DRAKE'S DRUM

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2468, 22 May 1915, Page 3

DRAKE'S DRUM

AN INTERESTING LEGEND. Will Drake's drum lie beaten now for the third time? In tho great hall at Buckland Abbey, in Devonshire, a" few miles from Plymouth—the ancestral home of tlio family of Sir Francis Drake —there hangs an ancient drum of a pattern not known t'heso three hundred years. It i.t tlio famous drum of tlio groat English sea-fighter, his companion throughout his whole adventurous career. It beat the signals on his flagship when lie scattered the Spanish Armada; it went with him on the first British ship that went round tho world, and it sounded the taps when, after his death at sea in_ the West Indies, his body was committed to tho waters of tlio Atlantic Ocean. When Drake lay dying, so runs the tradition, ho commanded his brother, who was a captain of one of the ships in the British Fleet, to take his drum back to England, and hang it in his hall at Buckland Abbey. Whenever danger threatened Britain lot them sound on that drum, and his spirit would outer into the British Admiral and scatter his country's foes as ho had done, in the days gone by. His brother did as ho was commanded, and after three centuries the dnim still hangs at Buckland Abbey, which is now in the possession of a descendant of Drake's Brother. Twice, runs the legend, has the drum been sounded—and not in vain; once in tho generation after Drake's death, when: the Dutch sought to wrest the control of the seas from the British, and the doughty Admiral van Tramp sailed up the' British Channel with a groom at his masthead, to signify that he would sweep the English from tho ocean. At its sound tho spirit of Drake entered into Admiral Blake, who triumphed over t'he conquering Dutch. Again, whon tho genius of Napoleon threatened the vor.y existence of the British Empire, tho drum was sounded, and Drake's spirit animated the greatest of Englis'h sea-fighters—Ad-miral Nelson. And now, when Britain is involved in the greatest war of her history, it is said that Drake's • drum will again be sounded—to raise up, if the legend be true, the spirit of the old captain for, tho third time. The old tradition is the subject of a well-known poem by Professor Henry Newbolt. The poem makes the great- sea-fighter, dying in his berth, exclaim :— "Tako my drum to England, hang it by tho shore, Strike it when your powder's runnin' low; If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit tho port o' heaven An' drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago."