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Oh, in that moment of suspense and agonizing doubt, what would I not have given to know that Picton himself and the fighting Fifth were there; that behind that ridge the Greys, the Royals, and the Enniskilleners sat motionless, but burning to advance; and the breath of battle waved among the tartans of the Highlanders, and blew upon the flashing features of my own island countrymen.
"They hadna ridden a mile, a mile, A mile, but barely ten, When Donald came branking down the brae Wi' twenty thousand men. "Their tartans they were waving wide, Their glaives were glancing clear, Their pibrochs rung frae side to side, Would deafen ye to hear.
All about me, when the rain was gone for the last time, there was a cry of waters, the voices of the burns running into the lochans, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling merrily, and all out of key with a poor wretch in draggled tartans, fleeing he knew not whither, but going about in shortened circles like a hedgehog in the sea.
There was something of the mother at her heart, which prevented her from urging him in plain terms to take the field as a cateran, for the fear occurred of the perils into which the trade must conduct him; and when she would have spoken to him on the subject, it seemed to her heated imagination as if the ghost of her husband arose between them in his bloody tartans, and laying his finger on his lips, appeared to prohibit the topic.
I could not sleep for six weeks without starting and thinking I heard these terrible cries, and saw the bodies lying on the steps, all stiff and swathed up in their bloody tartans.
Plain colours were evidently unpopular and fancy tartans of the most flamboyant hues predominated amongst those who, during a spell of, say, three years had been fortunate enough not to lose a parent, sister, brother, uncle, or aunt. A perfectly natural reaction appeared to urge the ci-devant mourners to robe themselves in lively checks and tartans.
Flockhart, apparently no friend to his minstrelsy, was pleased to observe, 'garring the very stane-and-lime wa's dingle wi' his screeching. Of course, it soon became too powerful for Waverley's dream, with which it had at first rather harmonized. 'Winna yere honour bang up? Waverley sprang up, and, with Callum's assistance and instructions, adjusted his tartans in proper costume.
There was the same stem clash of the jaw, the same hard, determined frown in this, their lovely descendant, that confronted Plantagenet and his mailed legions on the plains by Stirling, that stiffened under the wan moonlight on Culloden Moor amongst broken claymores and riven targets, and tartans all stained to the deep-red hues of the Stuart with his clansmen's blood.
'Truly, said Fergus Mac-Ivor, 'I think it can only be the inspiration of the tartans; for, though Waverley be always a young fellow of sense and honour, I have hitherto often found him a very absent and inattentive companion. 'We are the more obliged to him, said the Prince, 'for having reserved for this evening qualities which even such intimate friends had not discovered.
We fear our fair friends will expect something gay from the above heading lamps and flambeaux outside, fiddlers, feathers, and flirters in. Nothing of the sort, fair ladies nothing of the sort. Lord Scamperdale 'at home' simply means that his lordship was not out hunting, that he had got his dirty boots and breeches off, and dry tweeds and tartans on.
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