They came from untamable highlands,
From glens where their fathers were free,
From misty and mountainous islands
Set fast in the throat of the sea;
They fought for the honour of Britain;
They died in defence of the right;
Their deeds are in history written
In letters of light.
They fell where the Ganges is flowing;
They lie 'neath the Russian Redan;
Their dust o'er the desert is blowing
In the whirlwinds of far Kordofan;
The sons of Glen Orchy and Rannoch
Sleep sound by the slow-moving Scheldt,
And the bones of the men of Loch Fannich
Are white on the veldt.
But the Lows and Lochmaben and Gairloch
Still march to the battle array,
And the fighters from many a fair loch,
Like their fathers, leap forth to the fray;
Red flame tears the darkness asunder
Where the curtain of battle is drawn,
Where the clansmen through death-cloud and thunder
Go over at dawn.
In the strength of the hills and the heather,
With the salt of the sea in their blood,
They sweep from the trenches together
With the force of an onrushing flood;
Like the billows that beat upon Moidart
When gales from the Hobrides blow,
Like a storm on the mountains of Knoidart
They burst on the foe.
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[Illustration: _Hairdresser_ (_with a view to business--to customer,
who is getting rapidly bald_). "There are plenty of hairdressers, you
know, Sir, who profess to make a wig; but, when you've got it on, it
looks nothing like a wig at all, Sir."]
* * * * *