“EVERY man his boon companion, every man his maid,” they say in Argyll.
Somewhere in the wide world are both the man and the maid, but not always
do they come to your door. You may pass the maid at the market, never
thinking she was meant to mother your bairns, and her lot thereafter may
be over many hills, baking bannocks of oaten meal on another man’s
hearth—that’s your ill-fortune; the boon companion may wander by the
change-house where you sit drinking late—drinking late and waiting to
learn the very songs he knows, and he may never come that road again; but
whether that is good for you or ill is the most cunning of God’s secrets.
I could tell nine hundred tales and nine of boon companions who met the
friend they were meant for, but I have still to learn the art of seeing
the end from the beginning of any comradeship.
This particular and ancient history that I am telling is a story that is
to be heard on winter nights in the fir-wood bothies of Upper Loch Finne.
It is the story of an affair that happened in the wild year before the
beginning of the little wars of Lorn.
Colkitto Macdonald and his Irishry and the Athol clans came, as the world
knows, to Argyll, and carried the flambeau and the sword through every
glen in the country-side. Into our peaceable neighbourhood, so harmless,
so thriving and content, they marched on a winter’s end—wild bearded
fellows, ravenous at the eyes, lean as starved roebucks, cruel as the
Badenoch wolves. They put mother and child to the pike; the best men of
all our Gaelic people found the hero’s death when standing up against
these caterans, but uselessly. Carnus, Cladich, and Knapdale are thick
with green spots where Clan Diarmaid’s massacred people fell in the
troubles.
To that rich and beautiful country the spring of the year comes always
with vigour for the young heart. One feels the fumes of myrtle and fir
in the head like a strong wine. It is the season of longing and
exploits, and, if adventure is not in the way, the healthy young blood
will be stirred to love or manly comradeship. Then the eye is keenest
for the right girl, or (it may happen) the boon companion comes by the
right chance, and leads the one waiting for him into the highroads where
magic is at every corner, and old care is a carle to snap a finger at.
There are no meats so sappy, no drink so generous and hearty, no sleep so
sound as in that age and time.
It was in that season that the two men of my story met at a _ceilidh_, as
we call a night gossiping, in a tacksman’s house in Maam.
There had been singing of the true Gaelic songs and telling of Gaelic
stories. A fellow, Alan, sat in a dusky corner of the room with a girl,
Ealasaid, and they had little heed of song or story, but whispered the
sweet foolishnesses of their kind in a world of their own, till a man new
over from Cowal—Red John, by the byname—stood to his feet and sang a
Carrick ditty.
“I never heard better,” said Alan in the girl’s ear, for the new man and
his new song had cried them back to the company.
“Good enough, I’m not denying,” said she, “but he looks slack; you never
saw a man with a low lip so full and a laugh so round and ready who was
not given to wandering.”
“Where from?” asked young Alan, his eyes roving between the girl and the
man singing.
“From—oh! from good guidance,” said she, flushing; “from the plain ways
of his more common and orderly neighbours—from the day’s work.”
“The day’s work,” said Alan, “had no great hold on my fancy, and still
and on I’m not what one would call lazy. I wish, do you know, I could
sing yon jovial gentleman’s songs, and think life so humoursome as I’ll
warrant a man with that laugh finds it.”
He learned Red John’s best songs before summer-time, for Red John was his
boon companion.
They wandered, the pair of them, day after day and dusk after dusk, in
the way of good-fellowship, coming on many jovial adventures, gathering
curious songs, meeting free-handed folk and bits of good fortune. They
went many a time on the carouse of true comradery, and Alan, who should
be loving a girl, sat with this merry Cowal man in wayside ale-houses,
drinking starlight and the drug of the easy heart from earthen jars.
“Could you come to meet me to-morrow?” once asked Ealasaid, finding her
lover alone on his way to a new folly. She put a hand on his arm and
leaned up against his side.
“Where would we go?” he asked, tucking a loose lock of her hair behind
her ear, less for his love of trimness than to get some occupation for
his eyes.
“It used to be enough that it was with me when I asked before,” said
Ealasaid, staying his fingers; “but my cousin-german in Coillebhraid asks
us up to curds and cream.”
“John and I are promised at a wrestling in the town,” he said; “would the
next day—”
The girl drew her screen about her like one smitten by a cold wind.
“Alan, Alan! your worst friend!” said she.
“The decentest lad in the world; he quarrels with none.”
“For cowardice.”
“He understands me in every key.”
“So much the readier can he make you the fool.”
“He has taught me the finest songs.”
“To sing in the ale-house—a poor schooling, my dear!”
“I never before saw the jollity of living.”
“It’s no flattery to one Ealasaid; has he said aught of the seriousness
of death?”
Alan hummed the end of a verse and then laughed slyly.
“Lass,” said he, “does it make much differ that he thinks you the
handsomest girl in the parish?”
“I would sooner you yourself thought me the plainest, and yet had some
pleasure in my company.”
“Yesterday (on a glass), he said your eyes were the fullest, your hair
the yellowest, your step the lightest, your face the sweetest in all real
Argyll.”
“Then he’s the man who should be doing your courting,” said the girl,
with a bitterness; and she went home sore-hearted.
The days passed on birds’ feathers; the brackens coarsened in the gloomy
places of the forest; the young of bird and beast lost themselves in the
tangled richness of the field and wood. No rains came for many days, and
the sun, a gallant horseman, rode from hill to hill, feasting his eye on
the glens he saw too seldom.
In those hours the winds dozed upon the slimmest stem of heather; the
burns, that for ordinary tear down our braes, bragging loud to the lip,
hung back in friendly hollows under saugh-branch, rowan, and darach leaf;
“but a little sleep,” said they—“a little sleep, that we may finish a
dream we woke in the middle of,” and the grasshopper’s chirrup drowned
their prayer.
In their old fashion the glensfolk shifted for the time their homes to
the shielings high up on the hills, in the breasts of the corries where
are sappy levels that the heifers come to from the cropped glens like
misers to a gentleman’s table. While their cattle on the long day ends
tugged the crisp grasses, the people would come out of their bothies and
huts and sit in a company, above them the openings between the hills, the
silver dusk that never grew dark, and the prickle of stars. Then Red
John carried himself among the company like a chief, full of _bardachd_,
{295} of wit, of the most fairy music, so that even the girl whose lover
he borrowed gave him credit for a warlock’s charm.
It was not the genius of him, but the affable conduct and his gentleman’s
parts. A scamp, with duty near tugging at the cuff of his doublet, he
went dancing through life, regardless as a bird. Had you a grievance
against him?—he forgave you with a laugh, and took you by the elbow,
telling some gaiety in your ear. Your most sober mood fell before his
rallying like mist from the hillside in sun and breeze. Honest, true to
his word as to his friend, fond of a glass, fond of a lass: they called
him the boon friend of the shielings.
And wherever he went, this light-head, in humour and carelessness, Alan
walked faithful at his heels, nearer his heart than any foster-brother,
more and more learning his ways of idleness and diversion.
Ealasaid at last went to this Cowal fellow once complaining, with some
shame, for a Highland girl has small heed to speak of the heart’s
business to any man but one.
“I’m sorry, my dear, I’m sorry,” he said, with no pretence in the
vexation of his brow. “I tempt no one to folly, and surely I’m not to
blame for friendship to a lad so fine a woman can have the heart to think
the best of.”
“You are his blackest foe,” she said stormily.
“I’m foe to none, woman,” he cried, “except perhaps to a man they call
Red John, and the worst enemy ever I had was welcome to share the last
penny in my sporran. I have my weakness, I’ll allow, but my worst is
that my promise is better than my performance, and my most ill-judged
acts are well intended.”
“Blame yourself,” said Ealasaid.
“I blame nobody,” said he, laughing. “If other folk get such contentment
out of their good deeds as I get out of my good intentions, it’s no bad
world to spend a while in.”
“You’re like the weak man in the _ceilidh_ story,” pressed the girl.
“How?” quo’ he.
“Because you botch life,” said she. “Let a girl tell it you. And the
pity of it is you’ll do it to the end.”
At the worst of Ealasaid’s heart-break and the folly of Alan and his boon
companion, the men of Antrim and Athol came scouring over from Lorn into
the glens of MacCailein Mor. They found a country far from ready to meet
them, the leader himself from home, the sentinels sleeping, the forts
without tenants. It was a bitter winter, and those gentlemen of Antrim
and Athol kept their hides warm by chasing new-made orphans on to the
frozen rivers. When the bairns ran on the ice crying, and went through
it to a cold death, the good gentry laughed at the merriment of the
spectacle. Down Aora glen went the bulk of them, and round the Gearran
road to Shira glen, behind them smoking thatch and plundered folds.
Death struck with an iron hand at the doors of Maam, Elrigmore and
Elrigbeg, Kilblane and Stuckgoy, and at Stuckgoy lived the girl of my
story. She would have been butchered like her two brothers, by the
fringe of Athol’s army, but for her lover and his friend, who came when
the need was the sorest for them, and led her out behind the spoiled
township in the smoke of the burning byres.
There had been a break in the frost. It was a day of rain and mist, so
the men who chased them lost them early.
“If we can reach the head of the glen first,” said Alan, “there’s safety
in the Ben Bhuidhe cave.” So the cave they ran for.
The cave is more on Ben Shean than Ben Bhuidhe, for all its name; a
cunning hiding-place on the face of Sgornoch-mor rock, hanging over the
deer wallows where the waters of Shira and Stacan sunder, seeking Lochow
and Loch Finne. It was the home of the reiver when reiving was in vogue,
a hold snug and easy for sleep, and deep enough for plunder. Fires might
flash at night far ben in the heart of it, or songs might shake its roof,
but never the wiser was the world outbye.
The way to the cave was off Shira side at the head of the glen, among
whin bush and hazel, bending to the left over the elbow of Tomgorm, and a
haw-tree hung above the face of Sgornoch-mor. The cave itself lay
half-way down the rock, among a cluster of wild berry bushes that clung
finger and claw to a ledge so narrow that a man with a dirk could keep it
against a score of clans. To reach it there was but one way all
Glenshira folk knew, and none beside them—by a knotted rope that always
lay at the root of the haw-tree for that purpose. Once in, and the rope
with you, and your way to the foot of the rock was easy; but once in, and
the rope awanting, and the place was your grave, for you might starve in
the face of the birds that flapped on black feathers to their nests that
were lower still on the rock.
The girl and her friends reached the head of the glen well before the
band that followed them on the beaten road. There the mist fell off, and
the bare hills closed in on a gullet the wind belched through. Before
them was Tomgorm, and they took to the left and the climbing, Ealasaid
and Alan in front and Red John behind them, checking the whistling of
pibrochs at his lips.
“Poor girl, poor girl!” said he to himself, “I was wrong to have come
between you in the long summer day, for here’s in truth the black winter
and the short day, homelessness and hunger, and the foe on our heels.”
They got on the front of Sgornoch-mor, and all the north Highlands free
of mist were in broken peaks before them, cut with glens, full of roads
to liberty and safety, but too far off for a quarry before the hounds.
At the foot of the haw-tree was the rope in coils.
“There’s little time to waste,” said Red John, “for though I said nothing
of it at the braefoot, I heard a corps of our followers too close on our
heels for comfort. It would be leading them to our den below, and us to
some trouble, if they saw the way we went. Will you go first, mistress,
and Alan and I will follow?”
“I could die sweetly where I stand,” said Ealasaid, shrunk in weariness
and grieving, “but for Alan here,” she added, looking at the lad beside
her.
“Dying here, dying there,” said Red John, “I’ll dance a reel at your
wedding.”
He was fastening the rope round Ealasaid’s waist as he spoke.
“There’s one thing in my mind,” he said, in some confusion of voice.
“What is that?” she asked, with small interest written in her swimming
eyes.
“It’s about Alan,” said he (and busy about the rope): “I am your debtor
for many hours I robbed you of, unthinking—my old weakness, as I told
you.”
“That’s all bye,” she said; “that’s all bye and done with. Do you fancy
I’m thinking now of such small sorrows? If you borrowed my lover, you
pay for the loan with my life saved; I owe you that.”
“I’m all the better pleased to hear you say it,” said Red John, “because
your taunt about my botched life rankled.”
“I did you less than justice; one should never judge a life till the end
of it.”
Down the rock face the two men lowered her to the cave, where she let
herself free of the rope, with a shake of it for her signal.
“Hurry, lad,” said Red John, looking into the glen; and Alan went over
the edge, and down, foot and hand, eager enough to join Ealasaid.
The torn mists blew farther down the glen, the wind took a curve round
Sgornoch-mor, and eye and ear told Red John that a band of the Athol men
were close on him. He saw their bonnets on the slope, and heard them
roar when they saw him beside the haw-tree.
“My sorrow!” said he, “here’s Red John at the end of his tether! The
pair below need be none the worse nor the wiser, for who’s to get at them
with the rope gone?”
He lifted the rope a little to make sure that Alan was off it, then
slashed at it with his dirk till he cut it from the tree.
“Here’s a cunning and notable end to the botched life,” said the boon
companion to himself, turning, with the dagger still in his hand, to face
the Athol men.
And the rope in heavy coils fell past the cave mouth to the deep below.
* * * * *