The book Arran; - Cook Clan

218 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
We ne'er shall tread the fancy-haunted valley,
Where 'tween the dark hills crept the small clear stream.
In arms around the patriarch banner rally,
Nor see the moon on royal tombstones gleam :
Chorus—Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are grand ;
But we are exiles from our fathers' land.
Where the bold kindred, in the time long vanish'd,
Conquer'd the soil and fortified the keep,
No seer foretold the children would be banish'd.
That a degenerate Lord might boast his sheep :
Chorus—Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are grand ;
But we are exiles from our fathers' land.
Come foreign rage— ^let Discord burst in slaughter !
—
O then for clansmen true, and stern claymore
The hearts that would have given their blood like water.
Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar :
Choi-US—Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are grand ;
But we are exiles from our fathers' land.
Of course the friend and the rowers and the Gaelic are all
feigning : the composition as it stands is the original and
the immediate occasion as we have seen. Fortunately, in
the excellent work of a descendant of one of the Sannox
emigrants, we are able to follow the fortunes of the exiles
in their new home.^
Ill
Saturday, April 25th, 1829, is a day to be marked in the
calendar of historic days at Lamlash. On the deck of the
brig Caledonia, 196 tons burden, that had called in the bay
while outward bound from Greenock to the St. Lawrence
River, were gathered twelve families of Arran folk, 86 all
told children and adults, the greater part of them from
Sannox, with whom the Rev. A. Mackay held a religious
1902.
' Annals of Megantic County, Quebec, by Dugald M'Kenzie M'Killop. Lynn, Mass. ,,
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