thoughtful, and grim,
While the Panther, grinning as he passed, still
kept his eyes on him,
Phil Blood strolled slow to his mates below,
down by the mountain track,
With his lips set tight, and his face all white,
and the Panther at his back.
I reckon they stared when the two appeared!
but never a word Phil spoke;
Some of them laughed and others jeered,—but
he let them have their joke;
He seemed amazed, like a man gone dazed, the
sun in his eyes too bright,
And for many a week, in spite of their cheek,
he never offered to fight.
And after that day he changed his play, and kept
a civiller tongue,
And whenever an Injin came that way, his con-
trary head he hung;
But whenever he heard the lying word, 'It's a
Lie!' Phil Blood would groan;
'A Snake is a Snake, make no mistake! but an Injin's
flesh and bone!'"
——R. Buchanan.
Among the hills of India
Dwelt warriors fierce and bold,
The sons of robber chieftains
Who, in the days of old,
Fought for their mountain freedom,
And, if by Fate laid low,
Fell ever crowned with honour—
Their faces to the foe.
Now'twas an ancient custom
Among those hillsmen brave,
When thus they found their kinsman,
To dig for him no grave;
But the torn blood-stained garments
They stripped from off the dead,
And then his wrist they circled
With green or crimson thread.
Many the green-decked warriors,
But only for a few
Was kept that highest honour,
The thread of sanguine hue;
For'twas alone the bravest
Of those who nobly shed
Their life-blood in the battle
Whose wrists were bound with red.
And when they thus had graced them
Who fell before the foe,
They hurled their lifeless bodies
Into the plain below.
The earth did ne'er imprison
Those hillsmen brave and free,
The sky alone should cover
The warriors of Trukkee.
There came a time of conflict,
And a great armed throng
Of England's bravest soldiers,—
Avengers of the wrong,—
Marched through the gloomy gorges,
Forded the mountain rills,
Vowing that they would vanquish
Those robbers of the hills.
The road was strange and dubious;
Easy it was to stray;
And of those English soldiers
Eleven lost their way.
Led by a trusty leader,
They reached a fearful glen,
And saw a mountain stronghold
Guarded by forty men.
Guarded by forty veterans
Of that fierce robber band,
In every face defiance,
Weapons in every hand.
"Back!" cried the trusty leader;
The soldiers would not hear,
But up the foe-crowned mountain
Charged with their English cheer.
With loud huzzas they stormed it,
Nor thought to turn from death,
But for old England's honour
Yielded their latest breath.
Short was the fight but deadly,
For, when our last man fell,
But sixteen of that forty
Were left to tell the tale.
But those sixteen were noble—
They loved a brave deed done;
They knew a worthy foeman,
And treated him as one.
And when the English soldiers
Sought for their comrades slain,
They found their stiff stark corpses
Prostrate upon the plain:
They lay with blood-stained faces,
Fixed eyes, and firm-clenched fists,
But the Red Thread of Honour,
Was twined around their wrists.
——J. A. Noble.
This is the tale of the man
Who heard a word in the night
In the land of the heathery hills,
In the days of the feud and the fight.
By the sides of the rainy sea,
Where never a stranger came,
On the awful lips of the dead,
He heard the outlandish name.
It sang in his sleeping ears,
It hummed in his waking head:
The name—Ticonderoga,
The utterance of the dead.
On the loch-sides of Appin,
When the mist blew from the sea,
A Stewart stood with a Cameron:
An angry man was he.
The blood beat in his ears,
The blood ran hot to his head,
The mist blew from the sea
And there was the Cameron dead.
"O, what have I done to my friend,
O, what have I done to mysel',
That he should be cold and dead,
And I in the danger of all?
"Nothing but danger about me,
Danger behind and before,
Death at wait in the heather
In Appin and Mamore,
Hate at all of the ferries
And death at each of the fords,
Camerons priming gunlocks
And Camerons sharpening swords."
But this was a man of counsel,
This was a man of score,
There dwelt no pawkier Stewart
In Appin or Mamore.
He looked on the blowing mist,
He looked on the awful dead,
And there came a smile on his face,
And there slipped a thought in his head.
Out over cairn and moss,
Out over scrog and scaur,
He ran as runs the clansman
That bears the cross of war.
His heart beat in his body,
His hair clove to his face,
When he came at last in the gloaming
To the dead man's brother's place.
The east was white with the moon,
The west with the sun was red,
And there, in the house-doorway,
Stood the brother of the dead.
"I have slain a man to my danger,
I have slain a man to my death.
I put my soul in your hands,"
The panting Stewart saith.
"I lay it bare in your hands,
For I know your hands are leal;
And be you my targe and bulwark
From the bullet and the steel."
Then up and spake the Cameron,
And gave him his hand again:
"There shall never a man in Scotland
Set faith in me in vain;
And whatever man you have slaughtered,
Of whatever name or line,
By my sword and yonder mountain,
I make your quarrel mine.
I bid you in to my fireside,
I share with you house and hall;
It stands upon my honour
To see you safe from all."
It fell in the time of midnight,
When the fox barked in the den
And the plaids were over the faces
In all the houses of men,
That as the living Cameron
Lay sleepless on his bed,
Out of the night and the other world,
Came in to him the dead.
"My blood is on the heather,
My bones are on the hill;
There is joy in the home of ravens
That the young shall eat their fill.
My blood is poured in the dust,
My soul is spilled in the air;
And the man that has undone me
Sleeps in my brother's care."
"I'm wae for your death, my brother,
But if all of my house were dead,
I couldnae withdraw the plighted hand,
Nor break the word once said."
"O, what shall I say to our father,
In the place to which I fare?
O, what shall I say to our mother
Who greets to see me there?
And to all the kindly Camerons
That have lived and died long-syne—
Is this the word you send them
Fause-hearted brother mine?"
0122m
"It's neither fear nor duty,
It's neither quick nor dead
Shall gar me withdraw the plighted hand,
Or break the word once said."
Thrice in the time of midnight,
When the fox barked in the den,
And the plaids were over the faces
In all the houses of men,
Thrice as the living Cameron
Lay sleepless on his bed,
Out of the night and the other world
Came in to him the dead,
And cried to him for vengeance
On the man that laid him low;
And thrice the living Cameron
Told the dead Cameron, no.
"Thrice have you seen me, brother,
But now shall see me no more,
Till you meet your angry fathers
Upon the farther shore.
Thrice have I spoken, and now,
Before the cock be heard,
I take my leave for ever
With the naming of a word.
It shall sing in your sleeping ears,
It shall hum in your waking head,
The name—Ticonderoga,
And the warning of the dead."
Now when the night was over
And the time of people's fears,
The Cameron walked abroad,
And the word was in his ears.
"Many a name I know,
But never a name like this;
O, where shall I find a skilly man
Shall tell me what it is?"
With many a man he counselled
Of high and low degree,
With the herdsmen on the mountains
And the fishers of the sea.
And he came and went unweary,
And read the books of yore,
And the runes that were written of old,
On stones upon the moor.
And many a name he was told,
But never the name of his fears—
Never, in east or west,
The name that rang in his ears:
Names of men and of clans;
Names for the grass and the tree,
For the smallest tarn in the mountains,
The smallest reef in the sea:
Names for the high and low,
The names of the craig and the flat;
But in all the land of Scotland,
Never a name like that.
And now there was speech in the south,
And a man of the south that was wise,
A periwig'd lord of London, *
Called on the clans to rise.
And the riders rode, and the summons
Came to the western shore,
To the land of the sea and the heather,
To Appin and Mamore.
It called on all to gather
From every scrog and scaur,
That loved their fathers' tartan
And the ancient game of war.
And down the watery valley
And up the windy hill,
Once more, as in the olden,
The pipes were sounding shrill;
Again in highland sunshine
The naked steel was bright;
And the lads, once more in tartan,
Went forth again to fight.
"O, why should I dwell here
With a weird upon my life,
When the clansmen shout for battle
And the war-swords clash in strife?
* The first Pitt.
I cannae joy at feast,
I cannae sleep in bed,
For the wonder of the word
And the warning of the dead.
It sings in my sleeping ears,
It hums in my waking head,
The name—Ticonderoga,
The utterance of the dead.
Then up, and with the fighting men
To march away from here,
Till the cry of the great war-pipe
Shall drown it in my ear!"
Where flew King George's ensign
The plaided soldiers went:
They drew the sword in Germany,
In Flanders pitched the tent.
The bells of foreign cities
Rang far across the plain:
They passed the happy Rhine,
They drank the rapid Main.
Through Asiatic jungles
The Tartans filed their way,
And the neighing of the war-pipes
Struck terror in Cathay.
"Many a name have I heard," he thought,
"In all the tongues of men,
Full many a name both here and there,
Full many both now and then.
When I was at home in my father's house
In the land of the naked knee,
Between the eagles that fly in the lift
And the herrings that swim in the sea,
And now that I am a captain-man
With a braw cockade in my hat—
Many a name have I heard," he thought,
"But never a name like that."
There fell a war in a woody place,
Lay far across the sea,
A war of the march in the mirk midnight,
And the shot from behind the tree,
The shaven head and the painted face,
The silent foot in the wood,
In a land of a strange, outlandish tongue
That was hard to be understood.
It fell about the gloaming
The general stood with his staff,
He stood and he looked east and west
With little mind to laugh.
"Far have I been and much have I seen,
And kent both gain and loss,
But here we have woods on every hand
And a kittle water to cross.
Far have I been and much have I seen,
But never the beat of this;
And there's one must go down to that
waterside
To see how deep it is."
It fell in the dusk of the night
When unco things betide,
The skilly captain, the Cameron,
Went down to that waterside.
Canny and soft the captain went;
And a man of the woody land,
With the shaven head and the painted face,
Went down at his right hand.
It fell in the quiet night,
There was never a sound to ken;
But all of the woods to the right and the left
Lay filled with the painted men.
"Far have I been and much have I seen,
Both as a man and as boy,
But never have I set forth a foot
On so perilous an employ."
It fell in the dusk of the night
When unco things betide,
That he was aware of a captain-man
Drew near to the waterside.
He was aware of his coming
Down in the gloaming alone;
And he looked in the face of the man
And lo! the face was his own.
"This is my weird," he said,
"And now I ken the worst;
For many shall fall the morn,
But I shall fall with the first.
O, you of the outland tongue,
You of the painted face,
This is the place of my death;
Can you tell me the name of the place?"
"Since the Frenchmen have been here
They have called it Sault-Marie;
But that is a name for priests,
And not for you and me.
It went by another word,"
Quoth he of the shaven head:
"It was called Ticonderoga
In the days of the great dead."
And it fell on the morrow's morning,
In the fiercest of the fight,
That the Cameron bit the dust
As he foretold at night;
And far from the hills of heather,
Far from the isles of the sea,
He sleeps in the place of the name
As it was doomed to be.
——R. L. Stevenson.
From the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground.
There rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Piets in battle,
He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain
He hunted as they fled,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead.
Summer came in the country,
Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
Was none alive to tell.
In graves that were like children's
On many a mountain head,
The Brewsters of the Heather
Lay numbered with the dead.
The king in the red moorland
Rode on a summer's day;
And the bees hummed, and the curlews
Cried beside the way.
The king rode, and was angry,
Black was his brow and pale,
To rule in a land of heather
And lack the Heather Ale.
It fortuned that his vassals,
Riding free on the heath,
Came on a stone that was fallen
And vermin hid beneath.
Rudely plucked from their hiding,
Never a word they spoke:
A son and his aged father—
Last of the dwarfish folk.
The king sat high on his charger,
He looked on the little men;
And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
Looked at the king again.
Down by the shore he had them;
And there on the giddy brink—
"I will give you life, ye vermin,
For the secret of the drink."
There stood the son and father
And they looked high and low;
The heather was red around them,
The sea rumbled below.
And up and spoke the father,
Shrill was his voice to hear:
"I have a word in private,
A word for the royal ear.
"Life is dear to the aged,
And honour a little thing;
I would gladly sell the secret,"
Quoth the Piet to the King.
His voice was small as a sparrow's,
And shrill and wonderful clear:
"I would gladly sell my secret,
Only my son I fear.
"For life is a little matter,
And death is nought to the young;
And I dare not sell my honour
Under the eye of my son.
Takehim, O king, and bind him,
And cast him far in the deep;
And it's I will tell the secret
That I have sworn to keep."
They took the son and bound him,
Neck and heels in a thong,
And a lad took him and swung him,
And flung him far and strong,
And the sea swallowed his body,
Like that of a child of ten;—
And there on the cliff stood the father,
Last of the dwarfish men.
"True was the word I told you:
Only my son I feared;
For I doubt the sapling courage
That goes without the beard.
But now in vain is the torture,
Fire shall never avail:
Here dies in my bosom
The secret of Heather Ale."
——R. L. Stevenson.
The first letter our Captain wrote
To the Lord of Mantua:
"Did you ever see French Janet
(He wrote) on any day?
"Did ye ever see French Janet,
That was so blithe and coy?
The little serving-lass I stole
From the mountains of Savoy.
"Last week I lost French Janet:
Hunt for her up and down;
And send her back to me, my Lord,
From the four walls o* the town."
Captain Gold and French Janet,
For thirty days and thirty nights
There came no news to us.
Suddenly old grew Captain Gold,
And his voice grew tremulous.
O Mantua's a bonny town,
And she's long been our ally;
But help came none from Mantua-town,
Dim grew our Captain's eye.
"O send me Janet home again!"
Our Captain wrote anew;
"A lass is but a paltry thing,
And yet my heart's in two!
"Ha' ye searched through every convent-
close,
And sought in every den?
Mistress o' man, or bride of Christ,
I'll have her back again!"
O Mantua's a bonny town,
And she's long been our ally;
But help came none from Mantua-town,
And sick at heart am I.
For thirty days and thirty nights
No news came to the camp;
And the life waned old in Captain Gold,
As the oil wanes in a lamp.
The third moon swelled towards the full
When the third letter he wrote:
"What will ye take for Janet?
Red gold to fill your moat?
"Red wine to fill your fountains full?
Red blood to wash your streets?
Ah, send me Janet home, my Lord,
Or ye'll no die in your sheets!"
O Love, that makes strong towers to
sway,
And captains' hearts to fall!
I feared they might have heard his sobs
Right out to Mantua-wall.
For thirteen days and thirteen nights
No messenger came back;
And when the morning rose again,
Our tents were hung with black.
The dead bell rang through all the camp;
But we rung it low and dim,
Lest the Lombard hounds in Mantua
Should know the end of him.
——A. M. F. Robinson (Darmesteter).