Och hey! for the splendour of tartans!
And hey for the dirk and the targe!
The race that was hard as the Spartans
...
Dr. James Pittendrigh MacGillivray (1856 - 29 April 1938) was a prominent Scottish sculptor. He was born in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, the son of a sculptor, and studied under William Brodie and John Mossman. His works include public statues of Robert Burns in Irvine, Lord Byron in Aberdeen, the 3rd Marquess of Bute in Cardiff, John Knox in Edinburgh's St Giles Cathedral, and William Ewart Gladstone in Coates Crescent Gardens, Edinburgh. His work was influenced greatly by Pictish designs, and these are on display in Perth. He is sometimes linked with the Scottish Renaissance movement. Hugh MacDiarmid was amongst his admirers. Alloway village hall contains his sculpture of Robert Burns. MacGillivray also published two volumes of verse which draw on Doric dialect and earlier forms of Lowland Scots - Pro Patria in 1915 and Bog Myrtle and Peat Reek in 1922. He became a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1901 and was appointed the King's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1921. He was a Scottish nationalist, and was associated with Hugh MacDiarmid's Scottish Renaissance movement.)
The Return (A Piper's Vaunting)
Och hey! for the splendour of tartans!
And hey for the dirk and the targe!
The race that was hard as the Spartans
Shall return again to the charge:
Shall come back again to the heather,
Like eagles, with beak and with claws
To take and to scatter for ever
The Sasennach thieves and their laws.
Och, then, for the bonnet and feather!
The pipe and its vaunting clear:
Och, then, for the glens and the heather!
And all that the Gael holds dear.