Mont-Saint-Jean Three Poems on Waterloo, in Scots

Mont-Saint-Jean
Three Poems on Waterloo, in Scots
———
Daniil Lazko
Tuapse · 4 June 2026
;
I · LYRICAL POEM
Afore the Guns
(The Nicht at Waterloo)
The rain cam doun on Mont-Saint-Jean,
On muddied rig an’ trampled grain;
We lay upon the cauld terrain,
      Nae fire, nae sang —
Just thunder hingin’, dull an’ plain,
      The hale nicht lang.

The campfires hissed an’ wadnae tak,
The smeek blew laigh, the licht grew black;
Ilk sodger hapt his sodden pack
      An’ socht some rest,
Wi’ Death himsel ahint his back,
      A silent guest.

Nae bugle skirled, nae piper played;
The horses stamped, the colours swayed;
An’ officers wha gied the trade
      O’ war its will
Stuid quiet, as if their hearts had prayed,
      An’ thocht lay still.

For this is whit nae sang can tell:
The waitin’ is its ain dark hell.
Tae thole the oors, tae ken the knell
      Maun shune be rung,
An’ staun unmuved when terror fell —
      That sang’s nae sung.

The general passed the surgeons’ licht
Whaur saws an’ lint were laid tae sicht,
An’ lang-scrubbed trestle-boords, weel dicht,
      Stuid bare an’ raw —
He kent wha’d fill them, come the nicht,
      Syne walked awa’.

Sae deemly, deemly creep’d the licht,
A grey, dreich endin’ tae the nicht;
The muir lay still, the men stuid ticht,
      Wi’ fearfu’ breath —
An’ a’ their courage, quiet an’ richt,
      Stuid face tae death.

An’ victory, when it cam at last,
Cam no wi’ trumpet, loud an’ fast,
But like a shadow ower the past,
      Baith won an’ sair —
A gloure o’ glory, dim’d an’ vast,
      An’ grief laid bare.

;
II · NARRATIVE MINI-POEM
The Horse-Hauder
My maister set me by a dyke:
“Haud thae twa beasts, whate’er the fyke;
whate’er ye hear, whate’er betide,
haud fast, an’ dinna leave their side.”

He didna lauch, he didna froon,
but laid ae haun upon my croun
a wee while — syne he turned his horse
an’ rade intae the cannon’s course.

The hale lang day I held them twa
while reek gaed by like driftin’ snaw,
an’ riderless, wi’ bluidy mane,
the chairgers cam, an’ cam again.

I grat for shame — I had nae pairt
whaur better men were rived apairt;
I held a horse, a coward’s chairge,
ahint the smeek, ahint the targe.

Syne, throu the reek, at fa’ o’ licht,
my maister cam, a’ cauld an’ white,
an’ drew his beast, an’ lootit doun,
an’ spak as saft as faain’ soun’:

“Guid lad,” he said, “ye’ve bidden lang.
The day is oors. Gae hame. Be strang.”
He smiled — I think he smiled — an’ syne
he turned, an’ left nae mark nor sign.

They tellt me, efter, in the toun:
a round-shot brocht my maister doun
at noon, stane-deid — lang, lang afore
yon shape cam by my dyke at fower.

I’m auld the noo. I canna tell
gin yon was him, or but mysel
an’ fear, that shapit in the reek
the face I socht. I daurna speak
for siccar. But the beasts — they kent:
they liftit heid, an’ stuid content,
an’ quaitit when the shape cam near,
as if their maister haudit here.
A horse’ll no mistak its ain.
Yon’s a’ I hae. I speir nae mair.

;
III · ANTIQUE / CLASSICAL POEM
The Field Remembers
Noo lang the road frae Brussels rins,
Whaur ance the Emperor’s hope begins
An’ ends amang the broken whins
      O’ Mont-Saint-Jean —
A field that neither loss nor wins
      Can mak again.

The winter sky hings cauld an’ wide
Abune the muir whaur thoosands died;
Nae trumpet sounds, nae banners ride,
      Nae cannon’s breath —
Just iron, ash, an’ rain, an’ tide
      O’ silent death.

The standards, tattered, trail’d an’ torn,
Lie laigh upon the trampled corn;
The eagles fell that gowden morn,
      The lilies tae —
An’ a’ the pomp that men had borne
      Is wede away.

Hou still it is, this hallowed grun,
Whaur a’ the deeds o’ war were dune;
The armies, broken in the sun,
      Lay doun their pride —
An’ Discipline, that iron nun,
      Stuid by their side.

The victor sits him doun, his lane,
Wi’ caunle, an’ the roll o’ slain;
The bells o’ triumph dirl an’ strain
      Abune the toun —
He reads the leet, an’ reads again,
      An’ lays it doun.

The years rin lang. The braird grows green.
The corn comes gowd whaur guns hae been;
the pleuch turns up, atween the sheen
      o’ blade an’ bane,
a sabre’s hilt, the haft worn clean
      as ony stane.

The fairmer kens nae ferly. Syne
he caulms the share, an’ hauds the line,
an’ lays it by tae prap a vine
      or weicht a vat;
the field gies bane an’ bluid an’ wine,
      an’ minds them nat.

;
Literary Analysis
This cycle approaches Waterloo not as spectacle but as endurance. Its governing conviction is stated plainly in the first poem — that the waiting before battle is its own dark hell — and everything that follows is shaped by the refusal to let triumph arrive cheaply. The three poems move through a single arc: anticipation, witness, and memory. Each is written in Scots, used lightly and for music rather than for costume, and each lets weather, mud, iron, and bone carry the moral weight that a lesser treatment would hand to rhetoric.
The opening lyric is built on the Standard Habbie, the six-line stanza (rhyming aaabab, with two short fourth and sixth lines) that Robert Burns made the native instrument of Scots verse. The form is intimate and song-like, and here it is turned to grave use: campfires that will not catch in the rain, men who sleep with death at their backs, officers standing silent “as if their hearts had prayed.” The poem’s sharpest stroke is deliberately physical rather than abstract — the general passing the surgeons’ lamplight, the long-scrubbed trestle-boards standing bare before a shot has been fired, and his wordless knowledge of who will fill them. The cost of command is shown as a gesture and a turning-away, never named as a sentiment. The stanza’s music owes its clarity and human warmth to Burns; its historical breadth and noble restraint owe something to Walter Scott.
The narrative poem is the cycle’s psychological centre, and its debt is to James Hogg. A groom is ordered to hold two horses and on no account to leave them; he holds them through the whole battle, ashamed of his safety while better men are torn apart. At dusk his master returns, speaks gently, and tells him the day is won — and only afterwards does the boy learn that the master was killed by a round-shot at noon, hours before the figure came to him through the smoke. The poem withholds any verdict. It does not decide whether the apparition was the dead man, or fear shaping a longed-for face out of the reek. Instead it offers a piece of evidence and falls silent: the horses lifted their heads and stood content as the shape drew near, and a horse will not mistake its own. The mystery is left open in Hogg’s manner, the supernatural neither asserted nor explained, and the reader is left holding the same uncertainty as the old man who tells the tale.
The third poem shifts into an antique, elegiac register — the field already half turned to memory. Its calm, monumental gravity is the note of Edwin Muir: torn standards on the trampled corn, the winter sky over the ground where thousands died, discipline standing like an iron nun beside the broken armies. The loneliness of command returns, now as image rather than statement: the victor alone with a candle and the roll of the slain while the bells of triumph strain over the town, reading the list and laying it down. The close refuses consolation in the manner of Hugh MacDiarmid, whose intellectual severity resists the comfort the subject seems to invite. Years pass; corn grows gold where the guns had been; the plough turns up a sabre’s hilt worn smooth as a stone, and the farmer, finding no marvel in it, lays it by to prop a vine or weight a vat. History here is not a judge who vindicates but an indifference so complete that the relic of glory becomes a casual tool, and the field gives back bone and blood and wine, and remembers them not. The buried sacrament — corn and vine, flesh and blood returned to the earth and taken up again by the living — carries the poem’s final meaning without a word of piety.
Taken together, the three poems are meant to stand as a small monument in verse: fierce, grave, and humane, rooted in Scots speech. The five currents beneath the surface — Burns’s music, Scott’s historical breadth, Hogg’s nocturnal unease, MacDiarmid’s stern intelligence, and Muir’s monumental calm — are felt rather than imitated. What the cycle finally argues is quiet: that the truest courage at Waterloo was often the patience to hold and to endure, that greatness carried isolation, and that victory, when it came, was real but never simple — baith won an’ sair.
;
Historical Note: The Scots at Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815, a few miles south of Brussels, where the Duke of Wellington’s Anglo-allied army held the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean against Napoleon’s last campaign. Torrential rain on the night of 17–18 June left the ground a sea of mud, and the sodden field delayed the French attack — the cold, wet, sleepless wait that opens this cycle is not invention but the literal condition of the army on the eve of the battle.
Scottish troops served in numbers out of all proportion to Scotland’s size. Two days before the main battle, at the crossroads of Quatre Bras on 16 June, the Highland regiments of the 5th Division — the 42nd (Black Watch), the 79th (Cameron Highlanders), and the 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) — stopped the French advance toward Brussels at a heavy price, the Camerons throwing back an infantry attack at bayonet point while taking severe losses from artillery and cavalry. By the time these battalions reached Waterloo they were already battered.
The episode that fixed the Scots in legend came at the height of the French infantry assault on Wellington’s centre. To relieve the hard-pressed line, Lord Uxbridge launched the heavy cavalry, and the Union Brigade — so named for its English, Irish, and Scottish regiments, the 1st (Royal) Dragoons, the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, and the 2nd North British Dragoons, the Scots Greys — charged through their own infantry and down the muddy slope into d’Erlon’s advancing columns. The famous painting of the charge shows horses at full gallop, but the reality was slower and grimmer: the broken ground and the press of men meant the Greys could manage little more than a heavy trot, and by some accounts walked their horses into the first contact. As the cavalry surged through the sunken road, men of the Gordon Highlanders are said to have seized the troopers’ stirrups to get at the enemy, the cry of “Scotland Forever!” among them — an image later immortalised in Lady Butler’s 1881 canvas of that name.
In the melee Sergeant Charles Ewart of the Scots Greys captured a French Imperial Eagle, one of only two taken by the Allies during the entire battle — a trophy that became the regiment’s lasting emblem. (The sources differ on which regiment’s eagle it was, the 45th or the 105th of the Line, a small uncertainty characteristic of accounts written in the chaos of the day.) The triumph was costly: the Union Brigade pressed too far, struck at the French guns, and was then cut to pieces by fresh French cavalry, its commander Sir William Ponsonby killed. This is the hard arithmetic beneath the cycle’s refusal of easy glory — the same charge that won the eagle destroyed the brigade as a fighting force within the hour.
More than four thousand British soldiers died in or soon after the battle, many of them Scots; the survivors earned the Waterloo Medal and came home as heroes. The bond forged that day endured: the Greys and the Gordons kept their link for more than a century — famously charging together again at St Quentin in 1914 — and continued to mark Waterloo Day each 18 June. It is from this history — the mud, the long wait, the patience of the squares, the glory bought with annihilation — that the present poems take their subject and their grief.
;
A Glossary of Scots
The following words appear in the poems. Spellings follow common literary Scots usage.
a’  all
abune  above
ahint  behind
ane / ain  one / own
atween  between
awa’  away
bane  bone
bidden  stayed, waited, endured
bluid / bluidy  blood / bloody
braird  the first green shoots of corn
caulms  calms, steadies
caunle  candle
chairge / chairgers  charge / chargers (war-horses)
cam  came
croun  crown (of the head)
daurna  dare not
deemly  dimly
dicht  wiped, cleaned, made ready
dinna / didna  do not / did not
dirl  to ring, vibrate, resound
doun  down
dreich  dreary, bleak, grey and wet
dyke  a wall or low embankment
efter  after
fa’  fall
faain’  falling
fairmer  farmer
fearfu’  fearful
ferly  a wonder, a marvel
froon  frown
fyke  fuss, trouble, commotion
gaed  went
gies  gives
gin  if, whether
gloure  a glow, a sullen light; a stare
gowd / gowden  gold / golden
grat  wept
grun  ground
guid  good
hae  have
haft  the handle or grip
hale  whole
hame  home
haud / hauds / haudit  hold / holds / held
haun  hand
hings  hangs
hapt  wrapped, covered
ilk  each, every
intae  into
kens / kent  knows / knew
knell  the toll of a bell, esp. for the dead
laigh  low
lane (his lane)  alone (by himself)
lauch  laugh
leet  a list, a roll
licht  light
lint  linen, lint for dressing wounds
lootit  bowed, stooped, bent down
maister  master
mak  make
maun  must
minds  remembers, heeds
mistak  mistake
muir  moor
nae / no  no / not
nat  not
nicht  night
noo  now
oors  hours
ower  over
pairt  part
pleuch  plough
prap  to prop, to support
quaitit  grew quiet, quieted
rade  rode
raw  raw
reek  smoke
rig  a ridge of ploughed ground
rin / rins  run / runs
rived  torn, wrenched apart
sair  sore; grievous, painful
share  ploughshare
shune  soon
siccar  sure, certain
skirled  shrieked, sounded shrilly (of pipes)
smeek  smoke, reek
snaw  snow
socht  sought
sodger  soldier
soun’  sound
spak  spoke
speir  to ask, to inquire
stane / stane-deid  stone / stone-dead
staun  stand
stuid  stood
syne  then, afterwards; ago
tae  to
targe  a shield; here, cover
tellt  told
thae  those
thocht  thought
thole  to endure, to bear, to suffer
ticht  tight; tense, taut
toun  town
trestle-boords  trestle-boards (the surgeons’ operating tables)
twa  two
unmuved  unmoved
vat  a large tub or vessel
wadnae  would not
wean  a child
wede away  carried off, taken away (by death)
wee  small, little
weicht  to weight, to weigh down
weel  well
wha  who
whaur  where
whins  gorse, furze
yett  a gate
yon  that, yonder
Daniil Lazko · Tuapse · 4 June 2026