The band of Gideon roam the sky,
The howling wind is their war-cry,
The thunder's roll is their trump's peal,
And the lightning's flash their vengeful steel.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
"The sword of the Lord and Gideon."

And men below rear temples high
And mock their God with reasons why,
And live in arrogance, sin and shame,
And rape their souls for the world's good name.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
"The sword of the Lord and Gideon."

The band of Gideon roam the sky
And view the earth with baleful eye;
In holy wrath they scourge the land
With earth-quake, storm and burning brand.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
"The sword of the Lord and Gideon."

The lightnings flash and the thunders roll,
And "Lord have mercy on my soul,"
Cry men as they fall on the stricken sod,
In agony searching for their God.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
"The sword of the Lord and Gideon."

And men repent and then forget
That heavenly wrath they ever met,
The band of Gideon yet will come
And strike their tongues of blasphemy dumb.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
"The sword of the Lord and Gideon."

To the wedding of Shon Maclean
Twenty pipers together
Came in the wind and the rain
Playing across the heather;
Backward their ribbons flew
Blast upon blast they blew
Each clad in tartan new,
Bonnet and blackcock feather;
And every piper was fou,
Twenty pipers together!

At the wedding of Shon Maclean
They blew with lungs of leather,
And blythesome was the strain
Those pipers played together!
Moist with the mountain-dew,
Mighty of bone and thew,
Each with the bonnet of blue
Tartan and blackcock feather;
And every piper was fou,
Twenty pipers together!

At the wedding of Shon Maclean,
Twenty pipers together,
They blew with might and main,
Through wonderful lungs of leather!
Wild was the hullabaloo!
They stamped, they screamed, they crew!
Twenty strong blasts they blew,
Holding the heart in tether;
And every piper was fou,
Twenty pipers together!

The small stars twinkled over the heather,
As the pipers wandered away together
But one by one on the journey dropt,
Clutching his pipes, and there he stopt!
One by one on the dark hillside
Each faint blast of the bagpipes died,
Amid the wind and the rain!
And the twenty pipers at break of day
In twenty different bogholes lay,
Serenely sleeping upon their way
From the wedding of Shon Maclean.