It was nine o'clock before matters showed any progress. Then came
shouts from the road above us, the flash of torches, the tread of
men's feet in a quick, triumphant march. Then the stalwart figures of
the picturesque fellows, with their white kilts gleaming through the
darkness, came again into sight, seeming wilder and more imposing
in the alternating glare and gloom of the torches and the deepening
night. The man in tweeds was no longer visible. Our innkeeper
was alone in front. And all, as they marched, sang loudly a rude,
barbarous sort of chant, repeating it again and again; and the women
and children crowded out to meet the men, catching up the refrain in
shrill voices, till the whole air seemed full of it. And so martial
and inspiring was the rude tune that our feet began to beat in time
with it, and I felt the blood quicken in my veins. I have tried to
put the words of it into English, in a shape as rough, I fear, as the
rough original. Here it is:
"Ours is the land!
Death to the hand
That filches the land!
Dead is that hand,
Ours is the land!
Forever we hold it.
Dead's he that sold it!
Ours is the land.
Dead is the hand!"
Again and again they hurled forth the defiant words, until they
stopped at last opposite the inn, with one final, long-drawn shout of
savage triumph.
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