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Updated: May 14, 2025
The conduct of Edward to Wallace, and later to many other distinguished Scotchmen who fell into his hands, is a foul blot upon the memory of one of the greatest of the kings of England. Edward might now well have believed that Scotland was crushed for ever.
You may be sure also that Lumley was active in his preparations, and the result was that, on a fine afternoon in the early spring, we that is, Lumley, Macnab, Big Otter, and I set out on our expedition in a strong new boat which was manned by two Indians, two Scotchmen, and a number of Canadian half-breeds all picked men.
We Londoners are not accustomed from our youth to the poems of a great democratic genius, as the Scotchmen are to their glorious Burns. We have no chance of such an early acquaintance with poetic art as that which enabled John Bethune, one of the great unrepresented the starving Scotch day-labourer, breaking stones upon the parish roads, to write at the age of seventeen such words as these:
It was disconcerting to learn that Warren was in Natal, for it had been stated that Methuen was merely waiting Sir Charles to join him ere again attempting to fight his way to Kimberley. New Year's Day! New Year's Day, indeed! Our Scotchmen sighed. They drank brandy so labelled in the tavern, but more widely notorious as "lyddite" in the town.
Debating societies, like the company of reporters, engender a familiarity of reference to eminent persons, and Andrew had in his time struck down the champions of woman's rights as a boy plays with his ninepins. To be brought face to face with a lady whose name is a household word wheresoever a few Scotchmen can meet and resolve themselves into an argument was another matter.
"Well, then, let it be three. Ye know, Davy," said Major Duncan, insensibly dropping into the pronunciation and dialect of his youth, as is much the practice with educated Scotchmen as they warm with a subject that comes near the heart, "ye know, Davy, that my own choice has long been made, and in how anxious and hope-wearied a manner I've waited for that happy hour when I can call the woman I've so long loved a wife; and here have you, without fortune, name, birth, or merit I mean particular merit "
A wounded man lay on a litter at the end of the long, low room; and the traders sitting on the benches against the walls, or standing aimlessly about, were talking in suppressed tones. Scotchmen, driven from their farms by the Bois-Brulés, hung around in anxious groups. The lanterns, suspended on iron hooks from mid-rafter, gave but a dusky light, and I vainly scanned many faces for Eric Hamilton.
To finish the picture, you have only to imagine a dozen more ragged, raw-boned Scotchmen, sitting on the bare rocks around the piper, knitting stockings to send to England and America, where they can afford to wear them. Such is Scotia, old and new, whose sons are remarkable for their inveterate hatred of the Americans, as we shall see in the course of this narrative.
That is to say, the action has no deeper significance than any other actual warfare; it has not been, and could not have been, shaped to any symbolic purpose. Long before Tasso and Camoens and Ercilla, two Scotchmen had attempted to put patriotism into epic form; Barbour had written his Bruce and Blind Harry his Wallace.
When they were ordered to return to the British trenches, those who remained able to make the attempt found it quite as dangerous as trying to go forward. That afternoon the Black Watch and the First Cameronians charged where the Sussex and Northamptons had been repulsed, but the Scotchmen had but little more success.
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