PRIVATE ALEXANDER MCCRIMMON
AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
16TH SEPTEMBER 1917 AGE 46
BURIED: HOOGE CRATER CEMETERY, BELGIUM
The Gaelic translates as 'he will not return until the great day of doom and burning', the Last Day, the Day of Judgement . You would be forgiven for assuming that this was a quote from a hymn, but it isn't. The lines come from the chorus of MacCrimmon's Lament, a lament for a piper from the Isle of Skye killed in the 1745 Rebellion:
No more, no more, no more returning,
In peace nor in war is he returning;
Till dawns the great day of doom and burning,
MacCrimmon is home no more returning.
Alexander McCrimmon came from Skye; he was born there in 1871. This is not to say that he was related to the MacCrimmons of the lament who for three hundred years, 1500 to 1800, had been hereditary pipers to the Clan MacLeod. But nor is there anything to say he wasn't. His father, Donald, was a shepherd. In the 1891 census, Alexander was a groom in Snizort; in 1901 a fisherman in Minginish. In 1910, at the age of 39, he left Skye and emigrated to Australia where he worked as a station hand.
McCrimmon enlisted on 15 January 1917, embarking for Britain on 10 February with the reinforcements for the 1st Battalion Australian Infantry. By 31 May he was in France. On 16 September the battalion went into the trenches at Hooge; McCrimmon was killed that day. The war diary gives a detailed description of the day's activities, remarking on the intermittent shelling but not mentioning any casualties.
One of McCrimmon's brothers, also living in Australia, chose his inscription, nor was he the only Scottish soldier to have it as his epitaph. It was a haunting phrase for the Scots, even without any Skye or MacCrimmon connections, and one that became even better known as a result of a poem by Ewart Alan Mackintosh, who was killed in action in November 1917, 'Cha Till Maccruimein'. This is the last verse:
And there in the front of the men were marching
With feet that made no mark,
The old grey ghosts of the ancient fighters
Come back again from the dark;
And in front of them all MacCrimmon piping
A weary tune and sore,
"On gathering day, for ever and ever,
MacCrimmon comes no more".