By Trench and Trail in Song and Story

Is it not our bounden right
To uphold with all our might,
And with tongue and pen to fight
For our native Gaelic?

Guard the language known to Eve,
Ere the Serpent did deceive—
And the last one we believe,
Mellow, matchless Gaelic!

Pity the disloyal clown
Who will dwell awhile in Town,
And returning wear a frown
If he hears the Gaelic.

'Tis amusing to behold
Little misses ten years old,
When they leave the country fold
How they lose the Gaelic.

Some gay natives of the soil,
Cross "the line" a little while
And returning, deem it "style"
To deny the Gaelic.

Lads and lassies in their teens
Wearing airs of kings and queens—
Just a taste of Boston beans
Makes them lose their Gaelic!

They return with finer clothes,
Speaking "Yankee" through their nose!
That's the way the Gaelic goes—
Pop! goes the Gaelic.

Tho' the so-called "tony set"
Teach them quickly to forget,
They will all be loyal yet
To their mother Gaelic.

Then abjure such silly pride
Cast the ragged thing aside—
Let your mongrel "English" slide
Rather than the Gaelic.

What a dire calamity
And how lonesome we would be
If our honored Seannachie,
Failed to charm in Gaelic!

Better far the "mother tongue"—
Language in which mother sung
Long ago, when we were young—
Ever tender Gaelic!

Findlay's ever ready muse,
Stricken dumb, would soon refuse
People further to enthuse,
If he lost his Gaelic!

And Buchanan, how could he
Sell his soda or his tea
On this side of "Talamh a righ,"
If he lost his Gaelic?

Also Merchant Edward Mac
Would not sell so much tomac
If his stock was found to lack
Lusty Lewis Gaelic!

And Pennoyer, what would you
At the Gould post office do
When you'd hear from not a few
"Ca mar u ha u fean a diubh,"
If you lost your Gaelic?

Little Donald with the plaid
O'er his buirdly shoulder laid,
Would go dancing in the shade,
And his glory soon would fade
If he lost his Gaelic.

From O'Groat's to lands' end, too,
What would brother Scotsmen do—
All the loyal clansmen who
But a single language know,
If they lost their Gaelic?

What would then become of those
Poems grand, in rhyme or prose,
Which in stately measure flows
From "Beinn Oran's" spotless snows!
"Chaibar Faidth"—the best that grows—
"Fhir a baitha"—how he rows!
What, I ask, would happen those
If we lost the Gaelic?

Then uphold the magic tongue
Which through mystic Eden rung
When Creation still was young—
Language in which Adam sung
To his Eve, Earth's first love song;
When the morning stars were flung
Into space, where since they've clung—
Ancient, Glorious Gaelic!

Lofty is his habitation, peerless dweller of the skies—
Unafraid of all creation, where his rock-ribbed turrets rise;
There's a confidence unbounded hedging 'round his solitude
That should warn marauding mongrels with designs upon his brood!

O, the outlook from his aerie is a grand one, it is true—
Matchless beauty in the vistas which unfold before his view;
Might and right and wealth and glory that shall never know decline
Are his attributes to conquer ruthless robbers of the Rhine!

You invaded his dominions, sowing discord on the way;
Your besotted agents plotted to o'erthrow his mighty sway:
Using all the wiles of Willie on pacifist Bob and Pat,
Till some eaglets oversilly scarcely knew where they were at.

He was patient with your pirates since you first began to raid
And usurp his habitation to pursue your hell-born trade;
He was patient with your plotting till you piled the final straws
Which broke down his toleration—now, ye devils, mind his claws!

He looked on in consternation, scarce believing what he saw.
When you sank his ships in anger in defiance of all law:
Killing women and their children with a fiendishness unknown
Since the first bloodthirsty monster was misplaced upon a throne.

Now the eagle's wrath is burning, he is eager for the fray,
And the robbers who aroused him long will rue the bitter day
When he sweeps down from his aerie in the fury of his fire—
Sudden death will clutch the vitals of the victims of his ire!

Yea, the eagle's wings are spreading, nobly spreading to the breeze,
And their awful sweep shall bear him over land and over seas:
Men and money move in millions where those mighty pinions rest,
And God help misguided minions who have monkeyed with his nest!

Brave, determined northern neighbor, hold the "hills" so dearly won—
Hold the hills until the Eagle strikes with you to crush the Hun!
Courage! Allies, friends of freedom, in this war we're all akin—
Carry on! Old Glory's with you on the red road to Berlin!

The sun hath set and leaves the day, as when the soul hath left its clay,
The pale soft tints of twilight spread from east to west.
The evening breeze that fans my cheek with mellow cadence seems to speak,
Then sighing onward through the dusk it sinks to rest.

On nights like this my fancy strays, to loved ones lost in other days;
Whom gold had tempted to the sunset land afar;
Brave boys whose hopes of future wealth were blasted by thy power O Death,
Whose mandates wage on old and young a constant war.
Among the lads so kind and true, who sought the land of golden hue,
To meet amid its glittering hopes an early doom,
Was Lingwick's strongest, lealest man, the joy and pride of all his clan,
As brave a youth as ever graced a Compton home.

Dear comrade of my younger days, my muse is weak to sing thy praise,
But love is strong howe'er so feeble be my strain;
And though you're sleeping cold and still, on Flagstaff's distant pine-clad hill,
Fond memory often flits to thee across the plain.

I loved e'er childhood's days were passed: I'll love you on until the last;
E'en when the clouds of death approach I'll think of thee;
Oh, bitter fate! Oh, woeful hour! that cut thee down in manhood's power;
Thrice bitter if death's chains could bind eternally.

But blessed promise, hopeful friend, that tells us death is not the end,
That brighter prospects loom for all beyond the wave.
Oh, sing aloud the glad refrain, that friend with friend will meet again!
For love like this can ne'er be conquered by the grave.

What though the red men roam at will, from arid plain to cooler hill,
Regardless of the mounds that lie amid the groves:
What though our children find their graves with ghosts of long departed braves,
The spot is one the God of nature dearly loves.

In Arizona's distant land, where cyclones drift the heated sand,
And where the tall, majestic pine tree branches wave;
Where gaunt coyotes prowl for prey, through storm and calm, by night and day,
There in their midst there lies a lone, neglected grave.

Were eloquence immortal mine I'd sing of scenes the most sublime,
Of any nature ever lavished here below.
God's majesty seems here unfurled as elsewhere not in all the world,—
An earthly paradise o'erspread by heaven's glow.

How fitting that thy sun went down, so near the spot that wears earth's crown,—
The Colorado Canyon country, weird and dim;
No grander land beneath the skies in which to die, in which to rise;
And nature's God will care for all who sleep in Him.

What though, alas, fond earthly hopes are buried in yon western slopes,
And gentle mothers grieve for loved ones lying there:
Though maidens sigh with sad unrest, for lovers true who died out west;
The bitter heartache soon will cease and all be fair.

But Donald's manly voice still rings within our ears, and memory clings
To all the charms that marked his life while still below:
And often now our fancy's flight doth wing its journey to that night,
That marks his lonely death amid the mountain snow.

The prairie wolves of stealthy tread already seemed to scent the dead;
Their fitful howls were borne upon the midnight air;
The western world was wrapped in gloom, from sandy waste to heaven's dome,
When Donald closed his weary eyes and passed from care.

The air within the mountain camp was uncongenial, cold and damp:
And springtide gales were moaning dismally outside:
No loving hand was there to press his fevered brow with fond caress,
No gentle voice to whisper comfort when he died.

Dear Balloch Ban, thou'rt now at rest; thy sun went down far in the West.
Alas! no more to rise, until the Judgment Day;
No truer heart e'er ceased to beat, no braver soul O Death did greet,
Thy awful presence since the earth hath owned thy sway.

And now he sleeps beneath the sod, where grand old mountain pine trees nod
Their lofty plumes beneath the far-off, distant dome!
Oh, stranger, should you linger near, drop on this lonely grave a tear,
In memory of the boy that sleeps so far from home.

A lusty lad from Lewis,—
Bright gem from Britain's crown—
Assailed by Huns with gas and guns
In "No Man's Land" was down.

No power on earth can save him,
'Tis madness, then, to try;
Still to the deed sprang forth with speed
A balloch ban from Skye!

He volunteered to enter
That zone of certain death,
And unafraid went forth to aid,
While thousands held their breath.

Thru all that hell of fire
He sped like mountain deer—
On shell-torn ground his comrade found,
And bore him to the rear.

Their comrades gather 'round them
To do what mortals can:
But—cruel fate!—they found them
Beyond the help of man.

One whispers, "Da mar ha u?"
"Gla vadh," the friend replied;
Then rescuer and rescued
"Went over" side by side!

How marred the manly beauty!
Now torn by shot and shell—
Ye Huns have done your duty
And served your master well!

Poor bleeding, broken bodies
To mother earth consign—
The spirit of the laddies
Ye cannot more confine.

Over the top together—
Over the great gray host—
Homing like birds of freedom,
Back to their rock-bound coast.

Over the top together!
Out from the fighting list:
Home where the purple heather
Blooms in the Highland mist.

Sons of mothers returning—
Souls from the clod set free:
Back where the home guards, yearning,
Pray that their eyes might see—

See through the veil between them,
Though but a brief, brief glance,
Into the eyes of loved ones,
Dead on the fields of France!

Home where the curlew's calling
Notes that are wild and free!
Home, where the mist is falling
Into a storm-tossed sea.

Parents of brave, dead soldiers,
Dear sisters, sweethearts, wives,
Is there no balm in Gilead
For all the dear lost lives?

Yes, there's a balm in knowing
They died for you and me:
Their precious blood bestowing,
The price of liberty!

Dear lusty lad from Lewis:
Brave blue-eyed boy from Skye:
In this great war you show us
How bravely men can die!

I left my old home and my friends in the East,
Ambitious to better my fortunes, forsooth;
And seek amid scenes of the strenuous West,
The gold which had gilded the dreams of my youth.

But gold not alone, was the dochus mo chree
Which painted that faraway country so fair;
A lure more compelling was beckoning me—
The maiden I loved since my childhood was there!

I did what a man without money must do,
Just walked when the "brakies" were looking too sharp.
I sang when I felt in the humor, 'tis true—
When lonesome, like David I hung up my harp!

I envied the lot of the fellow inside,
Who traveled in comfort asleep or awake;
While I, of all comfort and slumber denied,
Was beating my way on the beam of a brake!

Thus onward I journeyed by night and by day,
Combating the problems of food and of rest—
Content as I traveled the wearisome way
To know I was nearing the wonderful West.

My pilgrimage, first uneventful and slow,
Changed color as Texas' vast reaches I struck.
Arizona the arid, and New Mexico—
Half hell and half heaven, were also my luck.

When tortured and weak by the heat of the sand,
And swollen my tongue and the water was done,
I wondered no more as I passed through the land
At the myriad bones bleaching white in the sun.

Yes, on as I plodded the limitless range,
In that land of hot sand and eternal clear skies,
How oft in my thirst did I long for a change
To my own native hills, where the watersprings rise!
O Compton beloved! what visions arose,
Of thy hills and dark vales and thy cold mountain streams!
And each fountain-like fuadhran[D] which bubbles and flows,
On the farm back at home in the land of my dreams!

Some tell me the beauty of Nature, abroad,
Surpasses in grandeur the country we boast—
They'd alter their views if they traversed the road
I wearily tramped on my way to the "Coast".

There may be a spot in some faraway clime
Where Nature in robes of perfection is dressed;
But give me her moods and her image sublime
As seen in the wild, woolly wastes of the West!

I slept with the red men who roam through that land—
Gaunt remnant that tells of the white man's abuse;
And often, although I could not understand,
Was I lulled by the soft clucking language they use.

We never took thought on occasions like these
Of the dangers which lurked as we lay on the ground—
Though the howl of coyote was borne past on the breeze,
And the rattlesnake coiled with an ominous sound!

Asleep 'neath the stars of that beautiful clime,
In the shadowy gloom that same mesa had cast,
Undisturbed in my slumbers, I'd dream of the time
When the long dreary miles still ahead would be passed.

Mysterious mesas! how ghostly ye loom!
How spectral and huge o'er the alkali waste;
The secrets of ages thy vastness entomb,
Are seemingly safe in thy mystical breast!

When shadows of even' crept over the land,
And mountains around me grew ghostly and grey,
The fringe of the foothills I anxiously scanned
For lithe, tawny forms ever prowling for prey.

Oft during my journey I fancied that rain
Fell cool from a cloud on my thirst-swollen lips;
Yet cloudless the sky o'er that quivering plain—
'Twas the last ray of hope undergoing eclipse!

At times would the lure of this mirage prevail,
Till, reason returning, I'd hasten me back;
For I knew the safe trail was to follow the rail
Gleaming hot in the sun on the Santa Fe track!

The phantoms of fever thus beckoned in vain,
Where better and stronger than I had been lost;
Though the hell of Mohave was scorching my brain,
I crossed it in safety and struck for the Coast.

O boundless Pacific! I deem it no loss
To flee to thy arms from the cactus and sand;
How sweet on thy deep, heaving bosom to toss
After parching so long in the alkali land!

I boarded a schooner that slopped in the bay—
A tub of a ship for Seattle outbound—
And up from old Frisco we wallowed our way
To lovely Seattle, the Queen of the Sound.

And there on a hill, in a beautiful spot,
Overlooking Lake Union's low murmuring wave,
The love of my youth, whom so long I had sought,
Alone among strangers I found—in her grave!

On Christmas night I sallied forth,
To the Red Mountain in the north;
The bright abode of men of worth
'Twixt here and heaven;
Where Finlay's stakes in mother earth
Are firmly driven.

I ambled up the village road,
Past many an Irishman's abode,
And carried quite a heavy load—
The most inside;
I faith sincerely thanked the code
The way was wide.

Here conscience loudly whispered, "Dhu,
How oft hath it been told to you,
The end that way would lead you to
Should you persist—
With soldiers of the ribbon blue
At once enlist."

I answered conscience, "give me peace,
The time of pledges draws apace,
When we must swear to shun the glass
And all its riot;
We've but a single week of grace
So let's enjoy it."

I followed up by Keenan's gate
Unto the "turn" where two ways meet,
Thence to the left the mountain street
Would guide me right,
Tho' for my life I could not see't,
Just in that light.

For where two highways ran before,
I saw a dozen tracks or more;
And which to take, I wasn't sure,
By either eye;
'Twas but a chance against a score,
And yet I'd try.

I started on with divers tacks,
And strove to reconcile the tracks
Which darted round, like jumping jacks,
Before my gaze;
'Twould take a dozen crowd a cacks
Their course to trace.

Had I big John's and Eddie's charts,
To tell me where the highway parts,
Reducing by their magic arts
Nineteen to two;
I would have from my heart of hearts
Poured blessings due.

Confusion worse confounded, gee!
On every track a horse I see,
And all alike it seems to me
As barley scones—
I vow, Pete Gagne's cavalry—
Proud, prancing roans!

Their bones were rattling in the cold
Like vales of which Ezekiel told!
A few indeed did seem too old
To nibble corn;
The colt among them all was foaled
Ere "Smoke" was born.

Ah! crippled, gaunt and wild-eyed steed,
Thy woes are great, your want is feed!
Reminds me of D. Bunker's breed
That gasps for breath;
Aye, one and all are built for speed—
To certain death!

I asked the leader of the band,
If he could tell, upon which hand,
The mountain turnpike pierced the land
Around those parts;
I'd shipped a sea, I told him, and
Had lost my charts.

"The left!" he answered with a yell;
"Tis easy, sir, your course to tell;
And that will lead you down to—well,
To "Robert's road."
Then straight away on yonder hill
Is "Smoke's" abode.

"The right hand road you must not take,
As that will lead to Moffat Lake,
Where Cookshire sportsmen saw "big snake"
Through Alden's glass.
And thots of serpents make me quake
From head to cass."

I gave my guide a social wink,
And started on, is cha ro blink,
Till my exuberance, I think,
Broke into song:
I said "good evening" to the "Mink,"
And passed along.

The air was keen, the night was bright,
And in the north that mystic light,
(In my exaggerated sight)
Was one to please;
The whole suggested yellow, white
Or greenish cheese!

I gained momentum down the ridge,
And jumped John Moggish's hump-backed bridge;
Then climbed the mountain, hedge by hedge,
Unto the crest.
And thought it there my privilege
To take a rest.

I could not find the mountain store
Which Channel mentioned in his leor,
My vision's better than before,
I really think:
Aye, C—— accounts for one or more—
And he don't drink.

But stores aside, I wandered on
To where the school house windows shone,
Altho' there seemed to me but one—
A dancing glare:
I thought the northern lights were on
The programme there.

And just within, O "hully gee!"
Is that a single Christmas tree,
Or is my vision still aglee?
For lack of breath—
A moving forest do I see
As saw Macbeth?

And better still the forest gleams
With all a youngster most esteems:
A greater crop, as groaning beams
Did there attest
Than Tupper saw in wildest dreams
Of wheat out West.

And bachelors (might they be fewer)!
I thought I'd see you single, sure,
But there they sit, at least a score,
On benches stuck;
Each one a wilted, lone wall flower
Awaiting pluck.

We pray you, O assultin Turk,
So noted for unholy work,
To send his devilship your clerk
Across the seas:
To drive our single men to kirk
With marriage fees.

Or send Armenians not yet dead
And take our bachelors instead;
Should you then hanker for their head
Just plant their hide:
And thus avoid that hellish dread
Infanticide!

Behold! I've reason now to stare!
For are there not two Finlays there—
And only one on earth I swear—
Come off my hat!
A worthier to fill a chair
Has never sat.

Red Mountain, thy neglect condone—
Within that "chair" your bard enthrone:
Instead of bread, don't give a stone
As others do—
Another Finlay like your own
You'll never know.

Sweet singer! may your mother tongue,
Embellished by thy gift of song,
Be ever heard the clans among
While print is read—
May future bards thy notes prolong
When thou art dead.

Thus on and on, while cycles roll,
May Gaelic—language of the soul—
Be heard in song from pole to pole,
From east to west,
Until the final tempests bowl
This earth to rest!

Concluding—I would humbly ask
All hypocrites to shun the task
Of shooting from behind a mask
Their fellow men—
And help us all to fling our flask
To Hinnom's glen!

We've heard the loud, despairing moan
Of sinners, reaping what they've sown,
In midnight fields with thistles grown
Where devils glean.
Yet let the first to cast a stone
Himself be clean.

No living mortal can invite
The gaze of creatures who delight
In showing spots upon the white
Which God hath gi'en.
Alas, alas, a little spite
Will find the stain.

But who's to judge? The serpent's there,
In every breast that breathes the air,
Though some with skill and acting rare
His form conceal;
While others full to view must wear
The squirming eel!