C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Ballad of ‘The Red Harlaw’
By Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)
T
The mackerel loves the wind,
But the oyster loves the dredging-sang,
For they come of a gentle kind.
And listen great and sma’,
And I will sing of Glenallan’s Earl
That fought on the red Harlaw.
And doun the Don and a’,
And hieland and lawland may mournfu’ be
For the sair field of Harlaw.
They hae bridled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse’s head,
And a good knight upon his back.
A mile but barely ten,
When Donald came branking down the brae
Wi’ twenty thousand men.
Their glaives were glancing clear,
The pibrochs rung frae side to side,
Would deafen ye to hear.
That Highland host to see.
“Now here a knight that’s stout and good
May prove a jeopardie:
That rides beside my reyne,—
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl the day,
And I were Roland Cheyne?
To fight were wondrous peril,—
What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne,
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl!”—
And ye were Roland Cheyne,
The spur should be in my horse’s side,
And the bridle upon his mane.
And we twice ten times ten,
Yet they hae but their tartan plaids,
And we are mail-clad men.
As through the moorland fern,—
Then ne’er let the gentle Norman blude
Grow cauld for Highland kerne.”
He turned him right and round again,
Said, Scorn na at my mither;
Light loves I may get mony a ane,
But minnie ne’er anither.