Glencoe Ghosts

Mountains, snow-swept mountains of Arctic grandeur Where no sweet bird finds rest in Winter’s thrall Your streams should run with blood for a thousand aeons You watched and did not hinder Clan Donald’s fall Glenlyon’s Argyll men, to the glen came trekking Like red-backed hounds to seek MacIain’s lair Where were your blizzards then, that could have saved him? Your corries turned a hiding place to a bier Buachaille Etive Mor of the Glen of Weeping Were you deaf to your dying children’s cries? Why could you not have blocked the Devil’s staircase Or opened the Sgur-mam-Fiann where Fingal lies? Mountains, snow swept mountains of Arctic grandeur Where ghostly wraiths of the murdered families flit The wail of the caoineag still keens out a warning You care for the fate of mortals not a whit