Scottish Quotations about Clan Spirit

Scotland, where the clan spirit survives where the servant tends to spend her life in the same service, a helpmeet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a pensioner; where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute of the pride of birth, but is, perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection
of her master’s, and at least knows the legend of her own family, and may count kinship with some illustrious dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth
generation.
R. L. Stevenson.

I like the inhabitants very well.
Dr. Johnson.

The heath waves wild upon her hills,
And foaming frae the fells,
Her fountains sing of freedom still,
As they dance down the dells.
And weel I lo’e the land, my lads,
That’s girded by the sea;
Then Scotland’s vales, and Scotland’s dales,
And Scotland’s hills for me!
I’ll drink a cup to Scotland yet
Wi’ a’ the honours three!

The thistle wags upon the fields,
Where Wallace bore his blade,
That gave her foemen’s dearest bluid
To dye her auld grey plaid;
And, looking to the lift, my lads,
He sang this doughty glee:
Auld Scotland’s right, and Scotland’s might,
And Scotland’s hills for me!
Then drink a cup to Scotland yet
Wi’ a’ the honours three!
H. S. Rriddel.

To those who know not the pipes, the feel of the bag in the oxter is a gaiety lost. The sweet round curve is like a girl’s waist; it is friendly and warm in the crook of the elbow and against a man’s side, and to press it is to bring laughing or tears. He jumped to his feet and took the
pipes from the old man’s hands, and over his shoulder with the drones. “Stand back, lad!” he cried to Gilian.
The march came fast to the chanter, the old tune, the fine tune that Kintail has heard before, when the wild men in their red tartan came over hill and moor; the tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it. The tune of the heroes, the tune of the pinelands and the broad straths, the tune that
the eagles of Loch Duich crack their beaks together
when they hear, and the crows of that countryside
would as soon listen to as the squeal of their babies.
“Well! mighty well!” said Paruig Dall. “You have the tartan of the clan in it.”
Neil Munro.

Sound the fife, and cry the slogan,
Let the pibroch shake the air
With its wild triumphal music

Worthy of the freight we bear.
Let the ancient hills of Scotland
Hear once more the battle-song
Swell within their glens and valleys
As the clansmen march along!
W. E. Aytoun.

And ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
Of lovers’ sleights, of ladies’ charms,
Of witches’ spells, of warriors’ arms;
Of patriot battles, won of old
By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold;
Of later fields of feud and fight,
When, pouring from their Highland height,
The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,
Had swept the scarlet ranks away.
While stretched at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each combat o’er,
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war displayed;
And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,
And still the scattered Southron fled before.
Sir Walter Scott.

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