Whether It Be
The Light-Haired Saxon From The South, Or The Dark-Haired, Sallow-Visaged
Celt From The Highlands,
Driven forth by the gaunt hand of famine, all
look back to Scotland as to "their country" - the mention of
Its name
kindles animation in the dim eye of age, and causes the bounding heart of
youth to leap with enthusiasm. It may be that the Scotch emigrant's only
remembrance is of the cold hut on the lone hill-side, where years wore
away in poverty and hunger, but to him it is the dearest spot of earth. It
may be that he has attained a competence in Canada, and that its fertile
soil produces crops which the heathery braes of Scotland would never
yield - no matter, it is yet his home! - it is the land where his fathers
sleep - it is the land of his birth; his dreams are of the "mountain and
the flood" - of lonely lochs and mountain-girded firths; and when the
purple light on a summer evening streams over the forest, he fancies that
the same beams are falling on Morven and the Cuchullins, and that the soft
sound pervading the air is the echo of the shepherd's pipe. To the latest
hour of his life he cherishes the idea of returning to some homestead by a
tumbling burnie. He never can bring himself to utter to his mountain land,
from the depths of his heart, the melancholy words, "Che til na tuille."
[Footnote: "We return no more."]
The Episcopal church was only two miles from us, but we were most
mercilessly jolted over a plank-road, where many of the planks had made a
descent into a sea of mud, on the depth of which I did not attempt to
speculate.
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