Cleft and battered, black with age,
Grim as Donald Gruamach’s whisker,
Which stood on end in battle rage
And made his foes flee all the brisker,
As they watched their kin pile high
In bloody dunes to ply the discard.Wine, song, story once made gay
Guests and bards and merry minstrels.
Above its melancholy bay
Now the ruin is lone, blissless.
It croons its tales of other years
To seals, mermaids and Blue Minchmen.Give me a stone from thy walls
My talisman aye to cherish,
Voices from ancestral halls
Of mighty heroes without blemish
Will speak from it, my heart to prime
That timely valour may not perish.Let it my love’s altar be
From which sines the mystic grail light
A path of gold across the sea,
Around the Isles a brighter daylight
Around Scotland it will shine
Banishing its sombre gray light.
(Blue Minchmen – mythical beings who are supposed to inhabit that stretch of water between Lewis and Skye).