A Bitter Wind
A poem about Culloden Battlefield today and the effects of the subsequent highland clearances.
And so, t’is a bitter wind that blows
around Drumossie.
A plaintive crow that lends a single voice
piercing guilty silence.
The moss itself, whispers among the slanted stones,
footsteps sinking into sacrifice.
Distant, calm blue firth betrays the battle-yells
awake forever on the breeze.
Over heathered moors, ruined cottages
stand sentinel to different times;
The Rowan, redundant now.
Red berries speak of spilled blood
and failure to protect hearth and home
from supernatural but more so,
corporeal…
A weeping wound with no stopping;
Engrained on Highlanders for all time,
the ghostly call of the empty glens
echoes down the ages.
Alison, You nailed this okay. Terrible times indeed. I visited Culloden some time ago and was shocked to see how many of my namesake ancestors were buried there. It was a very moving experience…
Gerry x
Hi Gerry, I think that anywhere that has known a great tragedy, holds the memory in the ethers. I am sure you agree that the atmosphere is very different to normal. It is quiet and cold, bonechilling in fact. I was born and brought up just along the road in Nairn and the feeling I get never leaves me. I studied it at a further education couse at Edinburgh Uni. Here is an excerpt of a historical document of the time. The Lyon in Mourning. Forbes, Scottish History Society 1895- 6 “They at the time told me that they had… Read more »
Thanks for that extra info Alison. I remember walking round the burial grounds–it took us a long long time. Nobody seems to learn do they ?
gerry x
No sadly. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Alison X
Chilling and deeply sad at the same time. Excellent write, technique just about flawless. Kudos!
Thank you!!!
Alison x
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
So true Alison, also those who do not want to learn. Your poem tells of then and now but despite all the evidence we have to hope for ‘better’ in the future.
Oh and by the way, did I say, brilliant poetry.
Michael.
PS I cannot find the word ‘Clowen’ in my dictionary. Should I take it to be Cloven?
Hi Michael
It’s auld Scots so I think it would mean cleaven as in cleaved in two.
Just terrible to think of the savagery that followed the slaughter. Nobody spared from infants to the elderly.
What is it about humans that they keep killing each other ?
Thanks for your kind comment.
Alison X
Alison, you captured the feel of the place and its history. I have visited a few times and it’s a chilling, atmospheric, and yes haunting is the word here, a haunting place…Leila x
Yes,Leila. I have gone there many times from being very young to now. In the old days there was only the memorial cairn to see and the Inverness road ran straight through the battlefield. The visitor’s center has grown so much and the road diverted…but no amount of materialism, can negate the deathly cold and haunting feeling that almost everybody experiences. It was not even so much the total slaughter of an exhausted and ill prepared army of willing Highlanders (and others) but the fact he (Butcher Cumberland) ordered “no quarter” given to anybody and that went on throughout the… Read more »
Read well and carried the horror of those Times – my paternal ancestors, the Mitchells, hailed from Aberdeen but fled to Wales to become miners and dray men. Mitch
Fancy that. Good for them. It was misery for everyone after the clearances.
Thanks Mitch.
Alison x