The Hector: Nova Scotia

In seventeen seventy three by Western Ross The Hector dropped its anchor off the land Where crofter-fishermen lived at a loss Two men professed their fate to understand Pagan and Witherspoon offered a berth Free passage to the far Canadian strand A farm, a year's provisions, fertile earth All this they promised to the Ross-shire men At last…a country that rewarded worth And so they came, from shieling and from glen Bringing their families to the waiting boat MacKays and Frasers from each cloudy Ben Grants, Chisholms, clad in torn plaid and coat McKenzies, Camerons and Pattersons McLeods, McLennans, owning scarce a groat Douglases, Murrays, Munroes Mathiesones And one lone piper playing a lament To kittle up the blood in Highland bones The old Dutch ship was leaky, creaky, spent And in this ailing tub they took to sea Enduring storms that cracked its masts and rent The straining sails. After this purgat'ry The children, Finlay, Angus, Janet, Kate Succumbed to smallpox, hunger, dysentery Folk lived by eating worms, mouldy oatcake Come into Nova Scotia at Pictou With eighteen dead. The Hector, two weeks late No cleared land waiting. Disillusion grew The forests, tall and frosty, winter near And no provisions, plans and hopes askew But they endured. Made of the past, a bier Put down new roots, these seeds of Highland sprays From this small offshoot, thousands flourish here In Nova Scotia's mighty, wooded ways Whose mist enfolds the ghosts of Gaelic lays