| Title | Meeting At Ticonderoga |
| Description | Episode 40 |
| Message Text | Quiet, Please! Wyllis Cooper No. 40 “Meeting At Ticonderoga” MBS – WOR – Mon. March 15, 1948 – 9:30-10:00 PM EST REH – Mon. March 15, 1948 – 2:00-5:00 PM EST STUDIO 2 Mon. March 15, 1948 – 8:00-9:30 PM EST STUDIO 15 CHAPPELL: Quiet, please. (SEVEN SECONDS SILENCE) CHAPPELL: Quiet, please. (MUSIC … THEME … FADE FOR) ANNCR: The Mutual Broadcasting System presents “Quiet, Please!” which is written and directed y Wyllis Cooper, and which features Ernest Chappell. “Quiet, Please!” for tonight is called, “Meeting at Ticonderoga”. --- MENZIES: No, sir, they were not married. They never saw each other in life. I suppose they are buried in the same cemetery lot because each one of them is a legend in these parts. Jane McCrea, you’d think that Scots, wouldn’t you? I don’t know but there is a Scots flavour about the McCrea; and ye canna deny that his name is as Scots as claymore and sgean-subh. I dinna know so much about Miss McCrea, save that she was massacred by the Indians about the tome of Saratoga, which as ye know, is no so far away frae here. She was to have married an officer in Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne’s army that came down frae the north and that Benedict Arnold tore into ribbons, although Horatio Gates took the credit and laid the foundation for Benedict’s defection in later years. Miss McCrae was a famous beauty of the region, and they killed her and scalped her, and paraded her long tresses about, and it was the story of her barbarous death that stirred the people of the countryside to rally at Saratoga for one of the decisive battles of the world. But him – no, he was before that time. Me? No, I’m not from this town. I’m frae Ticonderoga. Ye’ve been there. Aye, so. Can ye read the inscription on his gravestone? “Here lyes the body of Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, Esquire; Major to the Old Highland Regiment, aged 55 years, who died the 17th of July 1758 of the wounds received at the attack of the retrenchments of Ticonderoga, or Carillon.” Yes, retrenchments, that’s what it says. Should be entrenchments, of course. But I suppose the village stone-cutter in those days wasna used to military terms. The Old Highland regiment that was the Black Watch, the oldest Highland regiment in the British Army; the 42nd Regiment of Foot, the bonnie lads that have worn the red hackle aboon their braid bonnets since 1795. And Duncan Campbell of Inverawe was its major under Lt-Colonel Francis Grant in 1758. And he, and many a good Highland laddie of the Black Watch, was killed at Ticonderoga! No that was before Ethan Allen’s time. The fort was just newly completed in the summer of 1758, and it was seventeen years before Ethan Allen took it away from a sick man and a garrison of twenty soldiers. Montcalm was in command at Ticonderoga that summer. Aye, the same man that Wolfe defeated at Quebec later. Abercromby was the British general. Yes, I know a good deal about it. I’m an old inhabitant of these parts. About Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, now. A good man. A thoughtful man, God-fearing, and good to all his fellows. It was his goodness that brought him to his death, so that he sleeps far away from the banks of the River Awe, with no descendant in all the world to mourn him. Have ye the time, then, and I’ll tell ye? Duncan Campbell had been casting up his accounts that night in the old hall of Inverawe House, and he sat alone on the night that was to seal his fate, all unknowing. Canna ye see him, friend, a great kindly, lonely man at an oaken table scratching away at his papers with his quill in the candle-light? And the shadows flickerin’ aboon his head in the bloom, pickin’ out tiny flashes o’ siller on the basket hilts of the braid claymores upon the wall? Canna ye see him start to his feet at the sound o’ someone knockin’, hammerin’ on the great door o’ lonely Inverawe House in the middle o’ the night? An’ pluckin’ up one o’ the little pistol they call Scots dags an’ stridin’ to the door in the dark to see what manner o’ man has come at this hour to cal upon the Laird o’ Inverawe? An’ unboltin’ the door an’ flingin’ it open to whatever should be outside? |
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| Ownership | Astro1 |
| Views | 1,078 views. Averaging 0 views per day. |
| Submission Date | Aug 15, 2003 |