Note 101 — Chapter XIX · THE STORY OF THE LUCKNOW RESIDENCY.

The Jersey Times of December 10, 1857, contained what professed to be an extract of a letter from M. de Bannerol, a French physician in the service of Mussur Rajah, dated October 8, and published in Le Pays (Paris paper), giving an account of the feelings of the Christian women shut up within Lucknow just before their relief. It went on to state how Jessie Brown, a corporal’s wife, cheered the party in the depth of their terrors and despair, by starting up and declaring that, amidst the roar of the artillery, she caught the faint sound of the slogan of the approaching Highlanders, particularly that of the Macgregor, ‘the grandest of them a’!’ The soldiers intermitted firing to listen, but could hear nothing of the kind, and despair once more settled down upon the party. After a little interval, Jessie broke out once more with words of hope, referring to the sound of the Highland bagpipes, which the party at length acknowledged they heard; and then by one impulse, all fell on their knees, ‘and nothing was heard but the bursting sob and the voice of prayer.’ The tale has made so great an impression on the public mind, that we feel much reluctance in expressing our belief that it is either wholly a fiction, or only based slightly in fact. What excited our distrust from the first was the allusion to the slogans or war-cries of the respective clans—things which have had no practical existence for centuries, and which would manifestly be inappropriate in regiments composed of a miscellany of clansmen, not to speak of the large admixture of Lowlanders. We are assured that the story is looked upon in the best-informed quarters as purely a tale of the imagination.