Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
So pitiable seemed the state of the kingdom that at the opening of the fifteenth century the clans of the Highlands drew together to swoop upon it as a certain prey; but the common peril united the factions of the nobles, and the victory of Harlaw saved the Lowlands from the rule of the Celt. A great name at last broke the line of the Scottish kings.
Stern son of Lord Kenneth, high chief of Kinntail, Let the stag in thy standard bound wild in the gale! May the race of Clan Gillean, the fearless and free, Remember Glenlivat, Harlaw, and Dundee! Let the clan of grey Fingon, whose offspring has given Such heroes to earth, and such martyrs to heaven, Unite with the race of renowned Rorri More, To launch the long galley, and stretch to the oar.
An Edinburgh tailor, Harlaw, who seems to have been a deacon in English orders, was allowed to return to Scotland in 1554. Going from Mrs. Bowes's house to Edinburgh, Knox found that "the fervency" of the godly "did ravish him." At the house of one Syme "the trumpet blew the auld sound three days thegither," he informed Mrs. Bowes, and Knox himself was the trumpeter.
On Sundays, however, he made the best of himself, and came out like a belated and aged butterfly with his father's sporran, or tasselled goatskin purse, in front of him, his grandfather's dirk at his side, his great grandfather's skene dhu, or little black hafted knife, stuck in the stocking of his right leg, and a huge round brooch of brass nearly half a foot in diameter, and, Mr Graham said, as old as the battle of Harlaw on his left shoulder.
He was encountered at Harlaw, in the Garioch, by Alexander, Earl of Mar, at the head of the northern nobility and gentry of Saxon and Norman descent.
It was not to a racial battle between Celt and Saxon that the Earl of Mar and the Provost of Aberdeen, aided by the Frasers, marched out to Harlaw, in July, 1411, to meet Donald of the Isles. Had the clansmen been victorious there would certainly have been a Celtic revival; but this was not the danger most dreaded by the victorious Lowlanders.
May the race of Clan Gillean, the fearless and free, Remember Glenlivat, Harlaw, and Dundee! Let the clan of grey Fingon, whose offspring has given Such heroes to earth and such martyrs to heaven, Unite with the race of renown'd Rorri More, To launch the long galley and stretch to the oar. How Mac-Shimei will joy when their chief shall display The yew-crested bonnet o'er tresses of grey!
"It was their fashion since the days of the Great Earl that was killed at Harlaw; they did it to show scorn that they should die and be buried like other mortals; the wives o' the house of Glenallan wailed nae wail for the husband, nor the sister for the brother. But is she e'en ca'd to the lang account?" "As sure," answered Edie, "as we maun a' abide it."
"Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle, And listen, great and sma', And I will sing of Glenallan's Earl That fought on the red Harlaw. "The cronach's cried on Bennachie, And doun the Don and a', And hieland and lawland may mournfu' be For the sair field of Harlaw. I dinna mind the neist verse weel my memory's failed, and theres unco thoughts come ower me God keep us frae temptation!"
One experienced dame was heard to characterise a younger damsel as "a puir silly thing, who had no ambition, and would never," she prophesied, "rise above the mussel-line of business." The great battle of Harlaw, here and formerly referred to, might be said to determine whether the Gaelic or the Saxon race should be predominant in Scotland.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking