Back to the poetry, and once more to Sorley MacLean. The poet served in North Africa in World War II, and these verses commemorate a fallen comrade in arms. This is MacLean's own translation of his Gaelic original, "Curaidhean" -

HEROES

I did not see Lannes at Ratisbon
nor MacLennan at Auldearn
nor Gillies MacBain at Culloden,
but I saw an Englishman in Egypt.

A poor little chap with chubby cheeks
and knees grinding each other,
pimply unattractive face -
garment of the bravest spirit.

He was not a hit 'in the pub
in the time of the fists being closed,'
but a lion against the breast of battle,
in the morose wounding showers.

His hour came with the shells,
with the notched iron splinters,
in the smoke and flame,
in the shaking and terror of the battlefield.

Word came to him in the bullet shower
that he should be a hero briskly,
and he was that while he lasted
but it wasn't much time he got.

He kept his guns to the tanks,
bucking with tearing crashing screech,
until he himself got, about the stomach,
that biff that put him to the ground,
mouth down in sand and gravel,
without a chirp from his ugly high-pitched voice.

No cross or medal was put to his
chest or to his name or to his family;
There were not many of his troop alive,
and if there were their word would not be strong.
And at any rate, if a battle post stands
many are knocked down because of him,
not expecting fame, not wanting a medal
or any froth from the mouth of the field of slaughter.

I saw a great warrior of England,
a poor manikin on whom no eye would rest;
no Alasdair of Glen Garry;
and he took a little weeping to my eyes.

Alasdair Ranaldson of Glengarry was the vainglorious coxcomb immortalised by Walter Scott as Fergus MacIvor in his novel "Waverley". In his poems "Two MacDonalds" Sorley compares Glengarry with his brother James, a hero at Waterloo. Of the former he writes -

"He cleared the tenants in Glengarry -
the few of them left-
and he cleared the tenants about Kinloch Nevis,
and he cleared the tenants in Knoydart.
...
He spoiled Clan Donald."

Which was not how the Tory snob Scott saw Glengarry.

Another poem by Sorley commemorates his fear cinnidh, John MacLean, the Red Clydesider. Again he uses the expression, battle-post (ursann-chatha), which I take to mean a brave, or perhaps a strong, champion and defender.

THE CLAN MACLEAN

Not they who died
in the hauteur of Inverkeithing
in spite of valour and pride
the high head of our story;
but he who was in Glasgow
the battle-post of the poor,
great John MacLean,
the top and hem of our story.