Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.

February 13

The Widow of Glencoe

By William E. Aytoun (1813–1865)

For some years after the accession of William III. to the English throne Scotland remained in a turbulent condition. By the order of William forty members of the Clan Macdonald were massacred on Feb. 13, 1692, in their homes in the valley of Glencoe, an order which has left an indelible stain upon his memory.

DO not lift him from the bracken,

Leave him lying where he fell—

Better bier ye cannot fashion:

None beseems him half so well

As the bare and broken heather,

And the hard and trampled sod,

Whence his angry soul ascended

To the judgment-seat of God!

Winding-sheet we cannot give him—

Seek no mantle for the dead,

Save the cold and spotless covering

Showered from heaven upon his head.

Leave his broadsword, as we found it,

Bent and broken with the blow,

That, before he died, avenged him

On the foremost of the foe.

Leave the blood upon his bosom—

Wash not off that sacred stain:

Let it stiffen on the tartan,

Let his wounds unclosed remain,

Till the day when he shall show them

At the throne of God on high,

When the murderer and the murdered

Meet before their Judge’s eye!

Nay—ye should not weep, my children!

Leave it to the faint and weak;

Sobs are but a woman’s weapon—

Tears befit a maiden’s cheek.

Weep not, children of Macdonald!

Weep not thou, his orphan heir—

Not in shame, but stainless honour,

Lies thy slaughtered father there.

Weep not—but when years are over,

And thine arm is strong and sure,

And thy foot is swift and steady

On the mountain and the muir—

Let thy heart be hard as iron,

And thy wrath as fierce as fire,

Till the hour when vengeance cometh

For the race that slew thy sire;

Till in deep and dark Glenlyon

Rise a louder shriek of woe

Than at midnight, from their eyrie,

Scared the eagles of Glencoe;

Louder than the screams that mingled

With the howling of the blast,

When the murderer’s steel was clashing,

And the fires were rising fast:

When thy noble father bounded

To the rescue of his men,

And the slogan of our kindred

Pealed throughout the startled glen;

When the herd of frantic women

Stumbled through the midnight snow,

With their fathers’ houses blazing,

And their dearest dead below.

Oh, the horror of the tempest,

As the flashing drift was blown,

Crimsoned with the conflagration,

And the roofs went thundering down!

Oh, the prayers—the prayers and curses

That together winged their flight

From the maddened hearts of many

Through that long and woeful night!

Till the fires began to dwindle,

And the shots grew faint and few,

And we heard the foeman’s challenge

Only in a far halloo;

Till the silence once more settled

O’er the gorges of the glen,

Broken only by the Cona

Plunging through its naked den.

Slowly from the mountain-summit

Was the drifting veil withdrawn,

And the ghastly valley glimmered

In the gray December dawn.

Better had the morning never

Dawned upon our dark despair!

Black amidst the common whiteness

Rose the spectral ruins there:

But the sight of these was nothing

More than wrings the wild dove’s breast,

When she searches for her offspring

Round the relics of her nest.

For in many a spot the tartan

Peered above the wintry heap,

Marking where a dead Macdonald

Lay within his frozen sleep.

Tremblingly we scooped the covering

From each kindred victim’s head,

And the living lips were burning

On the cold ones of the dead.

And I left them with their dearest—

Dearest charge had everyone—

Left the maiden with her lover,

Left the mother with her son.

I alone of all was mateless—

Far more wretched I than they,

For the snow would not discover

Where my lord and husband lay.

But I wandered up the valley

Till I found him lying low,

With the gash upon his bosom,

And the frown upon his brow—

Till I found him lying murdered

Where he wooed me long ago.