Summerdale
Someone's son from Caithness
Was slaughtered at the start -
No sorry slub for this corpse,
Splendid stiffening symbol of Scottish pride.
Thirty sons of Caithness sighed their last sighs
In the first onslaught at Summerdale.
An Orkney peasant paced home,
Practising pomp yet pale beneath the panache
Snatched from a Caithness corpse
On open heath by Orphir's hills -
While four times thirty others died
In the retreat from Summerdale.
Memories of sadistic stories,
When she saw the stranger,
Aroused in a mother that malice
Reserved for prospective predators
Closing in on her young -
She would stand firm and have her Summerdale.
And she resolved to rid her Tuskerbister territory
Of a desperate man,
Surely defeated at Summerdale.
With her heart menacing body and soul,
Becoming an alien component within herself,
She waited for the soldier of Summerdale.
Magnus Erlendsson use your saintly powers
On this hovel's earthen floor :
Breathe life into a son of Orkney
Stilled by a single blow from a stone-stuffed sock -
His mother took him for a Caithness mother's son
And he was the last to die at Summerdale.