The Southern loons, sly, seized a chance,
An’ made the Hielan’ birkies prance;
But mony a head they made to dance
Upon the Haughs o’ Cromdale!
The Grants, McKenzies, and Mackays,
As soon’s their foemen they did spy.
Stood fast and fought most manfully
Upon the Haughs o’ Cromdale, etc.
An interesting antecedent to this chivalrous Highland stand for the Stuarts on Speyside in 1690 is found in the fact that Charles II., returning from exile, landed at the mouth of the Spey in 1650, just where the village of Kingston — which took its name from the event — now stands. That His Majesty might land dryshod, Thomas Milne, the ferryman, waded to the boatside, and, with the courteous deference of that time, with hands firmly planted on his knees, presented his
- ↑ The Dargai Pipers.— Piper Findlater, the hero of Dargai, wrote a letter to a relative, in which the following passages occur: “I am getting on fairly well, and netting well attended to. They were not very sure whether I woiud get my leg taken off or not, but I think it is all right now. The wound is nearly well now. The hone was all smashed away. They took out six pieces of bone, and it is a wonder that I had any bone in my leg to heal, but I was not so dangerously wounded as the papers said I was. It was me that played when I got shot, and it was a wonder I got away with my life, for I was sitting right in the open, and the bullets were glancing round me in all directions. If it is in the papers that my leg was taken off, it is not true.” Piper Milne, the other hero, has written to a brother in Vancouver a letter, in which the sentence occurs, “Off we went, playing the ‘Cock o’ the North,’ through a perfect storm of bullets.” This would show that the Gordons entered upon their forlorn hope to that tune, and that the “Haughs of Cromdale” came later.
