fuadain, "Tigh'nn o
Ghriogair, Νο

NOTE.-I am not aware that the above melody has ever been printed. It is one of our most popular airs, and more than one bard has wedded words to it. The set above given is the one known to me, and I heard it in several parts of the Highlands. Mr Wm. Mackay, solicitor, Inverness, favours me with another version, which I subjoin, and which is the one commonly sung in his native Glen of Urquhart.-W. M‘K.

As an ardent student of military history, and particuliarly of that branch termed tactics, I have always taken a great interest in the discussions as to the relative power of the musket and bayonet, the sword and target.

This discussion necessarily embraces the military history of the Highlanders from the period when they alone in Great Britain continued the use of the broadsword and target.

The controversy as to the relative powers of the weapons raged with great fierceness in the United Service Journal a long time ago, and was partially renewed within these few years.

The case against the bayonet was originally maintained almost singlehanded by the late Lieutenant-General Mitchell, but if there was an overwhelmning amount of numbers and opinions against his views, yet facts and reasons seemed to me so clearly in his favour that from an ardent admirer of the weapon, I came to form rather a low estimate of its powers per se for hand-to-hand fighting.

There was nothing, however, in the whole course of the controversy brought forward to prove that if musketry were as destructive as it is formidable, or, in other words, that if musket bullets actually disabled as many men as they usually frighten, the bayonet might not still be the arm, par excellence, for close combat; for if adversaries, otherwise armed, were so completely brought to the ground that only a few scattered men remained alive, and in a condition to close, a compact and unbroken body of bayoneteers would, in all probability be able to give a good account of them, and it therefore would be no valid argument against the bayonet that its bearers suffered more in the act of cutting up their adversaries than they would have done had they been armed with a more efficient weapon. because all warlike experience has proved that in actual engagements even the best disciplined troops can never be relied on in the employment of two separate weapons, while the musket and bayonet quite admit of combined action, and may in this sense be termed the best hand-weapon.

The shaft admits of being formed into the most perfect hand missile ever yet devised, while the blade has the action of the lance or pike, which ranks in the first-class of weapons for close combat, and the butt forms a powerful club or bludgeon, which, although a primitive, is often a formidable instrument of war,

Y

On the other hand, it may be urged, with a slight modification of the old proverb, that although "Jack of all trades," it is only master of one. The shortness of the shaft or handle deprives it of the peculiar advantages of the pike, which delivers its thrust beyond the reach of any other weapon, while the arm of the blade, and its necessary outward curve, causes it to act at a great mechanical disadvantage in delivering its thrusts, and the form of the butt renders it unwieldy as a club.

Indeed, if an ill-balanced club, capable of holding a twisted pike-head at the narrow end, really forms the best hand-to-hand weapon possible, it seems difficult to imagine how such an invention could have escaped the science and ingenuity of the ancients.

The sword-bayonet, now so much in vogue, also is liable to the objection of being extremely ill-balanced, and acting at a mechanical disadvantage in consequence of its being fixed on the side of the handle. It is, besides, a species of weapon which does not seem to have recommended itself to the Greeks and Romans, who studiously rejected all two-handed weapons which require to be swung about, as they require too much room in their use to admit of properly combined action, and are very difficult to recover.

It is indeed a somewhat remarkable fact that the Greeks and Romans -the two greatest and most scientific military nations of antiquity-only used the single-handed cut and thrust sword and the spear for close combat in the most brilliant periods of their history.

Two-handed swords, axes, and all similar weapons, were only then employed by barbarians, or invented in the middle ages, when the true principles of discipline, and the science of combined action, had been greatly lost sight of, and individual prowess more relied on than was ever done by the warriors of Greece and Rome.

When discussing the relative merits of the bayonet, General Mitchell assumed, as a principle to be deduced from all previous experience, that the effect of musketry was slow, and that active, resolute, men, on open ground, might calculate on closing with their adversaries with comparatively small loss.

This position was in general overlooked by his opponents, or met by the assumption of what might be the case in future, when fearful destruction was anticipated from improved modes of manipulating Brown Bess.

Shortly after the introduction of the Enfield, an enthusiastic admirer of the new invention, a Colonel Wilberforce (I believe), traversed the country lecturing on the inefficiency of the poor old lady. In these lectures, the worthy Colonel completely demonstrated the correctness of General Mitchell's views, and, indeed, gave such lamentable accounts of the performances of the musket, as to render it astonishing that the weapon should be formidable to any one but an old wife.

The facts stated by Colonel Wilberforce were all, at least in their leading features, quite familiar to every student of modern military history, and it therefore seemed rather unaccountable to many such that they should have been hailed as novelties by admiring audiences.

But, in point of fact, even a less efficacious fire-arm than Brown Bess will always be formidable so long as human nature remains as it is, nor will all the lectures in the world deprive it of that character, for the hand fire-arm possesses, above all missiles, the power of inflicting inevitable death, and that is to human instinct, or cowardice, if the truth be stated, the most dreadful mode of encountering the grim King of Terrors.

An arrow, a bullet from a sling, round shot from artillery, and all analogous missiles, can be seen, and men fondly think they can be avoided or parried, and this supposition, although in action generally found to be a mistake, gives a moral courage to face such weapons, which totally fails when brought in contact with the inevitable destruction produced by grape shot, and even ill-aimed musketry-for although it may be demonstrated to troops that but very few of them will be hit, yet every individual knows he may be one of these unfortunate few.

It therefore becomes a most important question to determine how far it is possible discipline, high moral courage, patriotism, self devotion, love of vengeance, naturally good nerves, and all those other aids by which poor human nature is bolstered up to overcome the natural instinct of self-preservation, have enabled men to face the invisible foe lurking in a hand fire-arm.

In the solution, therefore, of this difficulty, the great desideratum appears to be to determine what are the best weapons with which men, who have so overcome dread and danger, can encounter each other in hand-to-hand combat, and what light can be thrown upon these questions by preceding history.

These are all problems of intense interest to the military student, but they are generally treated either as foregone conclusions, or as quite subordinate to the great and inexplicable mysteries of strategetical combinations, which apparently assume that human beings with immortal souls and variable nerves are to be moved to death and destructien like so many chess men, by the will of a player confessedly often far from skilful,

Regarding the solution of the problem, in so far as the effect of the newly discovered fire-arm is concerned, it must be observed that from the earliest period every improvement in fire-arms has been hailed as the "ne plus ultra" of perfection, and after another improvement has been discovered, the performances of its predecessor have been ridiculed and vilified. The original matchlock and firelock were considered as unspeakable advances upon the bow-the flintlock upon the firelock-the iron over the wooden ramrod-the percussion over the flintlock; and after the discovery of the Enfield, the whole weakness of the system was developed by the ridicule thrown upon all previous weapons, in the shape of the abuse heaped on Brown Bess.*

But in a few years it has been discovered that the Enfield is but a piece of an old gas pipe, and the Needle gun, Snider, Chassepot, and Henry Martini, have consigned it to contempt.

What, however, are the actual effects of the modern weapons with

*After the invention of the matchlock, it was actually declared by some writers that hand-to-hand fighting would become impossible.

reference to the solution of the problem, has not, as yet, been very definitely explained.

There is no doubt that the most appalling descriptions are given of withering volleys, and troops lying stretched on the ground in the order in which they were formed, and a new feature of horror has been added in the shape of fields whitened in a few minutes with cartridges, which would doubtless have made corpses of enemies had they only happened to hit; but at the same time there are stories of Garibaldi's volunteers, Souaves and Turcos, who, either from want of discipline or ammunition, have rushed forward and scattered their enemies at the point of the bayonet.

Now, to one ignorant of actual warfare, it certainly appears strange that the fact of men being destitute of discipline or ammunition should render them impervious to bullets, which would in other circumstances have struck them dead, and induces the suspicion that the destructive power of musketry has not yet reached such a point of perfection, as in every case to prevent active and determined men from trying the ancient conclusion of cold steel.

The most ardent admirer of hand-to-hand fighting must, however, admit that the mechanical advantages derived from the breech-loading and revolving system are such as to render it extremely probable that the wolf is now very fast approaching, and that the fire of musketry will speedily become so rapid, and so well directed, as to render it, in general, physically impossible for troops to close with each other. The only astonishing thing to a civilian is to see that some military writers object to breech-loaders, as inducing the men to fire too rapidly; but surely if there be a point of military duty which it is in the power of discipline to impart, it is that of learning troops to regulate their fire; and if it be alleged that when in action, they become so flurried as to fire without aim, that remark seems equally applicable to muzzle-loaders, and a rapid ill-directed fire must at least be more efficacious than a slow one equally ill-aimed.

Take it in any view, the muzzle-loading system is mechanically rude and imperfect, and it would be contrary to all experience to suppose that it can hold its ground against such a superior mechanical principle as that of breech-loading.

When so entire a change in tactics, as will be consequent on the introduction of rapid and fearful havoc by musketry, seems closely impending, it may not be altogether uninteresting to consider historically some of those instances in which the old-fashioned flintlock and bayonet sustained signal discomfiture.

Perhaps the most interesting to the British tactitian are the successes which the Highlanders obtained over regular infantry, when armed in the modern manner.

These successes are alluded to in various articles in the United Service Journal, and in one of which the writer very fairly, and I think correctly, admits that the Highlanders fought at such disadvantage at Culloden as not to render that a fair trial of arms, but at the same time he quotes a sentence from an old number of the Gentleman's Magazine in the following terms :