David P.'s Blog
Uncle Jim, if you read this, can you please let me have the name of the author of this and the next poem, so that I may pay tribute to him/her?
To all of you, get ready for another, shorter poem tomorrow. It is less than half the length of the one you've just finished reading.
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Uncle Jim is featuring a lot in this blog, I've noticed, and so I'm showing here a photo which I came acroos yesterday while looking for something relevant to brighten these pages of too much text.
It's a wedding photo, as is pretty obvious, and it's Uncle Jim and Aunty Pat.
I'm very lucky in that because Mum was the eldest of a large family, and Jim the next-to-youngest, I have an uncle who is less than five years older than me.
And now to type in the second Scottish poem provided by Uncle Jim.
In seventeen hundred and seventy three upon a summer's day,
They boarded a brig called the Hector and silently sailed away
Away from the hills and their homeland, across the Atlantic sea,
To find in a far unknown land whatever their fate was to be.
From the shores of Loch Broom in emigrant gloom, they sought a new
world's hope,
Far from the greed of the owners, or death at the end of a rope.
Away from the killing and burning, and a proud people's slow decay,
To a new land beyond the horizon, beyond the Sassenachs' sway.
Two hundred souls from old Scotland, three thousand sea miles had
come,
Escaping the landlord's vengeance, the Redcoats'pipe and drum,
To wear the forbidden tartan and toast their banished king,
No longer afraid to be loyal or ashamed the old songs to sing.
Now they would stand in this New Found Land, led by their piper's
sound,
To make again a New Scotland in the Redman's hunting ground.
Two hundred souls of what had survived waded gladly to victors'shore
Toasting that day to be still alive, never thinking to ask for more.
With claymore and banner, with broadsword and dirk, with banner cum
bible in hand,
They came to Nova Scotia and to their promised land.
So another Scotland's story was that day begun, another Celtic victory,
another battle won.
With head held high under Canada's sky, the Scottish unfurled.
To signal the second coming on the edge of a brave new world.
But Highland heart and Albion pride, that into prayer and toil,
They reaped a Scottish harvest from Canada's virgin soil.