DRAKE'S DRUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 230, 8 March 1915, Page 6

DRAKE'S DRUM.

II.!. .lEI.I.ICOE FEAI! IT BEAT T ) VICTORY':

Will Drake's drum be now for the third time? 11l the. great hall at Bucklanil Abbey in Devonshire, a few miles from Plymouth—the ancestral home of the family of Sir I'rancU Drake -there hangs an ancient drum of a pattern not known these three hundred years. It is the famous drum of the great English sea fight er. his companion throughout his whole adventurous career. It beat the signals 011 his ilag-ship when he scattered the Spanish Armada; il went with him 011 the lirst British ship that went round the world, and it sounded the taps when, after his death, at sea ill tin.' West Indies, his body was committed to the waters of the Atlantic (leean.

When Drake lay dying, so runs the tradition, he commanded his brother, who, was :i captain of 011 c of the ships in the British I'leet, to take his drum back to England, and hang it in liis ball at Buekland Abbey. Whenever danger threatened Britain lit tlieni sound on that drum and his spirit would enter into the British admiral and scatter his country's foes as lie iiad done in the days gone by. His brother did e.s lie was command ed. and after three centuries the drum still hangs in Biicklaml Abbey, 'which i-i 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 the generation after Drake's death, when the Dutch sought to wrest the control of the sens from the British, ant the doughty Admiral von Tromp sailed up the Engii-h Channel with a broom at. his masthead, to signify that he would. <.ween the English from the, ocean. At its sound the spirit, of Drake enlcrid into Admiral Blake, win") triumphed over the ooiHjurrinft' Dutch. A.uaim wit en tin l of Xapoleon threatened tlu\ v«*rv existence of ilii l "British "Tmpiro, the drum was sounded, and Drake's spirit animated the of Kurdish soaJhihtcrs Admiral Xelson. And now, when ]ln(ain Is involved in Ihr ,iiivafi'<t war of her history, it is said that Drake's drum will asrain be >*onmled—-li> up. if tin l legend In l true, tli" spirit, of the old explain for the third lira l . The old iradii'ion is tin; subject- of a. poem by Henry NVwboit. The piw'iu makes the ureai <ea fighter dying in his • xi-Vmr. Take 111 v di'Min to Eiiehnd. hang et by the' sln.re. Strike el v.-liei! y,.m- powder's run--11 i 11' low: If the Dons Mjjhl Devon, I'll «,I,it the port 0' !,ea\e-i An* drum i' 1 e 111 o'i the Channel ~s W" drummed ihem long age.