Now, "Johnnie Cope" is one of the most magnificent sounds ever to issue from musical instruments. It is the Highlanders' war clarion, the tune that is played before battle, the wild music that is supposed to quicken the blood of the mountain man and freeze the foe in his tracks. It commemorates the day two-and-a-quarter centuries ago when the broadswords came whirling out of the mist at Prestonpans to fall on Major-General John Cope's redcoats and cut them to ribbons in something under five minutes. I once watched the Seaforths go in behind it against a Japanese-held village, and saw for the first time that phenomenon which you really can't appreciate until you have seen it – the unbelievable speed with which Highland troops can accelerate a slow, almost leisurely advance into an all-out charge. And I've heard it at military funerals, after "Lovat's Lament" or "Flowers of the Forest", and never failed to be moved by it. Well played, it is a savage, wonderful sound, unlike any other pipe march – this, probably, because it doesn't truly belong to the Army, but to the fighting tails of the old clansmen before the government had the sense to get them into uniforms.
—George MacDonald Fraser, "Johnnie Cope in the morning", in McAuslan in the Rough, 1974
