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was there a scottish war literature? 

For Mackintosh, then, war held out the promise of sublime, character-forming
experience,and the addition of a Celtic perspective could not help but sharpen
and sweeten this promise. The way he consequently employs a Highland Scottish
sensibility to wring the last drops of poignancy from war’s tragedy can be seen
in a poem such as ‘Cha Till MacCruimein’ in which he draws, perhaps a little
opportunistically, on traditions of Highland fatalism and lamentation.^47 Written
in Bedford in February 1915, before he went out to France, the poem describes the
departure for the Front of the 4th Camerons:

And every lad in his heart was dreaming

Of honour and wealth to come,

And honour and noble pride were calling

To the tune of the pipes and drum;

But I was hearing a woman singing

On dark Dunvegan shore,

‘In battle or peace, with wealth or honour,

MacCrimmon comes no more.’^48

To suggest that he uses Highland traditions opportunistically is not to accuse
Mackintosh of mendacity or dishonesty. It is to suggest, rather, that he regards
that culture as a useful source of the literary tropes and attitudes within which he
can structure and articulate a deeply felt set of personal responses. He adopts a
Highland literary sensibility precisely because it has, since Romanticism, developed
such powerful, resonant mechanisms for evoking sublime mournfulness. It is a
trope that other writers of a Scottish background exploited, too. Hamish Mann’s
‘A Scotsman’s Reply to an Offer to Transfer to the R.W.F.’ was also written in 1915
in Bedford prior to its author’s departure for France:

O, I’m dreaming of a mountain-side where torrents leap and roar,

And the skirling of the pipes upon a barren, rocky shore,

Where the sad-faced Scottish lassies pray for lads they’ll see no more

In the 42nd Highlanders (Black Watch).

Yes, I’m longing for the heather moor, the murmur of the Tilt,

ThewildandruggedplaceswhereredHighlandblood’sbeenspilt.

So, if I must die fighting, I’ll die fighting in the kilt

Of the 42nd Highlanders (Black Watch).^49

What is perhaps more significant than this opportunistic adoption of a Highland
sensibility, however, is that it is only one of several sources upon which poets like
Mackintosh and Mann feel they can legitimately draw. Mackintosh, like so many of

(^47) This is a poem which Vera Brittain knew and valued, having been sent a copy ofAHighland
Regimentat Christmas 1917. See Vera Brittain,Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the
Years 1900–1925(London: Virago, 1978), 416.
(^48) Mackintosh, ‘Cha Till MacCruimein’, inA Highland Regiment, 16.
(^49) Hamish Mann, ‘A Scotsman’s Reply to an Offer to Transfer to the R.W.F.’, inA Subaltern’s
Musings, 26.