know his father well;
        Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.'
    And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
    I'd toddle safely home and die -- in bed.

        Seigfried Sassoon

 The Snowstorm

    ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,
    Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
    Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
    Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
    And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
    The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
    Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
    Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
    In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

    Come see the north wind's masonry.
    Out of an unseen quarry evermore
    Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
    Curves his white bastions with projected roof
    Round every wayward stake, or tree, or door.
    Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
    So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
    For number or proportion. Mockingly,
    On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
    A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
    Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
    Maugre the farmer sighs; and, at the gate,
    A tapering turret overtops the work.
    And when his hours are numbered, and the world
    Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
    Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
    To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
    Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
    The frolic architecture of snow.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I Could Stop One Heart From Breaking

    IF I can stop one heart from breaking,
    I shall not live in vain;
    If I can ease one life the aching,
    Or cool one pain,
    Or help one fainting robin
    Unto his nest again,
    I shall not live in vain.

    Emily Dickinson

 There is no god, the wicked sayeth
 

    "THERE is no God," the wicked saith,
        "And truly it's a blessing,
    For what He might have done with us
        It's better only guessing."

    "There is no God," a youngster thinks,
        "or really, if there may be,
    He surely did not mean a man
        Always to be a baby."

    "There is no God, or if there is,"
        The tradesman thinks, "'twere funny
    If He should take it ill in me
        To make a little money."

    "Whether there be," the rich man says,
        "It matters very little,
    For I and mine, thank somebody,
        Are not in want of victual."

    Some others, also, to themselves,
        Who scarce so much as doubt it,
    Think there is none, when they are well,
        And do not think about it.

    But country folks who live beneath
        The shadow of the steeple;
    The parson and the parson's wife,
        And mostly married people;

    Youths green and happy in first love,
        So thankful for illusion;
    And men caught out in what the world
        Calls guilt, in first confusion;

    And almost everyone when age,
        Disease, or sorrows strike him,
    Inclines to think there is a God,
        Or something very like Him.

    Arthur Hugh Clough