"Harry Lauder Quotes and Humor"

THE FIERY CROSS
(Dedicated to Harry Lauder)

He stood behind the footlights and he set the crowd a-laughing
With the same old crooning chuckle that we loved in other years,
And only those who knew could guess the grief behind the daffing
But for those that did, the laughter had a secret salt of tears.
Then at last he came out in his grass-green coat and bonnet
With his gaudy tartans coloured like a garden in the sun,
The same quaint little figure - but a different face was on it
When he sang about the laddies that so well had fought and won.

A face lined hard with furrows where the plough of pain had driven.
Blue eyes that now were shadow-set through many a sleepless night,
The face of one who more than life ungrudgingly had given
Who called on us to do as well--and, ah! we owned his right.
We saw him in the Fiery Cross of Scotland, charred and gory
And our spirit burned within us to the challenge that he gave,
For the player was a prophet as he spoke his people's glory,
"We're a wee land, and a puir land, but, by God above, we're brave."
 

"Please do not think for a moment that I take the liberty of reprinting these verses
because I agree with their all too flattering picture of myself at the time of which I am writing.
But they certainly represented the spirit in which I appeared before the American public in 1917.
The authoress signed herself "Amelia J. Burr," but I do not know her and never met her. Many
different people sent me copies of the New York Outlook in which the poem appeared and the mere fact that they did so showed that my efforts were being generally appreciated--and understood."

"Go on in a way you are going. Leave your lights burning behind you,
So that others coming after you may benefit thereby.
Perchance, your boy or girl, passing that way someday,
May point to a lamp you left and say, gratefully and with pride.
'My Dad left that light burning' "

"Let one Scot be attacked in a wilderness or on a cannibal island
and another will pop up from nowhere to his rescue."

"Humor"

"Only Appearance of

HARRY
LAUDER

     The Audience Will Join In
Singing The Hymn "Thank God,
From Whom All Blessings Flow"

Sir Harry Lauder told of an Old Scots lady who sat in the front row
at one of his shows, and listened to his entire comedy act without
a trace of a smile. Later she told a friend:

"Aye, aye! Yon's a grand wee comedian, Harry Lauder.
A had an awfy job tae keep frae laughlin' "

"and how they laughed, too, at my tale of a of the Englishwoman scrubbing
the floor of a Red Triangle hut at a base in France.

"Hi there!" she called out to a young soldier passing along the hut. "Bring
me some more water, will you?"

The young man stopped, looked down at the woman in astonishment and replied,
"My good person, I'm an officer. Dash it all, you can't address an officer like that."

Quick as lightning came the retort from the woman with the scrubbing brush
in her hand, "Dash it all, man, I'm a Duchess."

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