“All hail, Macbeth! thou shalt be king hereafter.”--SHAKSPERE.
[Sidenote: OUR EARLIER DATA.]
It is, perhaps, not quite unworthy of remark, that not only is Cromarty
the sole district of the kingdom whose annals ascend into the obscure
ages of fable, but that the first passage of even its real history
derives its chief interest, not from its importance as a fact, but from
what may be termed its chance union with a sublime fiction of poetry.
Few, I daresay, have so much as dreamed of connecting either its name
or scenery with the genius of Shakspere, and yet they are linked to
one of the most powerful of his achievements as a poet, by the bonds
of a natural association. The very first incident of its true history
would have constituted, had the details been minutely preserved, the
early biography of the celebrated Macbeth; who, according to our
black-letter historians, makes his first appearance in public life as
Thane of Cromarty, and Maormor, or great man of Ross. But I am aware I
do not derive from the circumstance any right to become his biographer.
For though his character was probably formed at a time when he may
be regarded as the legitimate property of the provincial annalist,
no sooner is it exhibited in action than he is consigned over to the
chroniclers of the kingdom.
For the earlier facts of our history the evidence is rather
circumstantial than direct. We see it stamped on the face of the
country, or inscribed on our older obelisks, or sometimes disinterred
from out of hillocks of sand, or accumulations of moss; but very
rarely do we find it deposited in our archives. Let us examine it,
however, wherever it presents itself, and strive, should it seem at
all intelligible, to determine regarding its purport and amount. Not
more than sixty years ago a bank of blown sand, directly under the
northern Sutor, which had been heaped over the soil ages before, was
laid open by the winds of a stormy winter, when it was discovered that
the nucleus on which the hillock had originally formed, was composed of
the bones of various animals of the chase, and the horns of deer. It
is not much more than twelve years since there were dug up in the same
sandy tract two earthen urns, the one filled with ashes and fragments
of half-burned bones, the other with bits of a black bituminous-looking
stone, somewhat resembling jet, which had been fashioned into beads,
and little flat parallelograms, perforated edgewise, with four holes
apiece. Nothing could be ruder than the workmanship: the urns were
clumsily modelled by the hand, unassisted by a lathe; the ornaments,
rough and unpolished, and still bearing the marks of the tool,
resembled nothing of modern production, except, perhaps, the toys which
herd-boys sometimes amuse their leisure in forming with the knife.
We find remains such as these fraught with a more faithful evidence
regarding the early state of our country than the black-letter pages
of our chroniclers. They testify of a period when the chase formed,
perhaps, the sole employment of the few scattered inhabitants; and of
the practice, so prevalent among savages, of burying with their dead
friends whatever they most loved when alive. It may be further remarked
as a curious fact, and one from which we may infer that trinkets
wrought in so uncouth a style could have belonged to only the first
stage of society, that man’s inventive powers receive their earliest
impulses rather from his admiration of the beautiful, than his sense
of the useful. He displays a taste in ornament, and has learned to dye
his skin, and to tatoo it with rude figures of the sun and moon, before
he has become ingenious enough to discover that he stands in need of a
covering.
[Sidenote: THE FIONS OF KNOCK-FERRIL.]
There is a tradition of this part of the country which seems not a
great deal more modern than the urns or their ornaments, and which
bears the character of the savage nearly as distinctly impressed on it.
On the summit of Knock-Ferril, a steep hill which rises a few miles to
the west of Dingwall, there are the remains of one of those vitrified
forts which so puzzle and interest the antiquary; and which was
originally constructed, says tradition, by a gigantic tribe of _Fions_,
for the protection of their wives and children, when they themselves
were engaged in hunting. It chanced in one of their excursions that a
mean-spirited little fellow of the party, not much more than fifteen
feet in height, was so distanced by his more active brethren, that,
leaving them to follow out the chase, he returned home, and throwing
himself down, much fatigued, on the side of the eminence, fell fast
asleep. Garry, for so the unlucky hunter was called, was no favourite
with the women of the tribe;--he was spiritless and diminutive, and
ill-tempered; and as they could make little else of him that they
cared for, they converted him into the butt of many a teasing little
joke, and the sport of many a capricious humour. On seeing that he had
fallen asleep, they stole out to where he lay, and after fastening
his long hair with pegs to the grass, awakened him with their shouts
and laughter. He strove to extricate himself, but in vain; until at
length, infuriated by their gibes and the pain of his own exertions, he
wrenched up his head, leaving half his locks behind him, and, hurrying
after them, set fire to the stronghold into which they had rushed for
shelter. The flames rose till they mounted over the roof, and broke out
at every slit and opening; but Garry, unmoved by the shrieks and groans
of the sufferers within, held fast the door until all was silent; when
he fled into the remote Highlands, towards the west. The males of the
tribe, who had, meanwhile, been engaged in hunting on that part of the
northern Sutor which bears the name of the hill of Nigg, alarmed by the
vast column of smoke which they saw ascending from their dwelling,
came pressing on to the Firth of Cromarty, and leaping across on their
hunting-spears, they hurried home. But they arrived to find only a huge
pile of embers, fanned by the breeze, and amid which the very stones of
the building were sputtering and bubbling with the intense heat, like
the contents of a boiling caldron. Wild with rage and astonishment,
and yet collected enough to conclude that none but Garry could be
the author of a deed so barbarous, they tracked him into a nameless
Highland glen, which has ever since been known as Glen-_Garry_, and
there tore him to pieces. And as all the women of the tribe perished in
the flames, there was an end, when this forlorn and widowed generation
had passed away, to the whole race of the _Fions_. The next incident
of our history bears no other connexion to this story, than that it
belongs to a very early age, that of the Viking and Sea-King, and
that we owe our data regarding it, not to written records, but to an
interesting class of ancient remains, and to a doubtful and imperfect
tradition.
[Sidenote: THE KING’S SONS.]
In this age, says the tradition, the Maormor of Ross was married to a
daughter of the king of Denmark, and proved so barbarous a husband,
that her father, to whom she at length found the means of escape,
fitted out a fleet and army to avenge on him the cruelties inflicted
on her. Three of her brothers accompanied the expedition; but, on
nearing the Scottish coast, a terrible storm arose, in which almost
all the vessels of the fleet either foundered or were driven ashore,
and the three princes were drowned. The ledge of rock at which this
latter disaster is said to have taken place, still bears the name of
the King’s Sons; a magnificent cave which opens among the cliffs of
the neighbouring shore is still known as the King’s Cave; and a path
that winds to the summits of the precipices beside it, as the King’s
Path. The bodies of the princes, says the tradition, were interred,
one at Shandwick, one at Hilton, and one at Nigg; and the sculptured
obelisks of these places, three very curious pieces of antiquity, are
said to be monuments erected to their memory by their father. In no
part of Scotland do stones of this class so abound as on the shores of
the Moray Firth. And they have often attracted the notice and employed
the ingenuity of the antiquary; but it still appears somewhat doubtful
whether we are to regard them as of Celtic or of Scandinavian origin.
It may be remarked, however, that though their style of sculpture
resembles, in its general features, that exhibited in the ancient
crosses of Wales, which are unquestionably British, and though they are
described in a tradition current on the southern shore of the Moray
Firth, as monuments raised by the inhabitants on the expulsion of the
Danes, the amount of evidence seems to preponderate in the opposite
direction; when we consider that they are invariably found bordering
on the sea; that their design and workmanship display a degree of
taste and mechanical ability which the Celtæ of North Britain seem
never to have possessed; that the eastern shores of the German Ocean
abound in similar monuments, which, to a complexity of ornament not
more decidedly Runic, add the Runic inscription; and that the tradition
just related--which, wild as it may appear, can hardly be deemed less
authentic than the one opposed to it, seeing that it belongs to a
district still peopled by the old inhabitants of the country, whereas
the other seems restricted to the lowlands of Moray--assigns their
erection not to the natives, but to their rapacious and unwelcome
visitors, the Danes themselves. The reader may perhaps indulge me
in a few descriptive notices of the three stones connected with the
tradition; they all lie within six miles of Cromarty, and their
weathered and mossy planes, roughened with complicated tracery and
doubtful hieroglyphics, may be regarded as pages of provincial
history--as pages, however, which we must copy rather than translate.
May I not urge, besides, that men who have visited Egypt to examine
monuments not much more curious, have written folios on their return?
[Sidenote: THE OBELISKS OF EASTER ROSS.]
The obelisk at Hilton, though perhaps the most elegant of its class
in Scotland, is less known than any of the other two, and it has
fared more hardly. For, about two centuries ago, it was taken down by
some barbarous mason of Ross, who converted it into a tombstone, and,
erasing the neat mysterious hieroglyphics of one of the sides, engraved
on the place which they had occupied a rude shield and label, and the
following laughable inscription; no bad specimen, by the bye, of the
taste and judgment which could destroy so interesting a monument,
and of that fortuitous species of wit which lies within the reach of
accident, and of accident alone.
HE · THAT · LIVES · WEIL · DYES · WEIL · SAYS · SOLOMON · THE · WISE.
HEIR · LYES · ALEXANDER · DVFF · AND · HIS · THRIE · WIVES.
The side of the obelisk which the chisel has spared is surrounded by
a broad border, embossed in a style of ornament that would hardly
disgrace the frieze of an Athenian portico;--the centre is thickly
occupied by the figures of men, some on horseback, some afoot--of wild
and tame animals, musical instruments, and weapons of war and of the
chase. The stone of Shandwick is still standing,[4] and bears on the
side which corresponds to the obliterated surface of the other, the
figure of a large cross, composed of circular knobs wrought into an
involved and intricate species of fretwork, which seems formed by the
twisting of myriads of snakes. In the spaces on the sides of the shaft
there are two huge, clumsy-looking animals, the one resembling an
elephant, and the other a lion; over each of these a St. Andrew seems
leaning forward from his cross; and on the reverse of the obelisk the
sculpture represents processions, hunting-scenes, and combats. These,
however, are but meagre notices; the obelisk at Nigg I shall describe
more minutely as an average specimen of the class to which it belongs.
It stands in the parish burying-ground, beside the eastern gable of
the church; and bears on one of its sides, like the stone at Shandwick,
a large cross, which, it may be remarked, rather resembles that of the
Greek than of the Romish Church, and on the other a richly embossed
frame, enclosing, like the border of the obelisk at Hilton, the figures
of a crowded assemblage of men and animals. Beneath the arms of the
cross the surface is divided into four oblong compartments, and there
are three above--one on each side, which form complete squares, and one
a-top, which, like the pediment of a portico, is of a triangular shape.
In the lower angle of this upper compartment, two priest-like figures,
attired in long garments, and furnished each with a book, incline
forwards in the attitude of prayer; and in the centre between them
there is a circular cake or wafer, which a dove, descending from above,
holds in its bill. Two dogs seem starting towards the wafer from either
side; and directly under it there is a figure so much weathered, that
it may be deemed to represent, as fancy may determine, either a little
circular table, or the sacramental cup. A pictorial record cannot
be other than a doubtful one; and it is difficult to decide whether
the hieroglyphic of this department denotes the ghostly influence of
the priest in delivering the soul from the evils of an intermediate
state; for, at a slight expense of conjectural analogy, we may premise
that the mysterious dove descends in answer to the prayer of the two
kneeling figures, to deliver the little emblematical cake from the
“power of the dog;”--or, whether it may not represent a treaty of
peace between rival chiefs whose previous hostility may be symbolized
by the two fierce animals below, and their pacific intentions by the
bird above, and who ratify the contract by an oath, solemnized over the
book, the cup, and the wafer. A very few such explanations might tempt
one to quote the well-known story of the Professor of signs and the
Aberdeen butcher; the weight of the evidence, however, rests apparently
with those who adopt the last. We see the locks of the kneeling figures
curling upon their shoulders in unclerical profusion, unbroken by the
tonsure; while the presence of the two books, with the absence of any
written inscription, seems characteristic of the mutual memorial of
tribes, who, though not wholly illiterate, possess no common language
save the very doubtful language of symbol. If we hold further that the
stone is of Scandinavian origin--and it seems a rather difficult matter
to arrive at a different conclusion--we can hardly suppose that the
natives should have left unmutilated the monument of a people so little
beloved had they had no part in what it records, or no interest in its
preservation.
We pass to the other compartments;--some of these and the plane of
the cross are occupied by a species of fretwork exceedingly involved
and complicated, but formed, notwithstanding, on regular mathematical
figures. There are others which contain squares of elegantly arrayed
tracery, designed in a style which we can almost identify with that of
the border illuminations of our older manuscripts, or of the ornaments,
imitative of these, which occur in works printed during the reigns of
Elizabeth and James. But what seem the more curious compartments of
the stone are embossed into rows of circular knobs, covered over, as
if by basket-work, with the intricate foldings of myriads of snakes;
and which may be either deemed to allude to the serpent and apple of
the Fall--thus placed in no inapt neighbourhood to the cross; or to
symbolize (for even the knobs may be supposed to consist wholly of
serpents) that of which the serpent has ever been held emblematic, and
which we cannot regard as less appositely introduced--a complex wisdom,
or an incomprehensible eternity.
The hieroglyphics of the opposite side are in lower relief, and though
the various fretwork of the border is executed in a style of much
elegance, the whole seems to owe less to the care of the sculptor.
The centre is occupied by what, from its size, we must deem the chief
figure of the group--that of a man attired in long garments, caressing
a fawn; and directly fronting him, there are the figures of a lamb
and a harp. The whole is, perhaps, emblematical of peace, and may be
supposed to tell the same story with the upper hieroglyphic of the
reverse. In the space beneath there is the figure of a man furnished
with cymbals, which he seems clashing with much glee, and that of a
horse and its rider, surrounded by animals of the chase; while in
the upper part of the stone there are dogs, deer, an armed huntsman,
and, surmounting the whole, an eagle or raven. It may not be deemed
unworthy of remark, that the style of the more complex ornaments of
this stone very much resembles that which obtains in the sculptures
and tatooings of the New-Zealander. We see exhibited in both the same
intricate regularity of pattern, and almost similar combinations
of the same waving lines. And we are led to infer, that though the
rude Scandinavian of perhaps nine centuries ago had travelled a long
stage in advance of the New-Zealander of our own times, he had yet
his ideas of the beautiful cast in nearly the same mould. Is it not a
curious fact, that man, in his advances towards the just and graceful
in design, proceeds not from the simple to the complex, but from the
complex to the simple?
[Sidenote: DUNSKAITH.]
The slope of the northern Sutor which fronts the town of Cromarty,
terminates about a hundred and fifty feet above the level of the shore
in a precipitous declivity surmounted by a little green knoll, which
for the last six centuries has borne the name of Dunskaith (_i.e._ the
fort of mischief). And in its immediate vicinity there is a high-lying
farm, known all over the country as the farm of Castle-Craig. The
prospect from the edge of the eminence is one of the finest in the
kingdom. We may survey the entire Firth of Cromarty spread out before
us as in a map; the town, though on the opposite shore, seems so
completely under our view that we think of looking down into its
streets; and yet the distance is sufficient to conceal all but what
is pleasing in it. The eye, in travelling over the country beyond,
ascends delighted through the various regions of corn, and wood, and
moor, and then expatiates unfatigued amid a wilderness of blue-peaked
hills. And where the land terminates towards the east, we may see
the dark abrupt cliffs of the southern Sutor flinging their shadows
half-way across the opening, and distinguish among the lofty crags,
which rise to oppose them, the jagged and serrated shelves of the
Diamond-rock, a tall beetling precipice which once bore, if we may
trust to tradition, a wondrous gem in its forehead. Often, says the
legend, has the benighted boatman gazed from amid the darkness, as he
came rowing along the shore, on its clear beacon-like flame, which,
streaming from the rock, threw a long fiery strip athwart the water;
and the mariners of other countries have inquired whether the light
which they saw shining so high among the cliffs, right over their mast,
did not proceed from the shrine of some saint, or the cell of some
hermit. But like the carbuncle of the Ward-hill of Hoy, of which the
author of Waverley makes so poetical a use, “though it gleamed ruddy as
a furnace to them who viewed it from beneath, it ever became invisible
to him whose daring foot had scaled the precipices from whence it
darted its splendour.” I have been oftener than once interrogated on
the western coast of Scotland regarding the “Diamond-rock of Cromarty;”
and an old campaigner who fought under Abercromby has told me that he
has listened to the familiar story of its diamond amid the sand wastes
of Egypt. But the jewel has long since disappeared, and we see only
the rock. It used never to be seen, it is said, by day, nor could the
exact point which it occupied be ascertained; and on a certain luckless
occasion an ingenious ship-captain, determined on marking its place,
brought with him from England a few balls of chalk, and, charging
with this novel species of shot, took aim at it in the night-time
with one of his great guns. Ere he had fired, however, it vanished,
as if suddenly withdrawn by some guardian hand; and its place on the
rock has ever since remained as undistinguishable as the scaurs and
cliffs around it. And now the eye, after completing its circuit, rests
on the eminence of Dunskaith;--the site of a royal fortress erected
by William the Lion, to repress, says Lord Hailes in his Annals of
Scotland, the oft-recurring rebellions and disorders of Ross-shire.
We can still trace the moat of the citadel, and part of an outwork
which rises towards the hill; but the walls have sunk into low grassy
mounds, and the line of the outer moat has long since been effaced by
the plough. The disorders of Ross-shire seem to have outlived, by many
ages, the fortress raised to suppress them. I need hardly advert to a
story so well known as that of the robber of this province who nailed
horse-shoes to the feet of the poor widow who had threatened him with
the vengeance of James I., and who, with twelve of his followers, was
brought to Edinburgh by that monarch, to be horse-shoed in turn. Even
so late as the reign of James VI. the clans of Ross are classed among
the peculiarly obnoxious, in an Act for the punishment of theft, rief,
and oppression.
[Sidenote: THE URQUHARTS OF CROMARTY.]
Between the times of Macbeth and an age comparatively recent, there
occurs a wide chasm in the history of Cromarty. The Thane, magnified
by the atmosphere of poetry which surrounds him, towers like a giant
over the remoter brink of the gap, while, in apparent opposition to
every law of perspective, the people on its nearer edge seem diminished
into pigmies. And yet the Urquharts of Cromarty--though Sir Thomas, in
his zeal for their honour, has dealt by them as the poets of ancient
Greece did by the early history of their country--were a race of
ancient standing and of no little consideration. The editor of the
second edition of Sir Thomas’s _Jewel_, which was not published until
the first had been more than a hundred years out of print, states in
his advertisement that he had compared the genealogy of his author
with another genealogy of the family in possession of the Lord Lyon of
Scotland, and that from the reign of Alexander II. to that of Charles
I. he had found them perfectly to agree. The lands of the family
extended from the furthest point of the southern Sutor to the hill of
_Kinbeakie_ (_i.e._ end of the living), a tract which includes the
parishes of Cromarty, Kirkmichael, and Cullicuden; and, prior to the
imprisonment and exile of Sir Thomas, he was vested with the patronage
of the churches of these parishes, and the admiralty of the eastern
coast of Scotland, from Caithness to Inverness.
[Sidenote: WALLACE.]
The first of his ancestors, whose story receives some shadow of
confirmation from tradition, was a contemporary of Wallace and the
Bruce. When ejected from his castle, he is said to have regained it
from the English by a stratagem, and to have held it out with only
forty men for about seven years. “During that time,” says Sir Thomas,
“his lands were wasted and his woods burnt; and having nothing he
could properly call his own but the moat-hill of Cromarty, which he
maintained in defiance of all the efforts of the enemy, he was agnamed
_Gulielmus de monte alto_. At length,” continues the genealogist,
“he was relieved by Sir William Wallace, who raised the siege after
defeating the English in a little den or hollow about two miles from
the town.” Tradition, though silent respecting the siege, is more
explicit than Sir Thomas in her details of the battle.
Somewhat more than four miles to the south of Cromarty, and about the
middle of the mountainous ridge which, stretching from the Sutors to
the village of Rosemarkie, overhangs at the one edge the shores of
the Moray Firth, and sinks on the other into a broken moor, there
is a little wooded eminence. Like the ridge which it overtops, it
sweeps gradually towards the east until it terminates in an abrupt
precipice that overhangs the sea, and slopes upon the west into a
marshy hollow, known to the elderly people of the last age and a very
few of the present as _Wallace-slack_--_i.e._, ravine. The direct line
of communication with the southern districts, to travellers who cross
the Firth at the narrow strait of Ardersier, passes within a few yards
of the hollow. And when, some time during the wars of Edward, a strong
body of English troops were marching by this route to join another
strong body encamped in the peninsula of Easter Ross, this circumstance
is said to have pointed it out to Wallace as a fit place for forming an
ambuscade. From the eminence which overtops it, the spectator can look
down on a wide tract of country, while the ravine itself is concealed
by a flat tubercle of the moor, which to the traveller approaching
from the south or west, seems the base of the eminence. The stratagem
succeeded; the English, surprised and panic-struck, were defeated
with much slaughter, six hundred being left dead in the scene of the
attack; and the survivors, closely pursued and wholly unacquainted
with the country, fled towards the north along the ridge of hill which
terminates at the bay of Cromarty. From the top of the ridge the two
Sutors seem piled the one over the other, and so shut up the opening,
that the bay within assumes the appearance of a lake; and the English
deeming it such, pressed onward, in the hope that a continued tract
of land stretched between them and their countrymen on the opposite
shore. They were only undeceived when, on climbing the southern Sutor,
where it rises behind the town, they saw an arm of the sea more than
a mile in width, and skirted by abrupt and dizzy precipices, opening
before them. The spot is still pointed out where they made their final
stand; and a few shapeless hillocks, that may still be seen among the
trees, are said to have been raised above the bodies of those who fell;
while the fugitives, for they were soon beaten from this position, were
either driven over the neighbouring precipices, or perished amid the
waves of the Firth. Wallace, on another occasion, is said to have fled
for refuge to a cave of the Sutors; and his metrical historian, Blind
Harry, after narrating his exploits at St. Johnstone’s, Dunotter, and
Aberdeen, describes him as
“Raiding throw the North-land into playne,
Till at _Crummade_ fell Inglismen he’d slayne.”
Hamilton, in his modernized edition of the “Achievements,” renders the
_Crummade_ here Cromarty; and as shown by an ancient custom-house seal
or cocket (supposed to belong to the reign of Robert II.), now in the
Inverness Museum, the place was certainly designated of old by a word
of resembling sound--_Chrombhte_.
Of all the humbler poets of Scotland--and where is there a country with
more?--there is hardly one who has not sung in praise of Wallace. His
exploit, as recorded in the Jewel, connected with the tradition of the
cave, has been narrated by the muse of a provincial poet, who published
a volume of poems at Inverness about five years ago; and, in the lack
of less questionable materials for this part of my history, I avail
myself of his poem.
Thus ran the tale:--proud England’s host
Lay ’trench’d on Croma’s winding coast.
And rose the Urquhart’s towers beneath
Fierce shouts of wars, deep groans of death.
The Wallace heard;--from Moray’s shore
One little bark his warriors bore.
But died the breeze, and rose the day,
Ere gained that bark the destined bay;
When, lo! these rocks a quay supplied,
These yawning caves meet shades to hide.
Secure, where rank the nightshade grew,
And patter’d thick th’ unwholesome dew,
Patient of cold and gloom they lay,
Till eve’s last light had died away.
It died away;--in Croma’s hall
No flame glanced on the trophied wall,
Nor sound of mirth nor revel free
Was heard where joy had wont to be.
With day had ceased the siege’s din,
But still gaunt famine raged within.
In chamber lone, on weary bed,
That castle’s wounded lord was laid;
His woe-worn lady watch’d beside.
To pain devote, and grief, and gloom,
No taper cheer’d the darksome room;
Yet to the wounded chieftain’s sight
Strange shapes were there, and sheets of light
And oft he spoke, in jargon vain,
Of ruthless deed and tyrant reign,
For maddening fever fired his brain.
O hark! the warder’s rousing call--
“Rise, warriors, rise, and man the wall!”
Starts up the chief, but rack’d with pain,
And weak, he backward sinks again:
“O Heaven, they come!” the lady cries,
“The Southrons come, and Urquhart dies!”
Nay, ’tis not fever mocks his sight;
His broider’d couch is red with light;
In light his lady stands confest,
Her hand clasp’d on her heaving breast.
And hark; wild shouts assail the ear,
Loud and more loud, near and more near
They rise!--hark, frequent rings the blade,
On crested helm relentless laid;
Yells, groans, sharp sounds of smitten mail,
And war-cries load the midnight gale;
O hark! like Heaven’s own thunder high,
Swells o’er the rest one ceaseless cry,
Racking the dull cold ear of night,
“The Wallace wight!--the Wallace wight!”
Yes, gleams the sword of Wallace there,
Unused his country’s foes to spare;
Roars the red camp like funeral pyre,
One wild, wide, wasteful sea of fire;
Glow red the low-brow’d clouds of night,
The wooded hill is bathed in light,
Gleams wave, and field, and turret height.
Death’s vassals dog the spoiler’s horde,
Burns in their front th’ unsparing sword;
The fired camp casts its volumes o’er;
Behind spreads wide a skiffless shore;
Fire, flood, and sword, conspire to slay.
How sad shall rest morn’s early ray
On blacken’d strand, and crimson’d main,
On floods of gore, and hills of slain;
But bright its cheering beams shall fall
Where mirth whoops in the Urquharts’ Hall.
* * *
There occurs in our narrative another wide chasm, which extends from
the times of Wallace to the reign of James IV. Like the earlier gap,
however, it might be filled up by a recital of events, which, though
they belong properly to the history of the neighbouring districts,
must have affected in no slight degree the interests and passions of
the people of Cromarty. Among these we may reckon the descents on Ross
by the Lords of the Isles, which terminated in the battles of Harlaw
and Driemderfat, and that contest between the Macintoshes and Munros,
which took place in the same century at the village of Clachnaherry. I
might avail myself, too, on a similar principle, of the pilgrimage of
James IV. to the neighbouring chapel of St. Dothus, near Tain. But as
all these events have, like the story of Macbeth, been appropriated by
the historians of the kingdom, they are already familiar to the general
reader. In an after age, Cromarty, like Tain, was honoured by a visit
from royalty. I find it stated by Calderwood, that in the year 1589,
on the discovery of Huntly’s conspiracy, and the discomfiture of his
followers at the Bridge of Dee, James VI. rode to Aberdeen, ostensibly
with the intention of holding justice-courts on the delinquents;
but that, deputing the business of trial to certain judges whom he
instructed to act with a lenity which the historian condemns, he set
out on a hunting expedition to Cromarty, from which he returned after
an absence of about twenty days.
[Sidenote: THE FORAY OF THE CLANS.]
We find not a great deal less of the savage in the records of these
later times than in those of the darker periods which went before.
Life and property seem to have been hardly more secure, especially
in those hapless districts which, bordering on the Highlands, may be
regarded as constituting the battle-fields on which needy barbarism,
and the imperfectly-formed vanguard of a slowly advancing civilisation,
contended for the mastery. Early in the reign of James IV. the lands of
Cromarty were wasted by a combination of the neighbouring clans, headed
by Hucheon Rose of Kilravock, Macintosh of Macintosh, and Fraser of
Lovat; and so complete was the spoliation, that the entire property of
the inhabitants, to their very household furniture, was carried away.
Restitution was afterwards enforced by the Lords of Council. We find it
decreed in the _Acta Dominorum Concilii_ for 1492, that Hucheon Rose
of Kilravock do restore, content, and pay to Mr. Alexander Urquhart,
sheriff of Cromarty, and his tenants, the various items carried off by
him and his accomplices; viz., six hundred cows, one hundred horses,
one thousand sheep, four hundred goats, two hundred swine, and four
hundred bolls of victual. Kilravock is said to have conciliated the
justice-general on this occasion by resigning into his hands his
grand-daughter, the heiress of Calder, then a child; and her lands the
wily magistrate secured to his family by marrying her to one of his
sons.
[Sidenote: PATERHEMON.]
There lived in the succeeding reign a proprietor of Cromarty, who,
from the number of his children, received, says the genealogist, the
title, or agname, of Paterhemon. He had twenty-five sons who arrived
at manhood, and eleven daughters who ripened into women, and were
married. Seven of the sons lost their lives at the battle of Pinkie;
and there were some of the survivors who, settling in England, became
the founders of families which, in the days of the Commonwealth,
were possessed of considerable property and influence in Devonshire
and Cumberland. Tradition tells the story of Paterhemon somewhat
differently. His children, whom it diminishes to twenty, are described
as robust and very handsome men; and he is said to have lived in the
reign of Mary. On the visit of that princess to Inverness, and when,
according to Buchanan, the Frasers and Munros, two of the most warlike
clans of the country, were raised by their respective chieftains to
defend her against the designs of Huntly, the Urquhart is said also
to have marched to her assistance with a strong body of his vassals,
and accompanied by all his sons, mounted on white horses. At the
moment of his arrival Mary was engaged in reviewing the clans, and
surrounded by the chiefs and her officers. The venerable chieftain
rode up to her, and, dismounting with all the ease of a galliard of
five-and-twenty, presented to her, as his best gift, his little troup
of children. There is yet a third edition of the story:--About the
year 1652, one Richard Franck, a native of the sister kingdom, and as
devoted an angler as Isaac Walton himself, made the tour of Scotland,
and then published a book descriptive of what he had seen. His notice
of Cromarty is mostly summed up in a curious little anecdote of the
patriarch, which he probably derived from some tradition current at
the time of his visit. Sir Thomas he describes as his eldest son; and
the number of his children who arrived at maturity he has increased
to forty. “He had thirty sons and ten daughters,” says the tourist,
“standing at once before him, and not one natural child amongst them.”
Having attained the extreme verge of human life, he began to consider
himself as already dead; and in the exercise of an imagination, which
the genealogist seems to have inherited with his lands, he derived
comfort from the daily repetition of a kind of ceremony, ingenious
enough to challenge comparison with any rite of the Romish Church. For
every evening about sunset, being brought out in his couch to the base
of a tower of the castle, he was raised by pulleys, slowly and gently,
to the battlements; and the ascent he deemed emblematical of the
resurrection. Or to employ the graphic language of the tourist--“The
declining age of this venerable laird of Urquhart, for he had now
reached the utmost limit of life, invited him to contemplate mortality,
and to cruciate himself by fancying his cradle his sepulchre; therein,
therefore, was he lodged night after night, and hauled up by pulleys
to the roof of his house, approaching, as near as the summits of its
higher pinnacles would let him, to the beautiful battlements and
suburbs of heaven.”
I find I must devote one other chapter to the consideration of the
interesting remains which form almost the sole materials of this
earlier portion of my history. But the class of these to which I am
now about to turn, are to be found, not on the face of the country,
but locked up in the minds of the inhabitants. And they are falling
much more rapidly into decay--mouldering away in their hidden recesses,
like bodies of the dead; while others, which more resemble the green
mound and the monumental tablet, bid fair to abide the inquiry of
coming generations. Those vestiges of ancient superstition, which are
to be traced in the customs and manners of the common people, share in
a polite age a very different fate from those impressions of it, if
I may so express myself, which we find stamped upon matter. For when
the just and liberal opinions which originate with philosophers and
men of genius are diffused over a whole people, a modification of the
same good sense which leads the scholar to treasure up old beliefs
and usages, serves to emancipate the peasant from their influence or
observance.