Ruins of Chapel Cladh Langdale
'Twas not the beacon light of war
Nor yet the slogan cry
That chilled each heart and blanched each cheek
In the country of McKay
And made them march with weary feet
As men condemned to die.
Ah! had it been their country's foe
That they were called to brave
How loudly would the Piobroch sound
How proud their Bratach wave!
How joyfully each man would march
Tho' marching to his grave!
No! 'Twas a cruel sad behest
An alien chief’s command
Depriving them of house and home
Their country and their land
Dealing a death blow at their hearts
Bending the strong right hand.
Slowly and sadly down the glen
They took their weary way
The sun was shining overhead
Upon that sweet spring day
And earth was throbbing with the life
Of the great glad month of May.
The deer were browsing on the hills
They looked with wondering eye
The birds were singing their songs of praise
The smoke curled to the sky,
And the river added its gentle voice
To Nature's melody.
No human voice disturbed the calm
No answering smile was there
For men and women walked along
Mute pictures of despair
This was the last Sabbath
They would join in praise and prayer.
And men were there whose brows still bore
The trace of many scars
Who oft their vigil kept with death
Beneath the midnight stars,
Wherever their country needed men -
Brave men to fight their wars.
And grey haired women, tall and strong,
Erect and full of grace,
Most mothers of a noble clan
A brave and stalwart race,
And many a maiden young and fair,
With pallid, tear-stained face.
They meet upon the river's brink
By the Church so old and grey
They could not sit within its walls
Upon this sunny day:
The Heavens above would be their dome
And hear what they would say.
The preacher stood upon the bank
His face was pale and thin,
And as he looked upon his flock
His eyes with tears were dim.
And they awhile forgot their grief
And fondly looked at him.
His text, "Be faithful unto death,
And I will give to thee
A crown of life that will endure
To all Eternity."
And he pleaded God's dear promises
So rich, so full, so free.
Then said, "Ah! Friends, an evil day
Has come upon our glen
How sheep and deer are held of more
Account than living men.
It is a lawless law that yet
All nations will condemn.
I would not be a bolted knight
Nor yet a wealthy lord,
Nor would I for a coronet
Have said the fatal word,
That made a devastation worse
Than famine, fire or sword.
The path before each one of us
Is long and dark and steep
I go away a shepherd lone
Without a flock to keep,
And you without a shepherd go
My well beloved sheep.
But God, our Father, will not part
With one of us, I know,
Tho' in the cold, wide world our feet
May wander to and fro.
If we, like children cling to Him
With us He'll ever go.
"Farewell, my people, fare ye well,
We part to meet no more,
Until we meet before the throne
On God's Eternal shore,
Where parting will not break the heart;
Farewell for evermore."
He sat upon the low green turf,
His head with sorrow bowed,
Men sobbed upon their fathers' graves
And women wept aloud,
And there was not a tearless eye
In that heart-stricken crowd.
The tune of 'Martyrdom' was sung
By lips with anguish pale,
And, as it rose upon the breeze
It swelled into a wail,
And like a weird death coronach
It sounded in the vale.
Beannaicht gu robh gu sierruidh buan
Ainm glormhor uasal fein;
Lienadh a ghloir gach uile thir. - (Psalm 72. v.19)
Amen, agus Amen!
And echo lingering on the hills
Gave back the sad refrain.
Methinks there never yet was heard
Such a pathetic cry
As rose from that dear hallowed spot
Upon the deep blue sky;
'Twas the death wail of a broken clan
The noble clan McKay.
And e'er another Sabbath came
The people were no more
Within their glens, but they were strewn
Like rack upon the shore,
And the smoke of each burning house
Ascends to Heaven for ever more.
Poem Courtesy of Anne [Dolla] McKay Talmine
Please acknowledge if using else where
The text given and the psalm were those actually used - A short time after the burnings a crow built a nest in the deserted church.
Rev. Donald Sage wrote about the last Sabbath in Strathnaver before the burnings:-
"In Strathnaver we assembled, for the last time, at the place of Langdale, where I had frequently preached before, on a beautiful green sward overhung by Robert Gordon's antique, romantic little cottage on an eminence close beside us. The still-flowing waters of the Naver swept past us a few yards to the eastward.
The Sabbath morning was unusually fine, and mountain, hill, and dale, water and woodland, among which we had dwelt so long dwelt, and with which all our associations of 'home' and 'native land' were so fondly linked, appeared to unite their attractions to bid us farewell.
My preparations for the pulpit had always cost me much anxiety, but in view of this sore scene of parting, they caused me pain almost beyond endurance. I selected a text which had a pointed reference to the peculiarity of our circumstances, but my difficulty was how to restrain my feelings till I should illustrate and enforce the great truths which it involved with reference to eternity.
The service began. The very aspect of the congregation was itself a sermon, and a most impressive one. Old Achoul sat right opposite to me. As my eye fell upon his venerable countenance, bearing the impress of eighty- seven winters, I was deeply affected, and could scarcely articulate the psalm.
I preached and the people listened, but every sentence uttered and heard was in opposition to the tide of our natural feelings, which, setting in against us, mounted at every step of our progress higher and higher. At last all restraints were compelled to give way. The preacher ceased to speak, the people to listen.
All lifted up their voices and wept, mingling their tears together. It was indeed the place of parting, and the hour. The greater number parted never again to behold each other in the land of the living."
The ruins of Balaclava House Melness
Obituary of Annie McKay - Northern Times June 10, 1909.
Death of a Sutherlandshire bardess – News has just reached this country from New Zealand of the death of Miss Annie McKay, bardess to the Clan McKay Society, and authoress of "The Last Sabbath in Strathnaver" and other poems.
Miss McKay was born in the parish of Tongue, Sutherlandshire, sixty-eight years ago. Her early poetic efforts attracted the notice of Dr Mackintosh McKay, the biographer of Rob Don, and one of the best Celtic scholars of his day. Between herself and Mary McKellar, the Skye bardess, there was a life-long friendship and much mutual admiration.
After occupying positions in educational institutions in Pitlochry and Eastbourne, she emigrated to New Zealand, but there her harp seems to have been hung on the willow tree, for if she sang at all it was the sad song of the exile. Her poetic gifts were of a high order, and far removed from those of the ordinary rhymer.
Tuapeka Times, Volume XL, Issue 5584, 28 October 1908, Page 4
ORIGINAL POETRY
Dedicated to the memory of Miss Annie McKay, who died at the residence of her brother, John McKay, Tuapeka West, on the 14th of July, 1908, aged 65 years. She was a native of the Kyle of Tongue, Ben Loyal, in the Hioghlands of Scotland. She was an authoress of no mean order; kind, humane and generous to the core; an ardent lover of liberty and justice, with a hatred of oppression in every form. From her pen came many touching and sympathetic "poems on behalf of the poor crofters who were so inhumanly ground down by their merciless landlords who drove them from their homes, like sheep to the slaughter, to make way for the hunter and hound. Among the crofters the name of Miss Annie McKiay will ever be remembered for the way she exposed their heartless oppressors.
No more will the voice of the leal? hearted singer Be heard
when the lammies are seen on the hill;
No more through the glens the sweet muses will bring her
To sing of their grandeur by river and rill.
No more she will gaze on the highcrested mountains,
The slumbering lakes and their green studed isles,
Nor stray on the thanks of the clear silver fountains,
And sing the loved songs of her own native Kyles.
No more she will tell of the clansmen's devotion,
When Scotland unfurled her banner of war;
No more will she muse on the genius of Osian,
Nor list to the pibroch resounding afar.
No more she will hail the blue bonnet and feather
True "emblem of freedom, the tyrant to quell;
No more she will smile o'er the bloom of the heather,
The proud waving thistle, and bonnie blue bell.
No more she will sigh for tlie poor and neglected
Trampled and crushed by the lords of the earth
Nor weep o'er the heart-broken, helpless evicted
So cruelly forced from the land of their birth.
Her pen, like a dagger, stayed might and aggression,
Exposing what croiters had long to endure;
It brought down the landlords, condemned their oppression,
Triumphantly raising the down-trodden poor.
How silent the harp she once played in the evening,
Alone with the muses, her thoughts to control.
Sweet, sweet were her anthems, while twilight was waning
And nature was blending the song of the soul.
Far, far, from the Highlands fate doom'd her to wander
To flowry Zealandia, where in death she doth lie,
But the Bard of Ben Loyal the clans will remember
And honor the name of Miss Annie McKay.
Mrs E. Colville, Lawrence.
Local information on Annie McKay as provided by Alec George McKay
Annie McKay live with her parents at one time in Balaclava house - above Melness House on the track to Loch a Mhuilinn. She was courting a young man from the Tongue side. He used to row across the Kyle to visit her regularly, however, he was caught in a sudden squall one night and was drowned. Annie later moved to Edinburgh and then emigrated to New Zealand. It is said that she was heart broken at the death of her young man and never married as a result. She was a Bard to the Clan McKay and her most famous work is the above poem.
(Iain's Note - I have no documentary proof of any of the above, except for Annie's death notice in the Northern Times and Tuapeka Times which Alec George told me about. Balaclava House is listed in the Census of 1881 as an Institution - does anyone have any further information on why this should be? All that is shown on the 1878 OS map is a sheep fold - 4 acres - with what looks like a small building attached. Given that the battle of Balaclava took place on the 25th October 1854 and the first OS map is dated 1878 and it is not shown, and given that is listed in 1881,it all makes for an interesting puzzle. Does anyone know if any of Annie's poems were published?
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