The Heather on Fire

Mathilde Blind

This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

  • I.
  • II.
  • III.
  • IV.
  • V.
  • VI.
  • VII.
  • VIII.
  • IX.
  • X.
  • XI.
  • XII.
  • XIII.
  • XIV.
  • XV.
  • XVI.
  • XVII.
  • XVIII.
  • XIX.
  • XX.
  • XXI.
  • XXII.
  • XXIII.
  • XXIV.
  • XXV.
  • XXVI.
  • XXVII.
  • XXVIII.
  • XXIX.
  • XXX.
  • XXXI.
  • XXXII.
  • XXXIII.
  • XXXIV.
  • XXXV.
  • XXXVI.
  • XXXVII.
  • XXXVIII.
  • XXXIX.
  • XL.
  • XLI.
  • XLII.
  • XLIII.
  • XLIV.
  • XLV.
  • XLVI.
  • XLVII.
  • I.
  • II.
  • III.
  • IV.
  • V.
  • VI.
  • VII.
  • VIII.
  • IX.
  • X.
  • XI.
  • XII.
  • XIII.
  • XIV.
  • XV.
  • XVI.
  • XVII.
  • XVIII.
  • XIX.
  • XX.
  • XXI.
  • XXII.
  • XXIII.
  • XXIV.
  • I.
  • II.
  • III.
  • IV.
  • V.
  • VI.
  • VII.
  • VIII.
  • IX.
  • X.
  • XI.
  • XII.
  • XIII.
  • XIV.
  • XV.
  • XVI.
  • XVII.
  • XVIII.
  • XIX.
  • XX.
  • XXI.
  • XXII.
  • XXIII.
  • XXIV.
  • XXV.
  • XXVI.
  • XXVII.
  • XXVIII.
  • XXIX.
  • XXX.
  • XXXI.
  • XXXII.
  • XXXIII.
  • XXXIV.
  • XXXV.
  • XXXVI.
  • XXXVII.
  • XXXVIII.
  • XXXIX.
  • XL.
  • XLI.
  • XLII.
  • XLIII.
  • XLIV.
  • XLV.
  • XLVI.
  • XLVII.
  • XLVIII.
  • XLIX.
  • L.
  • LI.
  • LII.
  • LIII.
  • LIV.
  • LV.
  • LVI.
  • LVII.
  • LVIII.
  • LIX.
  • LX.
  • LXI.
  • LXII.
  • LXIII.
  • I.
  • II.
  • III.
  • IV.
  • V.
  • VI.
  • VII.
  • VIII.
  • IX.
  • X.
  • XI.
  • XII.
  • XIII.
  • XIV.
  • XV.
  • XVI.
  • XVII.
  • XVIII.
  • XIX.
  • XX.
  • XXI.
  • XXII.
  • XXIII.
  • XXIV.
  • XXV.
  • XXVI.
  • XXVII.
  • XXVIII.
  • XXIX.
  • XXX.
  • XXXI.
  • XXXII.
  • XXXIII.
  • XXXIV.
  • XXXV.
  • XXXVI.
  • XXXVII.
  • XXXVIII.
  • XXXIX.
  • XL.
  • XLI.
  • XLII.
  • XLIII.
  • XLIV.
  • XLV.
  • XLVI.
  • XLVII.
  • NOTES.
  • The Heather on Fire: A Tale of Highland
    Clearances.

            Dedicated to Captain Cameron,

    Whose glory it is to have thrown up his place rather than proceed in command of the steamer "Lochiel," which was to convey the police expedition against the Skye crofters in the winter of 1884.



            "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head."

    (preface)
    I SEEM to hear many a reader ask whether such atrocities as are described in "The Heather on Fire" have indeed been committed with the memory of this generation. Let him be assured that this is no fancy picture; that, on the contrary, the author's aim has been to soften some of the worst features of the heart-rending scenes which were of such frequent occurrence during the Highland Clearances. Many of them are too revolting for the purposes of art; for the ferocity shown by some of the factors and ground-officers employed by the landlords in evicting their inoffensive tenantry, can only be matched by the brutal excesses of victorious troops on a foreign soil. But even in those cases where no actual violence was resorted to, the uprooting and transplantation of whole communities of Crofters from the straths and glens which they had tilled for so many generations must be regarded in the light of a national crime.

    No traveller can have failed to be struck by the solitude and desolation which now constitute the prevalent character of the Scottish Highlands. "Mile after mile," says Macaulay, speaking of Glencoe, "the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, or for one human form wrapped in a plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog, or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile, the only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some storm-beaten pinnacle of rock." His words might appropriately stand for a description of a great part of the north of Scotland. But it was not always so. The moors and valleys, whose blank silence is only broken by the rush of tumbling streams or the cry of some solitary bird, were once enlivened by the manifold sounds of some human industry and made musical with children's voices. The crumbling walls and decaying roof-trees of ruined villages still bear witness to the former populousness of many a deserted glen. Perhaps these humble remains touch our feelings more deeply than the imposing fragments of Greek temples and Roman amphitheatres. For it was but yesterday that they were inhabited by a brave, moral, and industrious peasantry, full of poetic instincts and ardent patriotism, ruthlessly expelled their native land to make way for sporting grounds rented by merchant princes and American millionaires.

    During a visit I paid to the Isle of Arran in the summer of 1884, I stood on the site of such a ruined village. All that remained of the once flourishing community was a solitary old Scotchwoman, who well remembered her banished countrymen. Her simple story had a thrilling pathos, told as it was on the melancholy slopes of the North Glen Sannox, looking across to the wild broken mountain ridges called "The Old Wife's Steps." Here, she said, and as far as one could see, had dwelt the Glen Sannox people, the largest population then collected in any one spot of the island, and evicted by the Duke of Hamilton in the year 1832. The lives of these crofters became an idyll in her mouth. She dwelt proudly on their patient labour, their simple joys, and the kind, helpful ways of them; and her brown eyes filled with tears as she recalled the day of their expulsion, when the people gathered from all parts of the island to see the last of the Glen Sannox folk ere they went on board the brig that was bound for New Brunswick, in Canada. "Ah, it was a sore day that," she sighed, "when the old people cast themselves down on the seashore and wept."

    They were gone, these Crofters, and their dwellings laid low with the hill-side, and their fertile plots of corn overrun with ling and heather; but the stream went rushing on as of old, and as of old the cloven mountain peaks cast their shadow on the valley below whence the once happy people were all gone—gone, too, their dwelling-places, and, to use the touching words of a Highland minister, "There was not a smoke there now." For the progress of civilisation, which has redeemed many a wilderness, and gladdened the solitary places of the world, has come with a curse to these Highland glens, and turned green pastures and golden harvest-fields once more into a desert.



    The Heather on Fire:

          

    A Tale of the Highland Clearances.


          

    Duan First.

    I.


    HIGH on a granite boulder, huge in girth,
    Primæval waif that owned a different birth
    From all the rocks on that wild coast, alone,
    Like some grey heron on as grey a stone,
    And full as motionless, there stood a maid,
    Whose sun-browned hand her seaward eyes did shade
    Flinching, as now the sun's auroral motion
    Twinkled in milky ways on the grey heaving ocean.

    II.


    Ah! she had watched and waited overlong;—
    But now as the new sunshine poured along
    Heaven's hollow dome, till all its convex blue
    Brimmed over as a harebell full of dew—
    Yea, now she snatched the kerchief from her hair,
    And waved its chequered tartan in the air;
    For all at once she heard o'er ocean's calm
    The home-bound fishermen chanted King David's psalm.

    III.


    In stormful straits, where battering craggy heights
    Thundered the surf through equinoctial nights,
    Off dolorous northern strands where loomed Cape Wrath
    Red-lurid o'er the sea's unnatural math
    Of goodly ships and men, or yet where lone
    The Orkneys echoed to the tidal moan,
    These men had plied their perilous task and rude,
    Wrestling with wind and wave for scantiest livelihood.

    IV.


    Now laden they returned with finny spoil
    The deep had tendered to their arduous toil;
    Their fishing smacks, with every black sail fanned
    By favouring breezes, bore towards the land;
    And in their wake, or wheeling far away,
    Or headlong dropping on the hissing spray,
    Shrieked flocks of shore-birds, as now hove in sight
    Fantastic cliffs and peaks a-bloom with morning light.

    V.


    Ah! dear as is her first-born's earliest lisp
    To a young mother, toying with the crisp
    Close rings that shine in many a clustering curl
    Above the fair brow of her baby girl;
    Or welcome, as when parted lovers meet
    Their blissful looks and kisses,—even so sweet
    Unto the eyes of those sea-weary men
    Gleamed old familiar sights of their own native glen:

    VI.


    The shallow stream wide-straggling on the beach,
    That from cleft mountain ridges out of reach
    Of aught save eagles, clattered from on high
    To water the green strath and then to die
    Merged in the deep; the monstrous rocks that lay
    Sharp-fanged like crocodiles agape for prey;
    The mushroom hovels pitch-forked on the strand,
    Where browsed the small lean cattle mid the wet sea-sand.

    VII.


    And from her perch the Highland lass had leaped,
    Bounding from stone to stone, while still she kept
    Her footing on the slippery tangled mass,
    Through which her bare, brown, shapely feet did pass.
    Nor was she now alone on that bleak shore,
    For from each hut and corrie 'gan to pour
    Women, old men, and children, come to greet
    The fishers steering home their little herring-fleet.

    VIII.


    For now each boat was almost within reach,
    Their keels were grating harshly on the beach;
    A rough lad here flung out his rope in coils,
    There nets were cast ashore in whose brown toils
    Live herrings quivered with a glint like steel,
    Which, deftly shovelled into many a creel,
    Were carried to the troughs. And full of joy
    The sailor hailed his wife, the mother kissed her boy.

    IX.


    But oh, rejoicing most of any there,
    Rejoicing met one fond and faithful pair,
    Whose true and tender hearts, tried in love's fire,
    Life could not change, howe'er it might conspire
    With the revolving, disenchanting years
    To turn love's rainbow promises to tears,
    And ruthlessly to tear asunder still
    What seemed for ever joined by fate and mutual will.

    X.


    Had not nine Aprils with fleet sun and showers,
    On wan hill-sides kindled a flame of flowers?
    Had not nine harvest moons in sheltered nooks,
    Seen the shorn fields piled with the barley stooks,
    Since these two lovers in their buoyant youth
    Exchanged the vows they kept with stainless truth?
    Both toiling late and soon, year in, year out,
    One longed-for day to bring their marriage morn about.

    XI.


    But toil is long, and oh, man's youth so fleet!
    Fleeter love's hours when hands and lips may meet!
    Weary the moons when they are wrenched apart,
    For hope delayed still maketh sick the heart.
    And often when the lashing rain would smite
    The lowly hut throughout the moaning night,
    Beside her bed the girl fell on her knees,
    Praying her God for those in peril of the seas.

    XII.


    But now their nets had drawn great hauls aloft,
    And Michael, who had left his inland croft
    For female hands to till while he should reap
    The fickle harvest of the unsown deep,
    Returned not empty-handed to the side
    Of her he looked to wed ere Christmastide;
    As thirstily he met those sea-deep eyes,
    Where her long love lay hid, a pearl beyond all price.

    XIII.


    A grave, grand Crofter pitted in his pride
    Against the niggard soil or veering tide;
    Whose natural ruddy fairness wind and sun
    Conspired to dye together of a dun
    Unchanging umber—much as though he were
    Tarred like his sails for equal wear and tear—
    Wherein his eyes' unsullied blue seemed isled,
    Clear as two crystal springs by foul things ne'er defiled.

    XIV.


    Grave, too, the girl that was to be his bride,
    Whose dark head, as she stepped out by his side,
    Brushed his red-bearded chin: supple and frail,
    She looked a birch tree swaying with the gale;
    And her pale cheeks and shadowy eyes and hair
    Seemed veiled by some pathetic brooding care,
    But that her ripe lips, with their cranberry red,
    A glow of youthful bloom on all her features shed.

    XV.


    With many a "God-speed" from the fishermen,
    The lovers left the sea-board for the glen,
    Following the devious windings of the burn,
    Whose eddying waters flung themselves in turn
    O'er heaps of tumbled blocks, or, stilled and deep,
    In glassy shallows seems to fall asleep,
    Where, grimly twisted by Atlantic storms,
    Grey birks leant over it their pale, distorted forms.

    XVI.


    A lone, green place, with no live thing around,
    No barks, or bleats, or lowings, save the sound
    Of running waters, that, with many a fall
    And fluid splash, meandered musical;
    Running through months, years, ages, on and on,
    Monotonously beneath moon or sun,
    With fugitive, ever-recurring chime
    Echoing the swift pulsation of the heart of time.

    XVII.


    A green, lone place for lovers such as these,
    Where sitting underneath the birchen trees—
    On knolls of tufted moss, whose amber sheen
    Seemed rings of sunshine breaking through the green—
    Hand locked in hand, enlaced and tranced with bliss,
    Love's smouldering fire flamed out in one long kiss
    Full of the smothered yearning at each heart,
    While duty and stern fate kept their two lives apart.

    XVIII.


    There having lingered for a golden space,
    Lulled by the burn, face leaning close to face,
    How loth soe'er at last they turned away
    To follow the steep upland track that lay
    Beside the tumbling stream. For o'er the glade
    The hills began to cast a lengthening shade,
    And from lone hollows filmy veils of mist
    Fell round their furrowed brows in vaporous amethyst.

    XIX.


    And from the height of that green slope awhile
    Michael and Mary, leaning 'gainst the stile,
    Looked down the long withdrawing upper glen,
    The home of patient and laborious men;
    Where it lay spread beneath their loving gaze
    Transfigured, glowing to an amber blaze
    Poured forth from out the incandescent west,
    Where the sun hovered above the purple mountain's crest.

    XX.


    And so the twain cross to the fields of corn
    With half their yellow barley yet unshorn,
    Where still with rhythmic stroke the reaper walks,
    His sickle crackling through the bearded stalks,
    While the grain falls in heavy swathes, and then
    Bound by brown maids is flung unto the men,
    Who shouldering sheaf on sheaf all neatly bound
    Stook them in even shocks along the bristling ground.

    XXI.


    And then they pass through meadows soft as sleep
    And white with sprinklings of the black-nosed sheep,
    Where the tall stacks their lengthening shadows fling,
    Along the golden green of sun-setting;
    While through the air, in pendulous ebb and rise,
    A smoke-like pillar moves athrob with flies,
    Myriads of murmuring specks that pulse and quiver
    Athwart the moted beam that spans that rushing river.

    XXII.


    There, clustering near the stream in crooked line,
    The crofters' steadings, warmly thatched, incline
    Brown sloping roofs o'er which rope nets are thrown,
    And kept in place by many a ponderous stone
    Against the winter winds; and all around
    With kale, potatoes, garden-stuff, the ground
    Looked like a patch-work counterpane with edges
    Of currant bushes and frayed blackberry hedges.

    XXIII.


    And other farms appeared of their own will
    To have got rooted half-way up the hill,
    Where mid the wine-red ling they seemed to be
    Green islands ringed round by a purple sea;
    And far and wide along the pleasant strath
    The air smelt fragrant of the aftermath,
    While nimbly darting o'er the new-mown meadows,
    Shrill twittering swallows flashed above their flashing shadows.

    XXIV.


    "My glen, my bonnie glen!" the Crofter said,
    And reverently bared his tawny head,
    As he beheld aglow in sunset's ray
    The roof where first he saw the light of day—
    The strip of garden, to his infant eyes
    Delightful as a nook of Paradise,
    Where bees and pigeons murmuring, once to him
    Seemed echoes from afar of quiring cherubim.

    XXV.


    Even, as of yore, there wound the crooked street;
    There sprawled small children with bare legs and feet;
    There on a step stroking her whiskers sat,
    Sublimely tolerant, a green-eyed cat;
    And there too—in the middle of the road,
    Where the tall waggon swayed its creaking load
    Of high-piled oats—the cackling hens, a flutter,
    Scratching pecked up the grain with fussy haste and clutter.

    XXVI.


    And even as the stately couple stepped
    Up the fair clachan, two large collies leaped
    Into the street with short sharp barks of joy,
    And in their haste knocked a small touzled boy
    Into the gutter, where he lay and kicked,
    While the dogs dashed at Michael, madly licked
    His labour-hardened hands, and tried in vain
    To reach his kindly face, then barked and jumped again.

    XXVII.


    And at the loud glad noise an ancient dame
    Stepped to the door, and stood with stooping frame,
    And left hand warding off the dazzling rays.
    Like yellow parchment showed her crumpled face
    Scrawled o'er illegibly in runic wise
    With time's own handwriting; and yet her eyes
    Scarce matched its age—still young with love and teen,
    As rain in winter keeps the grass more freshly green.

    XXVIII.


    "Oh mother, mother!" cried the bearded man,
    As hurrying up he took her visage wan
    Between his hands, kissing her face and hair,
    As it might be a babe's, with tender care;
    Then stooping he passed swiftly through the door
    To where right in the middle of the floor
    A fire of turf blazed on a flat round stone,
    Whose leaping flames all round with equal lustre shone.

    XXIX.


    There Michael's father sat by, the red glare
    Touching her silver canopy of hair
    Into a fitful brightness, with his proud
    Grand head erect, though his strong frame was bowed,
    Felled at one blow—as when upon some height
    A fir, once fronting the confederate might
    Of winds from all the compass, on the holt
    Falls blasted, cloven in twain by heaven's sheer thunder-bolt.

    XXX.


    So Michael, since he was a lad no more,
    Three feeble lives on his strong shoulders bore
    Along life's road: for yet in manhood's prime,
    His father had come home one winter time
    From some fierce battle waged on fields of Spain,
    Where he and fellows like him helped to gain
    The day for England's king—alas! for him
    That gain was loss indeed:—crippled in life and limb,

    XXXI.


    With right arm gone, on crutches, he returned
    Who had gone forth a stalwart man, that burned
    With lust for action; and while still at heart
    Life's pulse beat strongly, he was set apart,
    Helpless as any log, unfit for toil,
    Condemned to see the woman drudge and moil,
    Doing the man's work and her own beside—
    Slaving from night to morn, from morn to eventide.

    XXXII.


    For she would cut the peat-moss, dig, and plough;
    Would reap the barley-field and milk the cow;
    Would spin and weave the wool her hands did shear
    Into stout plaids and comfortable gear;
    Would dye the home-spun cloth and rainproof tweed
    In hues wrung from the ling and sea-brown weed.
    But even the strength her strong love fed at last
    Broke with the heavy load on her brave shoulders cast.

    XXXIII.


    For though the heart is willing, even unto death,
    The flesh is weak, and fails with failing breath.
    Beneath the daily burden's daily strain,
    Her work-worn body failed, however fain
    She was, despite her aching bones, to keep
    The mate and bairns that could not sow or reap,
    Yet sorely needed to be housed and fed
    Howe'er the sun might sear or wild winds howl o'erhead.

    XXXIV.


    So she broke down at last, however loth,
    And her young son now laboured for them both;
    And for the little sister, barely nine,
    Who yet would twirl the spindle, coil up twine,
    Or take their milch cow to the field to graze:
    So, driven by ceaseless tasks, the urgent days
    Had waxed and waned, years followed one another,
    The lass had left her home, herself now wife and mother.

    XXXV.


    But honest Michael had not dared to wed
    The orphan girl whose dark and stately head
    In harvest fields rose first above the rye—
    While yet amid the opalescent sky
    A tremulous and dilatory light,
    Reluctant on the rear of refluent night,
    And shuddering through immensities afar
    Ethereally flamed the bright and morning star.

    XXXVI.


    Yea, though her lot was lowly, though the round
    Of want's imperious pressure hemmed and bound
    The orphan's life with those encircling walls
    Wherewith predestined poverty enthralls
    And stuns such toiling folk, until they ask
    But food and sleep after the long day's task—
    Moments she knew when mystical, intense,
    The universal soul thrilled through her inner sense.

    XXXVII.


    Then had she felt what she could ne'er express—
    A love, a worship, a sublime excess
    Of pure impersonal rapture such as thrills
    The lark's breast when his staunchless music fills
    Earth, air, and listening heaven;—but all too soon,
    Like flashes of a storm-bewildered moon
    Vanished the gleam—once more a rustic lass,
    She sheared the rustling grain, or through the rushy grass

    XXXVIII.


    Wading bare-legged in the chill evening dews,
    Drove home the cattle, who, with deep-toned moos,
    Snatched yet one last sweet mouthful and yet one
    Ere ruminatingly at set of sun
    They straggled toward their stalls. And still so well
    The maid had served her masters, it befell
    That as the years rolled on deep-hearted Mary
    From cow-girl was become head of the Castle dairy.

    XXXIX.


    And patient as her lover, and as brave,
    From out her wages yearly she would save
    A little hoard of coins, to line the nest
    What time their life's love should be crowned and blest
    In holy wedlock. Of that day now spoke
    Those four at meeting, while braw Michael broke
    His fast with porridge, cakes, and barley bree,
    By Highland air and hunger seasoned ambrosially.

    XL.


    But day declined, the lass must say good-bye,
    Once more to hasten to her milky kye.
    Bending a moment o'er the old man's chair,
    Her fresh lips reverently touched his hair,
    To whom—her young form vanishing from sight—
    The room hath darkened, even as though a light
    Were put out suddenly; for still the old
    Warm their chill lives where youth's warm glowing loves unfold.

    XLI.


    And lustily once more that tall pair strode
    Along the hilly, devious-winding road,
    White in the harvest moon, who from on high
    Watched like the night's love-lighted mother eye
    Benignly o'er that hill-embosomed glen,
    Dotted with little homes of Highland men;
    As though in mercy she would ward and keep
    All harm from those that there beneath low rafters sleep.

    XLII.


    Shine, quiet moonlight, shine! Relax, unloose
    The sweating peasants' over-laboured thews!
    Ease their tired muscles with thy healing balm,
    Breathe o'er their brows a pure, infantine calm,
    Dissolving all their senses in the deep
    Oblivion of immeasurable sleep!
    Shine, quiet moonlight, shine! O'er roofs like these
    Shed downier peace than falls o'er great kings' palaces.

    XLIII.


    Far o'er the moon-white way the lovers sped,
    And in the moonlight showed transfigurèd,
    Till looking on each other, their deep eyes
    Shone full of love, even as with stars the skies.
    Silent amid the silence, hand in hand,
    They hardly walked but floated through a land
    Whose hills and trees, sheeted in mystic white,
    Seemed disembodied shapes floating away in light.

    XLIV.


    And now the forest with its lichened pines,
    Through which the broken moonlight swerving shines,
    Roofs in the pair, outstepping through the deep
    Wet bracken, whence, with sudden upward leap,
    Tall antlered creatures start, and stare with eyes
    Widely dilated in a wild surprise—
    Then at one bound the herd hath fled, as still
    As clouds that dreamlike fly athwart an evening hill.

    XLV.


    And this the bourne where Michael must be gone—
    Through here the crested portal leads alone
    Down the tall avenue, whose furrowed trees
    Have weathered the same tale of centuries
    As the square tower and lofty parapet
    Of the grim castle, which, as black as jet,
    Against the moon with massive walls doth stand—
    The lordly mansion of the lord of all that land.

    XLVI.


    To him belonged the glens with all their grain;
    To him the pastures spreading in the plain;
    To him the hills whence falling waters gleam;
    To him the salmon swimming in the stream;
    To him the forests desolately drear,
    With all their antlered herds of fleet-foot deer;
    To him the league-long rolling moorland bare,
    With all the feathered fowl that wing the autumn air.

    XLVII.


    For him the hind's interminable toil:
    For him he ploughed and sowed and broke the soil,
    For him the golden harvests would he reap,
    For him would tend the flocks of woolly sheep,
    For him would thin the iron-hearted woods,
    For him track deer in snow-blocked solitudes;
    For him the back was bent, and hard the hand,
    For was he not his lord, and lord of all that land?

          

    Duan Second.

    I.


    ROSE now the longed-for, long-delaying hour
    To which, as towards the sun the sunward flower,
    Their hearts had turned though many a year of life,
    When Michael should take Mary unto wife.
    Long, long before the laggard sun arose
    Flushing the hill-sides' freshly fallen snows,
    The bride and bridegroom, in their best array,
    Footed it to the kirk on this their wedding day.

    II.


    At home the neighbours, full of kindly zest,
    Prepared the feast for many a wedding guest;
    Swept out the barns and scoured the dusky byres;
    Piled high the peats and kindled roaring fires,
    Whose merry flames in golden eddies broke
    Round ancient cauldrons crusted o'er with smoke,
    Whence an inviting savour steaming rose,
    As, slowly bubbling, boiled the meaty barley brose.

    III.


    Spread was the board; the various kinds of meat,
    Or roast or stew, sent up a savour sweet,
    Grateful to Highlanders, whose frugal cheer
    Is broth and oatmeal porridge all the year.
    But on this happy day no stint there was
    For all who liked to come and take their glass
    Of the good whisky, and with heart zest
    Drink to the new-wed pair with many a boisterous jest.

    IV.


    From township, bothie, shieling, miles away,
    The guests had flocked to grace this festive day:
    The shepherd left his fold, the lass her byre,
    Old folks their ingle-nook beside the fire,
    Mothers their bairns—yea, half the country-side
    Turned out to hail the strapping groom and bride;
    And jolly pipers scaled the break-neck passes,
    With frolic tunes to rouse the lightsome lads and lasses.

    V.


    Now smoked the feast, now peat-fires cheerier burned,
    As from the kirk the bridal pair returned;
    And Michael's mother rose from her snug seat,
    And came towards the bride with tottering feet,
    And tremulous hands outstretched, and sweetly spoke
    Her welcome: ruddier than her scarlet cloak
    The bride's cheek glowed beneath her black silk hood,
    As on the threshold of her home she blushing stood.

    VI.


    Ah! dear to her that narrow, grey-thatched home,
    Where she would bide through all the years to come;
    Round which her hopes and memories would entwine
    With fondness, as the tendrilled eglantine
    Clings round a cottage porch; where work and love,
    Like the twin orbs that share the heavens above,
    Would round their lives, and make the days and nights
    Glad with the steady flame of those best household lights.

    VII.


    Was there no omen, then, no warning thrill,
    With curdling dread her warm young blood to chill,
    To cast the shadow of a coming doom
    Across the sunshine and the tender bloom
    Of her new-flowering bliss?—nor anywhere
    A hint of all the sorrow and despair,
    The anguish, and the terror, and the strife
    Which, earthquake-like, would crush and overwhelm her life?

    VIII.


    Thank God that no foreboding shadow fell
    Across the threshold where love throve so well;
    Nor was there one endowed with second-sight,
    To tell of things their present mirth to blight.
    No, all were joyous! Good cheer made them glad,
    The whisky gladder still! Tongues wagged like mad!
    Full oft drank they the bride and bridegroom's weal,
    And merrily played the pipers many a stirring reel.

    IX.


    And Michael's father, nodding to the bride,
    Rapped sharply on the table as he cried,
    Seizing the cup in his one trembling hand,
    Like some hoar Patriarch of a storied land:
    "Lads, here's to Donald's memory! Mary, lass,
    Here's to thy father! What a man he was!
    My brave, God-fearing Donald! These old eyes
    Shall never see his like—so loving, leal, and wise.

    X.


    "Lads, here's to him! Aye, well I mind the day
    When on the heights of Aldea crouched we lay
    For hours amid the furze, and thundering hot
    The sun blazed, and we durst not fire a shot,
    We of the Forty-Second: up the steep
    Like cats we saw the stealthy Frenchmen creep—
    Our General, too, asleep! To ward off flies,
    He'd put a sheet of news across his steely eyes.

    XI.


    "By'r Lord! if there he didn't take his rest
    As sweetly as an infant at the breast.
    But when our captain up to him—he woke,
    Just raised his head a bit, and answering spoke:
    'The Frenchmen coming up the hill? What then?
    Drive me these Frenchmen down again, my men!'
    Aye, and we did so, without more Parlez;
    To hear Sir Arthur, bless your hearts, was to obey.

    XII.


    "Fluttered our plaids behind us down the hill,
    And how our bayonets shone! I see them still
    Flash back the Spanish sunlight! Oh, the sight,
    To see these black French devils taking flight,
    And helter-skelter in their hurry run
    Backwards with clashing swords! Then, lads, the fun
    Of chasing Johnny Crapaud, as we here
    With loud halloos and shouts follow the flying deer.

    XIII.


    "But needs they must come back! And, as before,
    The General says, 'Why, drive them back once more!'"
    The old man paused, looked round, took a long drain
    Of usquebaugh, and said, "Look you, again
    Those Frenchmen swarmed more numerous than before
    Up the hill-side! Sir Arthur, on being told,
    Moved not a muscle, but just calm and cold
    As was his wont, he muttered, still quite civil:
    'Drive me, I say, these Frenchmen to the devil!'

    XIV.


    "And that we did! By'r Lord, we did that time!"
    Some thumped the floor, some made their glasses chime,
    Some quaffed more whisky as the board they smote
    With shouts of bravo! Rory cleared his throat,
    And added calmly, in his deep-toned bass:
    "Aye, 'tis like yesterday, my little lass,
    Since I saw Donald last;—but few, my dear,
    Will mind him that's awa' of all the good folk here.

    XV.


    "Well, lads, we fired one volley ere we charged,
    And by my side the faithful comrade marched,
    When in a twinkling—mark you!—Donald Blair
    Lap suddenly right up into the air;
    As I have seen a noble red deer leap,
    Shot by a gillie, then all of a heap
    Fall down face foremost—so he struck the sod:
    I'd fell the hand that fired the shot, so help me God!

    XVI.


    "The firing slackened then; I'd marked him well;
    And by-and-by my turn came, when we fell
    To fighting hand to hand—I knew him by
    The white patch on his nose, and sure 'twas I
    That passed my bayonet through him; so the trick
    Was done, you see; he followed pretty quick
    At my poor Donald's heels, the loon! ah well,
    He ne'er went back to France, but like enough to hell.

    XVII.


    "So Donald was avenged—we won the day.
    'Tis lang syne now, the brown heads have turned grey,
    The grey are in their graves; but seems I hear
    At whiles brave Donald's laugh so ringing clear,
    And see his teeth gleam through his curly beard.
    Those were braw fechting days! Ye'll all have heard
    Tell on the Forty-Second? Show us the glen
    In Highland or in Island sent not its bonny men!"

    XVIII.


    The old man's eyes gleamed with young fire again.
    "Here's to the lads we left behind in Spain!"
    He cried, and quaffed his bumper with a will.
    And now the pipers struck up a loud and shrill;
    And while the old sat spinning many a yarn,
    The young folk blithely gathered in the barn;
    And with their fun and loud-resounding laughter,
    Shook the worm-eaten beams and cobweb-crusted rafter.

    XIX.


    Cheeks flushed, eyes sparkled, hearts beat high and fast,
    As o'er the floor their feet revolving passed,
    Till, to the sound of hornpipes and of reels,
    It seemed their hearts went dancing in their heels.
    With rhythmic motions now, and face to face,
    They tap the shaking boards with natural grace;
    Then, with the wild deer's swiftness, boy and girl
    Circling in dizzy maze around each other twirl.

    XX.


    And as they fling, and cling, and wheel, and pass,
    Many a lover lightly hugs his lass;
    And many a village belle and queen of hearts
    Makes desperate havoc with her simple arts
    'Mid her adoring swains, who, while they shower
    Their melting glances on her, glare and glower
    Upon their rivals, whom, while meekly sighing,
    With many a fervid kick they fain would send a-flying.

    XXI.


    But still among the bonnie dancers there
    Michael and Mary were the bonniest pair:
    So tall and stately, moving 'mid the rout
    Of flushed and panting couples, wrapped about
    With the pure glory of love, which seemed to fill
    And permeate their features with a still
    And tender glow—impassioned yet serene,
    The scripture of true hearts revealed in rustic mien.

    XXII.


    On, on they whirled to many a loud strathspey,
    Long after groom and bride had gone away;
    Long after the late half-moon's dwindling light
    Had risen grisly on the snowy night,
    Through which the wind, in sudden fits and spasms,
    Went roaring through the roaring mountain chasms,
    And then fell silent—with a piercing cry,
    Like a sore-hunted beast in its last agony!

    XXIII.


    But oh, what cared these merry wedding-guests,
    With flying pulses and with throbbing breasts,
    For all the piping winds and palely snows!—
    Their pipes out-played the wind-notes, and their toes
    Out-whirled the whirling snowflakes, and bright eyes
    Did very well instead of starry skies;
    And as the winter night grew drear and drearier,
    Music and mountain dew but made them all the cheerier.

    XXIV.


    And so the wedding lasted full three days,
    With dance and song kept at a roaring pace,
    And drinking no whit slacker; then the feast
    Came to an end at last, and many a beast—
    Rough Highland sheltie, or sure-footed ass—
    Carried them safe o'er stream and mountain pass,
    Through treacherous mosses and by darkling wood,
    Till safe and sound once more by their own hearths they stood.

          

    Duan Third.

    I.


    YEARS had passed on: the ever-rolling years
    On which man's joys and sorrows, hopes and fears,
    His loves and longings, are swept on and on,
    Like airy bubbles sparkling in the sun,
    Which, forming in a labouring vessel's wake,
    Flash for a moment, in a moment break;
    Frail flowers of foam, dissolving as they quiver,
    To sink and rise, and sink upon life's rushing river.

    II.


    Once more nine Aprils, with fleet sun and showers,
    On wan hill-sides had lit a flame of flowers;
    Once more nine harvest moons in sheltered nooks
    Saw the shorn fields piled with the barley stooks,
    Since Michael had brought home his dear loved wife,
    The faithful partner of his arduous life:
    Both toiling late and soon, year out year in,
    For the old folk and wee bairns the needful bread to win.

    III.


    But toil is long—and hard the stubborn strife
    Which with the inclement elements for bare life
    The Crofter wages; yet for all his ills
    Deep-rooted love unto the soil he tills
    The stout heart bears;—as mothers oft are fain
    To love those best who cost them sorest pain;
    So do these men, matched with wild wind and weather,
    Cling to their tumbling burns, bleak moors, and mountain heather.

    IV.


    And lo! once more it was the time of year
    When berries crimson and green leaves grow sere;
    When bluebells shelter numb, belated bees,
    And on the outstretched arms of wayside trees
    Dangle long wisps of oats, whose casual grain
    The thievish sparrows plunder, as the wain
    Creaks slowly, lurching sideways, to the croft,
    Whose sheaves, by stout arms tossed, are stored in barn and loft;—

    V.


    That time of year when, smoke-like, from the deep
    Atlantic ocean, fast ascending, sweep
    Innumerably the rain-burthened clouds
    Taking the sun by storm, and with dim crowds
    Confusing heaven, as, flying from the gale,
    They blur the lineaments of hill and dale,
    Till, dashed on giddy peak and blasted scaur,
    Their waters breaking loose, crash in one long downpour.

    VI.


    A drear autumnal night! The gusty rain
    Drums on the thatch; the tousled birches strain,
    Bending before the blast; and far and wide
    The writhen pines roar like a roaring tide,
    With which the tumult of the troubled stream
    Mingles its rumbling flood: a night to dream
    Of dire shipwrecks and sudden deaths at sea—
    Yet here, 'neath lowly cot, all sleep most peacefully.

    VII.


    All sleep but Mary, hushing in her arm
    The child whose moans now mingle with the storm
    And now fall silent, as his curly head
    Nestles against her breast, that burns to shed
    The warmth of life into her ailing bairn,
    O'er whom her eyes compassionately yearn
    With love, such as some master genius fine
    Limned in her namesake's eyes, bent o'er the child divine.

    VIII.


    Yea, Mary watched alone, while round her lay
    The nut-brown heads of children, and the grey
    Deep-furrowed brows of age: now and again,
    In the brief pauses of the hurricane,
    She caught their rhythmic breathing through the thick
    Laborious cough and panting of the sick
    And feverish child, who now and then made moan—
    "Oh, mother, mother dear! take off that heavy stone."

    IX.


    "Aye, aye," she crooned, stifling a heavy sigh;
    "Aye, aye, my precious darlin', mother'll try."
    And all the night by the red peat-fire's glare,
    As many a night before of carking care,
    With healing warmth she eased the poor child's ache,
    And with sweet cooling drinks his thirst did slake.
    At last the racking, troublous cough did cease,
    And dozing off towards dawn, he slumbered more at ease.

    X.


    The tempest too lulled suddenly: a swound
    As of spent forces hushed the wuthering sound
    And tumult of the elements; wan and grey
    In the eastern heavens broke the irresolute day
    Still pale and tearful, as the close-veiled sun
    Like one who fears to see the havoc done
    Peered furtively; his first and faltering ray
    Hailed by a lark's clear voice hymning the new-born day.

    XI.


    A poor caged lark! But as the exultant note
    Burst from the little palpitating throat
    Of the imprisoned songster, the dull yoke
    Of care that seemed to stifle Mary broke
    In a hot flood of tears; yea, hope once more,
    Like a tall pillar of fire, shone before
    Her groping steps—the bird's voice seemed to tell
    Her listening, anxious heart all would be well, be well.

    XII.


    "Yea, all would yet be well," she murmured; "soon,
    With this first quarter of the hunter's moon
    Father would come back from the seas, and bring
    His gains wherewith to buy so many a thing
    Sore needed by the bairn!" Therewith she rose
    More comforted at heart, and tucked the clothes
    Warmly around the child, and softly kissed
    The little sleeper's thin, brown, closely curled-up fist.

    XIII.


    And lifting his moist curls, she faintly smiled,
    Remembering how last June her ailing child,
    As blithe and bonnie as the other twin,
    His sister Mary, had come toddling in,
    Ruffled and rosy, pressing to his breast
    With chubby fingers, a forsaken nest,
    From which the startled lark had fled in fear,
    When 'mid the falling swathes the mowers' scythes rang near.

    XIV.


    But he had rescued it from being crushed
    By trampling feet, and eager-eyed and flushed
    Had toddled to the cottage with its shy,
    Poor half-fledged nestling, that did feebly cry
    For food and warmth and mother's folding wing;
    But lovingly he tended the wee thing—
    And lo! it lived, ceasing to pine and fret:
    In narrow cage it sang, sweet Michael's cherished pet.

    XV.


    The song aroused the household. One by one
    They rose to do their taskwork with the sun;
    All but the aged woman, now too sore
    To leave her bed, or labour any more,
    Save with her hands, which still found strength to knit
    Warm stockings for her son. Old Rory lit
    His pipe, and bending o'er the smouldering fire,
    Piled on the well-dried peats and made the flame leap higher.

    XVI.


    Fair Ranza hurried to her dear-loved cow,
    Shobhrag, the primrose-hued, that with a low
    Of deep content greeted the little maid,
    Who bade her a good day, and fondly laid
    A soft pale cheek against her shaggy side;
    Then pressing the full udders, sat astride
    On her small three-legged stool, and watched the white
    Warm stream of milk filling her pail with keen delight:

    XVII.


    Yet took great care not to take more than half,
    Nor rob the little, cuddling, week-old calf
    That stood near by—a glossy golden brown,
    Most like a chestnut roughly tumbled down,
    When its smooth burnished kernel seems to swell
    And burst athwart the trebly-cloven shell—
    Whose limpid eyes, pathetically meek,
    From their mute depths unto the gentle child did speak.

    XVIII.


    And bare-legged ruddy Ion, whistling shrill,
    Scampered across the grass all wet and chill,
    And littered with brown leaves and berries red,
    While as he brushed the hedge its brambles shed
    Brief showers upon him, as with prying look
    He keenly searched each ditch and hidden nook
    For a scarce egg or two, which now and then
    Was laid safe out of sight by some secretive hen.

    XIX.


    And Mary, bending o'er the peat-fire's glare,
    Its bright light dancing on her crispy hair
    And white face worn with watching, yet so grand
    Lit with those eyes of her, turned with one hand
    The well-browned oat-cakes, while her other one
    Had hold of little Maisie, whose bright fun
    Was kept in check by whispers from her mother,
    Not to disturb or wake the little sleeping brother.

    XX.


    At last they gathered round the humble fare,
    The youngest child repeating the Lord's prayer
    With broken baby tones and bended head:
    "Give us," she lisped, "this day our daily bread,"
    When a loud hurried knocking at the door
    Startled the little circle; even before
    They well knew how, into the room there broke
    A hurried, flurried group of scared, distracted folk,

    XXI.


    Wild, panic-stricken neighbours, blanched with dread.
    How helpless looked the strong! Discomfited,
    Like men from field-work driven by sudden foe
    Who yet instinctive clutched their spade or hoe!
    And unkempt wives anomalously dressed
    With querulous infants huddled to the breast;
    Showing, in quivering lip and quailing eye,
    The inevitable stroke of swift calamity.

    XXII.


    Yet ere one spoke, or could have said a word,
    Mary had waved them back: "Nay, by the Lord,
    Not here, not here," she whispered hoarse and low;
    "My child is sick—the sleep he's sleeping now
    Is worth a life;" then with a pleading sign
    She to the old man's care seemed to resign
    Her little ones, and softly closed the door,
    Bracing each quivering nerve for some dire grief in store,

    XXIII.


    And walked slow-footed to the outer gate,
    'Gainst which she leant her body like a weight;
    And with dry lips, low querying, barely sighed—
    "Michael? The tempest?" But a neighbour cried,
    One of her kin, who grasped her round the waist—
    "No, no, look yon!" And with bare arm upraised
    She pointed up the glen, whence drifting came
    Dark clouds of rolling smoke lit by red tongues of flame.

    XXIV.


    And through the rolling smoke a troop of men
    Tramped swiftly nearer from the upper glen;
    Fierce, sullen, black with soot, some carrying picks,
    Axes, crow bars, others armed with sticks,
    Or shouldering piles of faggots—to the fore.
    A little limping man, who cursed and swore
    Between each word, came on post-haste; his hand,
    Stretched like a vulture's claw, seemed grabbing at the land.

    XXV.


    "The deil a one of all the lot shall stay;
    They've a'been warned—I'll grant no more delay;
    So let them e'en be smoked out from their holes,
    To which the stubborn beggars stick like moles,
    Cumbering the ill-used soil they hack and scratch,
    And call it tillage! Silly hens that'd hatch
    Their addled eggs, whether they will or no,
    Are beaten off, and sure these feckless fules maun go."

    XXVI.


    So on from glen to glen, from hut to hut,
    The hated factor came with arrogant strut
    And harsh imperious voice, and at one stroke,
    Of house and home bereft these hapless folk,
    Biding all inmates to come forth in haste:
    For now shall their poor dwellings be laid waste,
    Their thatch be fired, walls levelled with the leas,
    And they themselves be shipped far o'er the wide, wild seas.

    XXVII.


    Thus through his grasping steward bids the chief,
    In whom hereditary, fond belief
    Honours the proud head of their race—the man
    Whose turbulent forbears their devoted clan
    Had served in bloody wars, nor grudged to yield
    Their lives for them in many a battle-field:
    But in these latter days men's lives are cheap,
    And hard-worked Highlanders pay worse than lowland sheep.

    XXVIII.


    And so that he unstinted may abide
    In all the pomp and power of lordly pride,
    Riot in lawless loves, or if he please,
    Have a refreshing change of palaces;
    Or softly warmed in scented orange bowers,
    Shun his moist land of mist and mountain showers,
    The far-off master hath declared his will,
    To have the Crofters swept from every dale and hill.

    XXIX.


    Ah! sore's the day to those unhappy folk,
    Whose huts must fall beneath the hammer's stroke,
    As now the thud of heavy trampling feet
    Draws close and closer to their village street;
    Where, hurrying aimlessly, some wildly stray,
    While others stand and stare in blank dismay,
    And with the sudden shout—"They come! They come!"
    The neighbors rush in fear, each to his threatened home.

    XXX.


    But one, still grasping Mary by the waist,
    Abode with her, and said: "Haste, woman, haste!
    Let's get the old man and the bairns away,
    And whatsoe'er of goods and gear we may,
    Before the factor's men break in, and fling
    Your bedding in the road and everything
    Ye'se bought right dear, and pots and pans and a'
    Lie ruined past the mending, broken by their fa'."

    XXXI.


    But Mary, answering with 'bated breath,
    "Ah! d'ye forget our child nigh sick to death,
    And the old bedridden mother?"—even before
    Her tremulous lips could add a syllable more,
    A voice smote on her ear, most like the screech
    Of some fell bird of prey than human speech,
    That bade her, at the law's resistless call,
    To clear out quickly, bag and baggage, once for all.

    XXXII.


    And Mary clasped her hands and raised her eyes,
    And with a sudden throb of sharp surprise
    She knew the little man who, years gone by,
    When she was but a lass who kept the kye—
    A bare-legged lassie, but most fair and slim,
    Like a young poplar swayed at the wind's whim—
    Had come a-courting, and with fierce suit dunned
    The maiden for her love, while she him loathed and shunned.

    XXXIII.


    She knew the man, and a quick searing red
    Burned cheeks as wan as hueless petals shed
    By wind-nipped flowers in autumn. "Lord," she cried,
    "Ha' mercy! 'tis Dick Galloway," and eyed
    The factor for a while; then sighing said—
    "There's Michael's mother, she's now been a-bed
    A weary while; ah, sir, she is that old
    That if she's moved, for sure she'll die of cramp and cold."

    XXXIV.


    Then with a break and pleading change of tone,
    She pointed o'er her shoulder with a moan
    As of a cushat dove in forest deeps—
    "My child's been sick, sir; now, thank God, he sleeps.
    To drag him out into the gousty glen
    Would be sheer murder! Oh, come ben, come ben,
    And see him smile so sweetly where he lies,
    'Most like one of God's angels up in Paradise.

    XXXV.


    "Ye see, if ye'll but bide a little span,
    Michael'll be back, and he's a canny man
    For rare devices, and will surely find
    A way to shelter them from rain and wind;
    And we'll go quiet and make no lament,
    Though me and Michael's always paid the rent
    Howe'er we pinched oursel's when times were bad;
    But now ye ken my plight, come see the curly lad."

    XXXVI.


    "Plague take the woman, what a mighty fuss
    'Bout a bedridden hag and sickly cuss!
    D'ye think, dem, I'll stand jawing at this rate
    About sick brats at every beggar's gate?
    Time's money's worth," the lowland factor sneered;
    And with a vicious gnawing of his beard,
    And something of a leer and bantering whine,
    "Ye're not so saucy, lass, as was your wont lang syne.

    XXXVII.


    "Ye mind," he hissed, lowering his voice, "I'se bet,
    What a big fool ye made of me; and yet,
    Mary, you were a bigger! Down I went
    In the wet grass right on my knees, and spent
    My breath in sighs, and, damn me! all ye'd say
    Was, with a loud guffaw, 'Dick Galloway,
    For shame, get up, get up, man!' Then I swore
    You'd rue it, as you have, and shall do more and more.

    XXXVIII.


    "Come, come, time's up! Clear out of this, I say!
    Here, lads, come hither; help to clear away
    This stinking rubbish heap—some of ye chaps
    Here lend a hand, clear out this woman's traps.
    Of all these dirty huts the glen we'll sweep,
    And clear it for the fatted lowland sheep."
    Then, with a mocking bow and a limping gait,
    Left Mary standing there—dumb by the rustic gate.

    XXXIX.


    "Cowards!" she cried, with a fierce flash of light
    In her big eyes, and reared to her full height,
    And waved them back as might some warrior queen,
    Full-armed and fearless, of her people seen
    Foremost upon the ramparts as the foe
    Scales her fair walls before their overthrow-
    Yea, even with such an air the woman stood:
    "Cowards!" she cried once more, "thirst ye for children's blood?"

    XL.


    Her regal presence and her flashing eyes,
    Raised as in supplication to the skies,
    Awed even these surly men, who still delayed
    To shove her back, and make a sudden raid
    Upon her cottage;—brutal as they were,
    The motherhood that yearned through her despair
    Awed them a moment—but a moment more
    They'd hustled her aside and tramped towards the door.

    XLI.


    Swifter than they—yea, at a single bound
    She swooped above her child's bed, wrapped him round
    In a thick plaid, and clasped him to her breast,
    And panting—"Father, see ye to the rest,
    So help me God I can't," she, clutching hold
    Of Maisie's hand, strode out into the cold;
    And on a fir uprooted by the gale
    Sat down, and hushed the child that 'gan to hoarsely wail.

    XLII.


    Meanwhile the men fell to their work and broke
    The rough-cast walls with many a hammer stroke;
    Pulled down strong beams, set the mossed thatch on fire,
    While Ranza, quivering flew towards the byre
    To save their cow and calf; and the young son
    Of seven seized what he could lay hands upon,
    And dragged it in the roadway, for the lad
    Knew well 'twas all the wealth his hard-worked father had.

    XLIII.


    And ancient Rory, tottering on his crutch,
    Tried all in vain with his one hand to clutch
    And lift his palsied wife, who could not hear
    His hurried words, all tremulous with fear,
    With which he tried to rouse her—all her moan,
    A peevish whimper to be left alone,
    Till 'mazed, he hobbled off in wild suspense,
    Shouting for neighbours' help to bear the old wife hence.

    XLIV.


    Where all was tumult and confusion, where
    Shrill cries and wild entreaties filled the air,
    And breathless folk pushed wildly to and fro,
    They hardly heeded one another's woe.
    Long, long it seemed ere Rory's perilous plight
    Brought him a helping hand—oh curdling sight!
    Too late, too late!—blankets and bedding blazed
    Around the poor old soul, whose skinny arms upraised

    XLV.


    Hacked feebly 'gainst the flames that rose and fell
    Hissing and crackling round her. "I'm in hell!"
    She mumbled crazily, and stared with dim,
    Lack-lustre eyes, struggling with palsied limb
    To fly but could not: with his desperate roar,
    It seemed the strength of by-gone days once more
    Surged through the old man's shrunken veins; he caught
    The woman up and bore her hence with horror half distraught.

    XLVI.


    And laid her by the wayside, where her gear
    Hissed on the heather; like a village Lear
    His eyes rolled maddening, while some neighbours came,
    And flinging water on the greedy flame,
    They quickly quenched it—but as quickly, oh!
    That other flame went out, which here below,
    No skill of man hath learned to light again:
    Eyes closed, heart stopped, shut fast and locked on human pain.

    XLVII.


    Yet where so many suffered one more wail
    Of anguish scarce was heeded! Rang the dale
    With lamentation and low muttering wrath,
    As homestead after homestead in the strath,
    As hut on hut perched tip-toe on the hills,
    Or crouched by burn-sides big with storm-bred rills,
    Blazed up in unison, till all the glen
    Stood in red flames with homes of ousted Highland men.

    XLVIII.


    And through the dire confusion and smoke
    From burning byres, the cattle roaring broke,
    And mad with terror, rushed down from the fells;
    Whole flocks tore bleating onwards, with the yells
    Of furious dogs behind them; whins and trees
    Caught fire, and boughs fell crackling on the leas,
    And smouldering rafters crashed, and roofs fell in,
    And showers of wind-blown sparks high up in air did spin.

    XLIX.


    Distracted, stunned, amazed, the hurrying folk
    Sway to and fro; some harness to the yoke
    The loudly whinnying horses, and on van
    Or cart, in desperate haste, toss what they can
    Of their scant household goods: clothes, bedding, chairs,
    Spades, hoes, and herring-nets, and such like wares;
    And high atop of all, well high despairing,
    Wives, mothers, children—howling, weeping, swearing.

    L.


    Here a bold shepherd leaps from rock to rock,
    And vainly calls his wildly scattering flock;
    Caught some in burning bushes, or on high
    Shown motionless, as marble 'gainst the sky,
    Where on some jutting shelf a step amiss
    Will hurl them headlong down the precipice.
    There, at their peril, clambering cottars seek
    To save their precious crops, half stifled with the reek.

    LI.


    But women-folk and children chiefly throng
    Helpless about the pathways, since the strong
    And able-bodied tarry yet at sea,
    Netting the herrings which innumerably
    Swim in the merry moonlight; and, perchance,
    While round their keels the silvery waters dance,
    Their hearts fly homewards to the huts even then
    A-blazing up by hundreds through their native glen.

    LII.


    Yea, all that night about the winding strath—
    On brown hill-side and giddy mountain path,
    Or where, on dolorous moor and blanching mere,
    The dark mist lolled and floated, far and near,
    Reddening the river chafed by granite blocks,
    The drear ravines, the vapour-shrouded rocks,
    And realms wind-haunted—hung that awful light
    Of huts and flaming farms ensanguining the night.

    LIII.


    And ever, as procession-like on high
    Swiftly across the wind-tormented sky
    The wingèd clouds, crossing from sea to sea,
    Rolled o'er the mountain-valley, suddenly
    Their livid masses stricken with the glare
    Kindled a wrathful crimson, till the air
    Seemed to take fire, infected from below,
    And earth from heaven itself to catch the unnatural glow.

    LIV.


    And all that lurid night, beside the stream,
    With many a wind-snapped pine and blackened beam
    Hurrying to seaward in the fitful glare
    Of blazing roofs and rafters, Mary's care
    Was centered on the child upon her knee,
    Who gasped, convulsed, in his last agony,
    Close to the burden of the life beneath
    Her heart—that battle-field of wrestling life and death.

    LV.


    And round her lay little ones, the shawl
    Snatched from her neck a covering for them all—
    Where half hid in her gown the nestling things
    Showed, as through feathers of maternal wings
    The yellow heads of new-hatched chickens peep;
    Yet 'mid confusion calm, they slept the sleep
    Of innocents, while watchful mother eyes
    Shone o'er them fair as stars flickering through stormy skies.

    LVI.


    The air blew chillier as faint streaks of grey
    Broadened towards that mystic time of day
    Which oftenest ushers in the feeble cry
    Of new-born babes, and hears the last good-bye
    Faltered from dying lips; even at that hour
    When close-shut petals feel the living power
    And thrill of light, the child, with gasping breath,
    Shuddered convulsed, and shrank as from the frost of death.

    LVII.


    Then suddenly his writhing limbs relaxed,
    The fair, transparent features slowly waxed
    Crescent in beauty, and, with nameless awe
    Dilating, glowed the eyes, as if they saw
    Dawning upon the unfathomable night
    And dumb abysms of death, light within light
    Shining prophetic on those infant eyes,
    Limpid as mountain meres, that glass the starry skies.

    LVIII.


    Like to a drop of morning dew that shone
    In momentary lustre and is gone;
    Like to a new-lit taper whose fair light
    A sudden gust hath quenched ere fall of night;
    Like to a fresh-blown lily which the storm
    Hath broken ere its time, the flower-like form
    Of the fair child lay on its mother's knee,
    Unconscious of her sharp, shrill cry of agony,

    LIX.


    "Oh, Michael, oh, my son!" The piercing wail
    Of human grief went echoing on the gale
    That sobbed about the pine tops. Howling bayed
    The dogs, as if they also mourned the dead;
    Then keenly sniffed the air, and barked and leaped
    About the woman's skirts. The children wept.
    Steps crackled on the leaves. And like a dart
    Straight aimed, flew Michael, straining Mary to his heart.

    LX.


    Lo, all her pent-up anguish, all her fears,
    Then broke their flood-gates in a storm of tears
    Upon her husband's shoulder; with her arms
    Locked closely round him, the fell night's alarms,
    The home in ashes laid, the sick and old
    Relentlessly thrust forth into the cold
    Autumnal night—yea, all the pain and trouble
    Seemed bearable to her, now that her heart was double.

    LXI.


    Few were his words. What comfort was in speech?
    The news had smitten Michael on the beach,
    Where late at night he landed. For a cloud
    Of densely rolling smoke hung like a shroud
    On the familiar cliffs and well-known bay,
    Till the bewildered mariners lost their way
    Even in broad noon, but won the shore at night,
    Piloted by the flames that flashed from vale and height.

    LXII.


    Oh, ghastly home-coming! Oh, cruel blow!
    To find their levelled walls and huts laid low;
    Their crofts destroyed, their stacks of fragrant hay
    Devoured of greedy flames or borne away
    By all the winds of heaven. Oh, harrowing sight!
    Sore labour's fruits all wasted in a night;
    The banished clansmen hurrying to the shore,
    To sound of pipes that wail, Farewell for evermore.

    LXIII.


    They fly and turn not on the hireling band,
    That unresisting drives them from their land.
    Dowered with the lion's strength, like lambs they go,
    For saith the preacher: "God will have it so.
    Therefore, lest worse befall them, lest they yell
    Hereafter from the burning pit of Hell,
    Let them in judgment for their sins go hence,
    Nor vainly strive, poor folk, against God's providence."

          

    Duan Fourth.

    I.


    HIGH among sea-bleached rocks, and bleached as they,
    Naked to summer storm, to wintry day,
    Unroofed and windowless, a ruined keep
    Tottered, suspended o'er the turbulent deep,
    That evermore with hungry lap and moan
    Gnawed worrying at the bald precipitous stone,
    Whose shrubless gaunt anatomy defied
    The siege and ruthless onset of the battering tide.

    II.


    Here it was rumoured, once from furthest Thule
    Tall Vikings landed and had fixed their rule,
    Harrying the Gaelic people. Here, they said,
    One, yet red-handed, forcibly had wed
    A slaughtered chieftain's child. White as sea-foam,
    He bore the bride up to his eagle home,
    Whose hollow vaults echoed the huge carousals
    In celebration of those terrible espousals.

    III.


    But in the dead of night the bride arose,
    And noiselessly as the pale drifting snows,
    The two-edged sword of him, who, drenched with wine,
    Slept there, she brandished in the dim moonshine,
    And sheathed it in his heart; then where he lay
    Cursed him with a strange curse and fled away:
    That curse which for long centuries had preyed
    Upon those grisly walls, the credulous sea-folk said.

    IV.


    To these ill-omened ruins, where all rank
    And blistering weeds grew thickly 'mid the dank
    Coarse grass and thistles, where the flat-mouthed toad
    Squatted, where foxes found secure abode,
    Where whooping owls with lidless eyes did stare,
    And fluttered bats athwart the dusky air
    Shot shuttlewise—even thither Michael bore
    Mary, and her sore pangs at his own vitals tore.

    V.


    For in these ruins, where the hunted beast
    Burrowed secure, the outcasts hoped at least
    The factor's gang would never track their prey.
    With breathless haste the Crofter cleared away
    The mouldering rubbish, and with infinite care,
    On the hard pillow of the ruinous stair
    He propped the dear dark head of her whose spent
    Attenuated frame with coming life was rent.

    VI.


    And to the barren moorland waste forlorn,
    Treeless—but for a solitary thorn
    That, lightning-stricken and bereft of leaf,
    Stood like a gallows waiting for its thief—
    The little children went, and blue with cold
    And hunger, searched upon the gusty wold
    For the spare rust-brown ferns and shrivelled heather
    To ease their mother's bones in place of flock and feather.

    VII.


    Their father meanwhile knocked a stancheon
    Into some rotten chinks, and thereupon
    Stretched a tarred sail across the corner where
    His wife lay shivering in the inclement air
    Whistling through hole and cranny; from the ground
    Sought waifs and strays, and by a godsend found
    A piece of solid drift-wood, unawares,
    Mayhap, of smugglers left, there hiding perilous wares.

    VIII.


    And with much coaxing of the spitting fuel,
    That seemed to wage a sort of spiteful duel
    With the recoiling flames, the fitful spark
    Flared up at last and wavered through the dark,
    As blowing with strong lungs to fan the blaze,
    Michael, with new-ploughed furrows in his face,
    Stooped over it, to grill the caller herring,
    While flameward to their death the flurried moths came whirring.

    IX.


    Then with a mother's tenderness he fed
    The shivering, fretful children, and like lead
    Their lids fell to, even while the small white teeth
    Munched the sore-needed food, as with a sheath
    Slumber encompassed them. The weary souls,
    Like little foxes snuggling in their holes,
    Lay close around the fire with curled-up toes,
    Warmed by the bickering flames and deaf to all their woes.

    X.


    Deaf to the rising blast that rushed and beat
    Against the walls—to volleying hail and sleet
    Rattling like grapeshot—to the breakers' boom
    That right beneath them in the hollow gloom
    Seemed plucking at the everlasting rocks
    With such terrific and reiterate shocks
    Of crashing seas—deaf as the very stones
    To lashing winds and waves mixed with their mother's groans.

    XI.


    And as the tempest rose, and as the night
    Grew wild and wilder, in the topmost height
    Of heaven the sundering cloud-gates showed above
    Where the white moon was fleeing like a dove
    Before the wrack, or like a living soul
    Escaped the body's ponderous control,
    And launched into eternity—even so
    Her weltering light appeared to Michael in his woe,

    XII.


    Where, gripped with pain and ineffectual rage,
    And helpless as a lion in his cage,
    He paced the roofless chamber, or would start
    Into the storm to ease his bursting heart.
    And rushing forth he in the transient blaze
    Of moonlight met his father face to face
    Chopping a way athwart the baffling gale,
    His hair and matted beard hoar with the rattling hail.

    XIII.


    His father?—nay, not this man—but some vain
    Hallucination his distempered brain
    Had conjured up from darkness! Aye, some fell
    And shocking mask that mimicked but too well
    The venerable head! Oh, dread surmise!
    He knew this form, though from the wandering eyes
    A stranger stared, and verily knew not him.
    Michael grasped at the wall; all seemed to turn and swim,

    XIV.


    As, stumbling o'er the threshold, wild and worn,
    His face bedaubed with soot, his garments torn,
    The old man shook himself, then looked around,
    And seeing the children curled up on the ground,
    Went painfully down on one knee, and spread
    His horny palm towards the fire, that shed
    An opal glow; then, dropping to the earth,
    Laughed hoarsely to himself—"Aye, here's a bonnie berth.

    XV.


    "A pretty night, sir, this! The moon's at full,
    That makes the winds go daft, a man from Mull
    Told me in private! 'Tis a rare strathspey
    The merry piper's playing; but, I say,
    A drop of whiskey, lad! I've come from far,
    And yon—come closer, lad—yon's bloody war."
    But his mad ramblings here were cut in twain
    By madder hurly-burly of wind-smitten rain.

    XVI.


    "Happen you haven't heard puir Scotland, lad,
    Is done for quite? Oh, Lord! the times are bad.
    The French we used to drub now drub us, rob,
    Kill, burn the very women!" And a sob
    Throttled the old man's utterance. "Oh, the shame!—
    Our braw lads ran away—ran, sir, like tame,
    Pale-livered sheep or rabbits in hot flight!
    Had I not left some limbs in Spain, I'd make them fight.

    XVII.


    "Aye, there's the trouble! I've lived overmuch.
    Earth's sick of me," and waving his old crutch
    Above his head he muttered—"Fire and flood
    Fight 'gainst our lads now they are made of wood,
    And jointed cunningly to look like men
    But bloodless. So they're burning in the glen,
    But I, ye ken, I'm of the Forty-Secon'!
    I've served my country well as it has me, I'se reckon."

    XVIII.


    And therewith burst into a husky song
    Of doughty Highland deeds, and, crazed with wrong,
    Dozed off, nor knew how busy death was there,
    Nor that as his new grandchild felt the air
    And edge of the inhospitable night,
    It shuddered back from life's brink in affright,
    Dragging its mother after—where she lay
    Like to a gallant ship that dwindling drifts away,

    XIX.


    Merged in the dim obliterating line
    Where heaven and ocean seem to intertwine
    Their separate elements. Oh, crushing grief,
    With Mary's life Michael's was fain to leave,
    Who grasped his head with both his hands as though
    To ward off the inevitable blow,
    And keep his reeling sense and staggered brain
    From breaking down beneath the accumulating pain,

    XX.


    As had his wretched father's! "Oh, my own
    Puir love," he cried, "oh, leave me not alone!
    Would I could die with thee, or give my life
    For thine, my little lass, my murdered wife!
    The Lord have mercy on us!" and the strong
    Man shuddered with his sobs, and fiercely clung
    To her who sighed, "I'm going with my dears,
    Watch thou the bairns that's biding in this vale of tears."

    XXI.


    Crushing her freezing hand in his, the flight
    Of hours passed by unheeded, and the night,
    With all her winds loud wailing, lapped him round,
    And with her own his misery did confound.
    Unhappy wretch, not even to mourn his dead
    Might he watch unmolested by the bed
    Of his life's only treasure; yea, even then
    On his great grief they burst, the great Lord's hireling men.

    XXII.


    Had they not scoured the country far and wide,
    The forest maze and crevissed mountain-side,
    The wave-bored cavern by the sounding shore,
    And haunts of sea-fowl, searching for a score
    Or two of fugitive distracted men,
    Whose hoary memories hugged their native glen,
    As ivy climbing round some king of oaks
    Cleaves to and breaks with it beneath the woodman's strokes?

    XXIII.


    And by the faint light breaking through a chink
    Of the grey ruin tottering on the brink
    Of the bleached headland, lo! the men of law,
    By tortuous tracks, had crept to where they saw
    The treacherous gleam; and one among their band,
    Even in the name of him who owned that land,
    Bade them come on, nor waste their time, for, dem!
    The tide was rising, nor would surely wait for them.

    XXIV.


    Therewith they burnt the heather and the ferns
    Gathered and slept on by those weary bairns;
    Put out the fire, and tore the sail away,
    Where, smooth as in her blooming maiden day—
    Like some fair image on a sculptured tomb,
    Within a hushed cathedral's mystic gloom—
    Recumbent with her infant at the breast,
    The large-limbed mother lay in monumental rest.

    XXV.


    With painful steps slow winding round and round,
    Down curving tracks, they gained the burial-ground,
    Where some few furlongs from the sea it lay
    Upon a slope, acquainted with the spray;
    And where behind it, far receding, rose
    Cloud-shouldering pinnacles with maiden snows
    Begirt, and luminous with evanescent
    Gleams of the casual sun, storm-quenched and still renascent.

    XXVI.


    Within the shadow of the hills o'erhead,
    Within the sound of sea-waves lay the dead.
    Here, thickly planted, leant the moss-grown stones,
    And kept old names green over mouldering bones;
    Or billowy ridges simply marked the spot
    Where paupers rested whom even death forgot;
    And crippled thorns and weeping birchen trees
    Rustled in conclave of the flight of centuries.

    XXVII.


    Yea, here, even here, where their forefathers slept,
    The children lifted up their voice and wept,
    Lamenting as the Israelites of old
    In Babylon. Here, among graves, behold
    The desolate folk that congregating swell
    To bid their native land a long farewell—
    To bid their people's dust a last good-bye,
    Wetting with tears that earth where they may never lie.

    XXVIII.


    But lo, all swerved aside, as through the throng
    The little funeral party moved along,
    All save three mourners, motionless and grey,
    With covered faces crouching by the way;
    For all knew Michael, honoured in the strath,
    And in compassion mutely cleared a path,
    As on his back he and another bore
    Sail-shrouded on a plank the wife who was no more.

    XXIX.


    The staggering children, motherless and worn,
    Followed, the least one of the eldest borne;
    All meekly, by his little grandson led,
    The old man shuffled after—his wild head
    Nodding perpetually filled even with awe
    The sorrowing folk he passed—but when he saw
    So many of his people gathered there,
    Returning reason broke on madness of despair.

    XXX.


    And more and more he came to understand,
    As by the new-dug grave he saw them stand,
    In which—a shamrock-leaf of lives—were laid
    Mother and new-born babe and winsome maid,
    Even Ranza—Mary's first-born—she whose brave
    Heart forced her staggering footsteps to the grave,
    Where she had dropped convulsed, her innocent life
    As sorely done to death as by a butcher's knife.

    XXXI.


    Compassion moved their bowels. Not an eye
    But ran with tears. Michael's alone were dry.
    His heart had rained sorrow unspeakable
    On his wife's body; now an empty well
    Seemed drained to the last drop. But even before
    The solemn prayers were ended, from the shore
    The factor's gang came pouncing on their prey,
    And hounded them with threats of handcuffs to the bay.

    XXXII.


    For many there with sobs and bitter moans
    Were clinging round the thorn trees and the stones:
    More desperate than any, Rory clave,
    Frenzied in turn and fawning, to the grave
    Of the Mackinnons. "I shall stay," he cried,
    "With mine own people! Where my forebears died,
    The good, God-fearing folk, years upon years,
    There Rory too will die and mix his dust with theirs."

    XXXIII.


    And then with humbly supplicating mien
    Begged and entreated like a frightened wean—
    "No, no, ye won't begrudge a little span
    Of ground wherein to bury an old man
    Four score and over, who will not, for sure,
    Long cumber earth that is not for the poor?"
    And low he grovelled 'mid the tomb-stones there,
    Brushing the long rank grass with his white floating hair

    XXXIV.


    He might as well have pleaded with the sea
    When, even as then, the surf rolls angrily,
    Raging against its bourne. Deaf to his prayer,
    They swore to hale him forward by the hair
    If he demurred, who, fiercely struggling, shook
    His old notched crutch; when Michael, with the look
    Of a sick lion, groaned "Come, father, come,
    Our country casts us forth, banished from hearth and home.

    XXXV.


    "God may have given the land to dress and keep
    Unto our hands, but then his lordship's sheep
    Fetch more i' the market. So with all our roots,
    Like ill-weeds choking up the corn's young shoots,
    He plucks us from the soil. His sovereign word
    Hath driven us hence. As with a flaming sword
    Doth he not bar the entrance to our glen?
    But, father, if we must, shall we not go like men?"

    XXXVI.


    Then with his children Michael strode along,
    His father followed through the elbowing throng
    Of men and women, darting here and there
    To snatch up children, or their household ware,
    Splashing through sea pools, stumbling over blocks,
    To where the boats banged sharply on the rocks,
    Bobbing like corks, and bearing from the shore
    Their freight of human souls towards the Koh-i-noor.

    XXXVII.


    But as the shout of sailors, as the stroke
    And dip of oars upon his senses broke,
    The old man started back, and 'mid the loud
    Din and confusion of the pushing crowd
    He disappeared unnoticed, as the ship,
    With many a lunge and shake and roll and dip,
    Now weighed her anchors, and with bulging sail
    Close-reefed, and creaking shrouds, drove on before the gale.

    XXXVIII.


    And crowding on the decks, with hungry eyes
    Straining towards the coast that flies and flies,
    The crofters stand; and whether with tears or foam
    The faces fastened on their dwindling home
    Are wet, they know not, as the lean and yearn
    Over the trickling bulwark by the stern
    Toward each creek and headland of that shore,
    The long-love lineaments they may see never more.

    XXXIX.


    Therewith it seemed as if their Scottish land
    Bled for its children, yea, as though some hand—
    Stretching from where on the horizon's verge
    The rayless sun hung on the reddening surge—
    Incarnadined the sweep of perilous coast
    And the embattled storm-clouds swarthy host,
    With such wild hues of mingling blood and fire
    As though the heavens themselves flashed in celestial ire.

    XL.


    And in the kindling of that wrathful light
    Their huts, yet flaming up from vale and height,
    Grew pale as watch-fires in the glare of day;
    White constellated isles leagues far away,
    Headlands and reefs and paps, whose fretted stone
    Breasted the sucking whirlpool's clamorous moan,
    Grew incandescent o'er the wind-flogged sea,
    Scaled over with whitening scum as struck with leprosy.

    XLI.


    For as the winds blew up to hurricane,
    Like a mere spark quenched on the curdled main
    The ship was swept beyond the old man's sight,
    A dizzy watcher on that lonesome height,
    Where, grappled to a fragment of the keep,
    He hung and swung high o'er the raging deep
    While sea-gulls buffeted about his locks,
    Slipped shrieking into chinks and crannies of the rocks.

    XLII.


    And now the waves that thundered on the shore
    Him seemed the iron-throated cannon's roar;
    And now his heart, upstarting as from sleep,
    Shuddered for those that sailed upon the deep,
    As in brief flashes of his clouded mind
    He knew himself sole crofter left behind
    Of all his clan—crying now and again,
    "She's cleared the Sound of Sleat—safe on the open main.

    XLIII.


    "She's safe now with the treacherous reefs behind!"
    He shouted, as in answer to the wind
    That had swung round like some infuriate host,
    With all its blasts set full upon the coast;
    And hounded back, the ship, as if at bay,
    Came reeling through the twilight, thick, and grey
    With rags of solid foam and shock of breaking
    Waters, beneath whose blows the very rocks were shaking.

    XLIV.


    Yea, near and nearer to the deadly shore
    She pitches helpless 'mid the bellowing roar
    Of confluent breakers, as with sidelong keel,
    Dragging her anchors, she doth plunge and reel,
    Dashed forwards, then recoiling from the rocks,
    Whose flinty ribs ring to the Atlantic shocks—
    On, on, and ever on, till hurled and battered
    Sheer on the rock she springs, and falls back wrecked and shattered.

    XLV.


    And through the smoke of waters and the clouds
    Of driving foam, boats, rigging, masts, and shrouds
    Whirled round and round; and then athwart the storm
    The old man saw, or raving saw, the form
    Of his own son, as with his children pressed
    Close to his heart, borne on the giddy crest
    Of a sheer wall of wave, he rose and rose,
    Then with the refluent surge rolled whelmed beneath its snows.

    XLVI.


    And through the lurid dusk and mist of spray
    That quenched the last spark of the smouldering day,
    Faces of drowning men were seen to swim
    Amid the vortex, or a hand or limb
    To push through whelming waters, or the scream
    Wrung from a swimmer's choking lips would seem
    To be borne in upon the reeling brain
    Of that old man, who swooned beneath the mortal strain.

    XLVII.


    Yea, thus once more upon the natal coast,
    Which, living, those brave hearts had left and lost,
    The pitying winds and waves drove back to land,
    If but to drown them by the tempest's hand,
    The banished Highlanders. Safe in the deep,
    With their own seas to rock their hearts to sleep,
    The crofters lay: but faithful Rory gave
    His body to the land that had begrudged a grave.


    (notes)