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McGilveray has been dead for over a hundred years, but there is a parish in Quebec where his tawny-haired descendants still live. They have the same sort of freckles on their faces as had their ancestor, the bandmaster of Anstruther’s regiment, and some of them have his taste for music, yet none of them speak his language or with his brogue, and the name of McGilveray has been gallicised to Magille.

In Pontiac, one of the Magilles, the fiddler of the parish, made the following verse in English as a tribute of admiration for an heroic deed of his ancestor, of which the Cure of the parish, the good M. Santonge, had told him:

“Piff! poem! ka-zoon, ka-zoon!
That is the way of the organ tune–
And the ships are safe that day!
Piff! poum! kazoon, kazoon!
And the Admiral light his pipe and say:
‘Bully for us, we are not kill!
Who is to make the organ play
Make it say zoon-kazoon?
You with the corunet come this way–
You are the man, Magillel
Piff! poum! kazoon, kazoon!'”

Now, this is the story of McGilveray the bandmaster of Anstruther’s regiment:

It was at the time of the taking of Quebec, the summer of 1759. The English army had lain at Montmorenci, at the Island of Orleans, and at Point Levis; the English fleet in the basin opposite the town, since June of that great year, attacking and retreating, bombarding and besieging, to no great purpose. For within the walls of the city, and on the shore of Beauport, protected by its mud flats–a splendid moat–the French more than held their own.

In all the hot months of that summer, when parishes were ravaged with fire and sword, and the heat was an excuse for almost any lapse of virtue, McGilveray had not been drunk once–not once. It was almost unnatural. Previous to that, McGilveray’s career had been chequered. No man had received so many punishments in the whole army, none had risen so superior to them as had he, none had ever been shielded from wrath present and to come as had this bandmaster of Anstruther’s regiment. He had no rivals for promotion in the regiment–perhaps that was one reason; he had a good temper and an overwhelming spirit of fun–perhaps that was another.

He was not remarkable to the vision–scarcely more than five feet four; with an eye like a gimlet, red hair tied in a queue, a big mouth, and a chest thrown out like the breast of a partridge–as fine a figure of a man in miniature as you should see. When intoxicated, his tongue rapped out fun and fury like a triphammer. Alert-minded drunk or sober, drunk, he was lightning-tongued, and he could play as well drunk as sober, too; but more than once a sympathetic officer altered the tactics that McGilveray might not be compelled to march, and so expose his condition. Standing still he was quite fit for duty. He never got really drunk “at the top.” His brain was always clear, no matter how useless were his legs.

But the wonderful thing was that for six months McGilveray’s legs were as steady as his head was right. At first the regiment was unbelieving, and his resolution to drink no more was scoffed at in the non-com mess. He stuck to it, however, and then the cause was searched for–and not found. He had not turned religious, he was not fanatical, he was of sound mind–what was it? When the sergeant-major suggested a woman, they howled him down, for they said McGilveray had not made love to women since the day of his weaning, and had drunk consistently all the time.

Yet it was a woman.

A fortnight or so after Wolfe’s army and Saunders’s fleet had sat down before Quebec, McGilveray, having been told by a sentry at Montmorenci where Anstruther’s regiment was camped, that a French girl on the other side of the stream had kissed her hand to him and sung across in laughing insolence: