Locheil’s Farewell

I recently happened upon a tiny red tome titled ‘Jacobite Songs and Ballads’ which looks to have been printed around 1887. I was surprised how many of the songs were at least a little familiar to me and found it interesting to note that the editor G. S. MacQuoid chose to order them fairly chronologically, beginning with hopeful songs of praise for the return of Bonnie Prince Charlie and ending with laments over the state of the ravaged post-Culloden Highlands. There’s still lots to explore but this one has stuck with me so far:

Culloden, on thy swarthy brow,
Spring no wild flowers nor verdure fair:
Thou feel’st not summer’s genial glow,
More than the freezing wintry air;
For once thou drank’st the hero’s blood,
And war’s unhallowed footsteps bore,
The deeds unholy nature viewed,
Then fled, and cursed thee evermore.

From Beauly’s wild and woodland glens,
How proudly Lovat’s banners soar!
How fierce the plaided Highland clans,
Rush onward with the broad claymore!
Those hearts that high with honour heaved,
The volleying thunder there laid low!
Or scattered like the forest leaves,
When wintry winds begin to blow!

Where now thy honours, brave Locheil!
The braided plume’s torn from thy brow,
What must thy haughty spirit feel,
While skulking like the mountain roe!
While wild-birds chant from Lochy’s bowers,
On April eve, their loves and joys;
The Lord of Lochy’s loftiest towers,
To foreign lands an exile flies.

To his blue hills that rose in view,
As o’er the deep his galley bore,
We often looked, and cried “Adieu!”
I’ll never see Lochaber more!
Though now thy wounds I cannot heal,
My dear, my injured native land,
In other climes thy foe shall feel,
The weight of Cameron’s deadly brand.

Land of proud hearts and mountains grey!
Where Fingal fought and Ossian sung!
Mourn dark Culloden’s fateful day,
That from thy chiefs the laurels wrung.
Where once they ruled and roamed at will,
Free as their own dark mountain game;
Their sons are slaves and keenly feel,
A longing for their father’s fame.

Shades of the mighty and the brave,
Who, faithful to your Stuart, fell;
No trophies mark your common grave,
No dirges to your mem’ry swell!
But generous hearts will weep your fate,
When far has rolled the tide of time,
And bards unknown shall renovate,
Your fading fame in loftiest rhyme!