Every land, every glen or town, I make no doubt, has its own peculiar
air or atmosphere that one familiar with the same may never puzzle about
in his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at odd moments like the
scent of bog-myrtle and tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air in
Glen Shira had ever been very genial and encouraging to me. Even when
a young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school,
the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the riper airs of the late
afternoon went to my head like a mild white wine; very heartsome too,
rousing the laggard spirit that perhaps made me, before, over-apt to sit
and dream of the doing of grand things instead of putting out a hand to
do them. In Glascow the one thing that I had to grumble most about next
to the dreary hours of schooling was the clammy air of street and close;
in Germanie it was worse, a moist weakening windiness full of foreign
smells, and I’ve seen me that I could gaily march a handful of leagues
to get a sniff of the salt sea. Not that I was one who craved for wrack
and bilge at my nose all the time. What I think best is a stance inland
from the salt water, where the mountain air, brushing over gall and
heather, takes the sting from the sea air, and the two blended give
a notion of the fine variousness of life. We had a herdsman once in
Elrigmore, who could tell five miles up the glen when the tide was out
on Loch Firme. I was never so keen-scented as that, but when I awakened
next day in a camceiled room in Elrigmore, and put my head out at the
window to look around, I smelt the heather for a second like an escapade
in a dream.
Down to Ealan Eagal I went for a plunge in the linn in the old style,
and the airs of Shira Glen hung about me like friends and lovers, so
well acquaint and jovial.
Shira Glen, Shira Glen! if I was bard I’d have songs to sing to it, and
all I know is one sculduddry verse on a widow that dwelt in Maam! There,
at the foot of my father’s house, were the winding river, and north and
south the brown hills, split asunder by God’s goodness, to give a
sample of His bounty. Maam, Elrigmore and Elrigbeg, Kilblaan and Ben
Bhuidhe--their steep sides hung with cattle, and below crowded the
reeking homes of tacksman and cottar; the bums poured hurriedly to the
flat beneath their borders of hazel and ash; to the south, the fresh
water we call Dubh Loch, flapping with ducks and fringed with shelisters
or water-flags and bulrush, and farther off the Cowal hills; to
the north, the wood of Drimlee and the wild pass the red Macgregors
sometimes took for a back-road to our cattle-folds in cloud of night
and darkness. Down on it all shone the polished and hearty sun, birds
chinned on every tree, though it was late in the year; blackcock whirred
across the alders, and sturdy heifers bellowed tunefully, knee-deep at
the ford.
“Far have I wandered,” thought I to myself, “warring other folk’s wars
for the humour of it and small wages, but here’s the one place I’ve seen
yet that was worth hacking good steel for in earnest!”
But still my heart was sore for mother, and sore, too, for the tale of
changed times in Campbell country my father told me over a breakfast of
braddan, fresh caught in a creel from the Gearron river, oaten bannock,
and cream.
After breakfast I got me into my kilt for town. There are many costumes
going about the world, but, with allowance for every one, I make bold
to think our own tartan duds the gallantest of them all. The kilt was my
wear when first I went to Glascow College, and many a St Mungo keelie,
no better than myself at classes or at English language, made fun of
my brown knees, sometimes not to the advantage of his headpiece when
it came to argument and neifs on the Fleshers’ Haugh. Pulling on my old
_breacan_ this morning in Elrigmore was like donning a fairy garb, and
getting back ten years of youth. We have a way of belting on the kilt
in real Argile I have seen nowhere else. Ordinarily, our lads take the
whole web of tartan cloth, of twenty ells or more, and coil it once
round their middle, there belting it, and bring the free end up on the
shoulder to pin with a brooch--not a bad fashion for display and
long marches and for sleeping out on the hill with, but somewhat
discommodious for warm weather. It was our plan sometimes to make what
we called a philabeg, or little kilt, maybe eight yards long, gathered
in at the haunch and hung in many pleats behind, the plain brat part in
front decked off with a leather sporran, tagged with thong points tied
in knots, and with no plaid on the shoulder. I’ve never seen a more
jaunty and suitable garb for campaigning, better by far for short sharp
tulzies with an enemy than the philamore or the big kilt our people
sometimes throw off them in a skirmish, and fight (the coarsest of them)
in their gartered hose and scrugged bonnets.
With my kilt and the memory of old times about me, I went walking down
to Inneraora in the middle of the day. I was prepared for change from
the complaints of my father, but never for half the change I found in
the burgh town of MacCailein Mor. In my twelve foreign years the place
was swamped by incomers, black unwelcome Covenanters from the shires of
Air and Lanrick--Brices, Yuilles, Rodgers, and Richies--all brought up
here by Gillesbeg Gruamach, Marquis of Argile, to teach his clans the
arts of peace and merchandise. Half the folk I met between the arches
and the Big Barns were strangers that seemingly never had tartan on
their hurdies, but settled down with a firm foot in the place, I could
see by the bold look of them as I passed on the plain-stanes of the
street A queer town this on the edge of Loch Finne, and far in the
Highlands! There were shops with Lowland stuffs in them, and over the
doors signboards telling of the most curious trades for a Campbell
burgh--horologers, cordiners, baxters, and such like mechanicks that I
felt sure poor Donald had small call for. They might be incomers, but
they were thirled to Gillesbeg all the same, as I found later on.
It was the court day, and his lordship was sitting in judgment on two
Strathlachlan fellows, who had been brawling at the Cross the week
before and came to knives, more in a frolic than in hot blood, with some
of the town lads. With two or three old friends I went into the Tolbooth
to see the play--for play it was, I must confess, in town Inneraora,
when justice was due to a man whose name by ill-luck was not Campbell,
or whose bonnet-badge was not the myrtle stem.
The Tolbooth hall was, and is to this day, a spacious high-ceiled room,
well lighted from the bay-side. It was crowded soon after we got
in, with Cowalside fishermen and townpeople all the one way or the
other--for or against the poor lads in bilboes, who sat, simple-looking
enough, between the town officers, a pair of old _bodachs_ in long
scarlet coats and carrying _tuaghs_, Lochaber axes, or halberds that
never smelt blood since they came from the smith.
It was the first time ever I saw Gillesbeg Gruamach sitting on the
bench, and I was startled at the look of the man. I’ve seen some sour
dogs in my day--few worse than Ruthven’s rittmasters whom we met in
Swabia--but I never saw a man who, at the first vizzy, had the dour
sour countenance of Archibald, Marquis of Argile and Lord of Lochow.
Gruamach, or grim-faced, our good Gaels called him in a bye-name, and
well he owned it, for over necklace or gorget I’ve seldom seen a sterner
jowl or a more sinister eye. And yet, to be fair and honest, this was
but the notion one got at a first glint; in a while I thought little
was amiss with his looks as he leaned on the table and cracked in a
humoursome laughing way with the paneled jury.
He might have been a plain cottar on Glen Aora side rather than King of
the Highlands for all the airs he assumed, and when he saw me, better
put-on in costume than my neighbours in court, he seemingly asked my
name in a whisper from the clerk beside him, and finding who I was,
cried out in St Andrew’s English--
“What! Young Elrigmore back to the Glens! I give you welcome, sir, to
Baile Inneraora!”
I but bowed, and in a fashion saluted, saying nothing in answer, for
the whole company glowered at me, all except the home-bred ones who had
better manners.
The two MacLachlans denied in the Gaelic the charge the sheriff clerk
read to them in a long farrago of English with more foreign words to it
than ever I learned the sense of in College.
His lordship paid small heed to the witnesses who came forward to
swear to the unruliness of the Strathlachlan men, and the jury talked
heedlessly with one another in a fashion scandalous to see. The man who
had been stabbed--it was but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk had
gone through from front to back with only some lose of blood--was averse
from being hard on the panels. He was a jocular fellow with the right
heart for a duello, and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made light of the
disturbance and his injury.
“Nothing but a bit play, my jurymen--MacCailein--my lordship--a bit
play. If the poor lad didn’t happen to have his dirk out and I to run on
it, nobody was a bodle the worse.”
“But the law”--started the clerk to say.
“No case for law at all,” said the man. “It’s an honest brawl
among friends, and I could settle the account with them at the next
market-day, when my shoulder’s mended.”
“Better if you would settle my account for your last pair of brogues,
Alasdair M’Iver,” said a black-avised juryman.
“What’s your trade?” asked the Marquis of the witness.
“I’m at the Coillebhraid silver-mines,” said he. “We had a little
too much drink, or these MacLachlan gentlemen and I had never come to
variance.”
The Marquis gloomed at the speaker and brought down his fist with a bang
on the table before him.
“Damn those silver-mines!” said he; “they breed more trouble in this
town of mine than I’m willing to thole. If they put a penny in my purse
it might not be so irksome, but they plague me sleeping and waking, and
I’m not a plack the richer. If it were not to give my poor cousin, John
Splendid, a chance of a living and occupation for his wits, I would
drown them out with the water of Cromalt Burn.”
The witness gave a little laugh, and ducking his head oddly like one
taking liberties with a master, said, “We’re a drouthy set, my lord,
at the mines, and I wouldn’t be saying but what we might drink them dry
again of a morning, if we had been into town the night before.”
His lordship cut short his sour smile at the man’s fancy, and bade the
officers on with the case.
“You have heard the proof,” he said to the jury when it came to his turn
to charge them. “Are they guilty, or not? If the question was put to me
I should say the Laird of MacLachlan, arrant Papist! should keep his men
at home to Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loosing them
on honest, or middling honest, Campbells, for the strict virtue of these
Coillebhraid miners is what I am not going to guarantee.”
Of course the fellows were found guilty--one of stabbing, the other of
art and part--for MacLachlan was no friend of MacCailein Mor, and as
little friend to the merchant burghers of Inneraora, for he had the poor
taste to buy his shop provand from the Lamont towns of Low Cowal.
“A more unfriendly man to the Laird of MacLachlan might be for hanging
you on the gibbet at the town-head,” said his lordship to the prisoners,
spraying ink-sand idly on the clean page of a statute-book as he
spoke; “but our three trees upbye are leased just now to other
tenants,--Badenoch hawks a trifle worse than yourselves, and more
deserving.”
The men looked stupidly about them, knowing not one word of his
lordship’s English, and he was always a man who disdained to converse
much in Erse. He looked a little cruelly at them and went on.
“Perhaps clipping your lugs might be the bonniest way of showing you
what we think of such on-goings in honest Inneraora; or getting the
Doomster to bastinado you up and down the street But we’ll try what a
fortnight in the Tolbooth may do to amend your visiting manners. Take
them away, officers.”
“_Abair moran taing_--say ‘many thanks’ to his lordship,” whispered
one of the red-coat halberdiers in the ear of the bigger of the two
prisoners. I could hear the command distinctly where I sat, well back in
the court, and so no doubt could Gillesbeg Gruamach, but he was used to
such obsequious foolishness and he made no dissent or comment.
“_Taing! taing!_” said one spokesman of the two MacLachlans in his
hurried Cowal Gaelic, and his neighbour, echoing him word for word in
the comic fashion they have in these parts; “_Taing! taing!_ I never
louted to the horseman that rode over me yet, and I would be ill-advised
to start with the Gruamach one!”
The man’s face flushed up as he spoke. It’s a thing I’ve noticed about
our own poor Gaelic men: speaking before them in English or Scots, their
hollow look and aloofness would give one the notion that they lacked
sense and sparkle; take the muddiest-looking among them and challenge
him in his own tongue, and you’ll find his face fill with wit and
understanding.
I was preparing to leave the court-room, having many people to call on
in Inneraora, and had turned with my two friends to the door, when a
fellow brushed in past us--a Highlander, I could see, but in trews--and
he made to go forward into the body of the court, as if to speak to
his lordship, now leaning forward in a cheerful conversation with
the Provost of the burgh, a sonsy gentleman in a peruke and figured
waistcoat.
“Who is he, this bold fellow?” I asked one of my friends, pausing with
a foot on the door-step, a little surprised at the want of reverence to
MacCailein in the man’s bearing.
“Iain Aluinn--John Splendid,” said my friend. We were talking in the
Gaelic, and he made a jocular remark there is no English for. Then he
added, “A poor cousin of the Marquis, a M’Iver Campbell (_on the wrong
side_), with little schooling, but some wit and gentlemanly parts. He
has gone through two fortunes in black cattle, fought some fighting
here and there, and now he manages the silver-mines so adroitly that
Gillesbeg Gruamach is ever on the brink of getting a big fortune, but
never done launching out a little one instead to keep the place going. A
decent soul the Splendid! throughither a bit, and better at promise than
performance, but at the core as good as gold, and a fellow you would
never weary of though you tramped with him in a thousand glens. We call
him Splendid, not for his looks but for his style.”
The object of my friend’s description was speaking into the ear of
MacCailein Mor by this time, and the Marquis’s face showed his tale was
interesting, to say the least of it.
We waited no more, but went out into the street I was barely two closes
off from the Tolbooth when a messenger came running after me, sent by
the Marquis, who asked if I would oblige greatly by waiting till he
made up on me. I went back, and met his lordship with his kinsman and
mine-manager coming out of the court-room together into the lobby that
divided the place from the street.
“Oh, Elrigmore!” said the Marquis, in an offhand jovial and equal
way; “I thought you would like to meet my cousin here--M’Iver of the
Barbreck; something of a soldier like yourself, who has seen service in
Lowland wars.”
“In the Scots Brigade, sir?” I asked M’lver, eyeing him with greater
interest than ever. He was my senior by about a dozen years seemingly, a
neat, well-built fellow, clean-shaven, a little over the middle height,
carrying a rattan in his hand, though he had a small sword tucked under
the skirt of his coat.
“With Lumsden’s regiment,” he said. “His lordship here has been telling
me you have just come home from the field.”
“But last night. I took the liberty while Inneraora was snoring. You
were before my day in foreign service, and yet I thought I knew by
repute every Campbell that ever fought for the hard-won dollars of
Gustavus even before my day. There were not so many of them from the
West Country.”
“I trailed a pike privately,” laughed M’lver, “and for the honour of
Clan Diarmaid I took the name Munro. My cousin here cares to have none
of his immediate relatives make a living by steel at any rank less than
a cornal’s, or a major’s at the very lowest Frankfort, and Landsberg,
and the stark field of Leipzig were the last I saw of foreign battles,
and the God’s truth is they were my bellyful. I like a bit splore, but
give it to me in our old style, with the tartan instead of buff, and the
target for breastplate and taslets. I came home sick of wars.”
“Our friend does himself injustice, my dear Elrigmore,” said Argile,
smiling; “he came home against his will, I have no doubt, and I know he
brought back with him a musketoon bullet in the hip, that couped him by
the heels down in Glassary for six months.”
“The result,” M’Iver hurried to exclaim, but putting out his breast with
a touch of vanity, “of a private _rencontre_, an affair of my own with
a Reay gentleman, and not to be laid to my credit as part of the war’s
scaith at all.”
“You conducted your duello in odd style under Lums-den, surely,” said I,
“if you fought with powder and ball instead of steel, which is more of
a Highlander’s weapon to my way of thinking. All our affairs in the Reay
battalion were with claymore--sometimes with targe, sometimes wanting.”
“This was a particular business of our own,” laughed John Splendid (as I
may go on to call M’lver, for it was the name he got oftenest behind
and before in Argile). “It was less a trial of valour than a wager about
which had the better skill with the musket. If I got the bullet in my
groin, I at least showed the Mackay gentleman in question that an Argile
man could handle arquebus as well as _arme blanche_ as we said in the
France. I felled my man at one hundred and thirty paces, with six to
count from a ritt-master’s signal. Blow, present, God sain Mackay’s
soul! But I’m not given to braggadocio.”
“Not a bit, cousin,” said the Marquis, looking quizzingly at me.
“I could not make such good play with the gun against a fort gable at so
many feet,” said I.
“You could, sir, you could,” said John Splendid in an easy, offhand,
flattering way, that gave me at the start of our acquaintance the whole
key to his character. “I’ve little doubt you could allow me half-a-dozen
paces and come closer on the centre of the target.”
By this time we were walking down the street, the Marquis betwixt the
pair of us commoners, and I to the left side. Lowlanders and Highlanders
quickly got out of the way before us and gave us the crown of the
causeway. The main part of them the Marquis never let his eye light on;
he kept his nose cocked in the air in the way I’ve since found peculiar
to his family. It was odd to me that had in wanderings got to look on
all honest men as equal (except Camp-Master Generals and Pike Colonels),
to see some of his lordship’s poor clansmen cringing before him. Here
indeed was the leaven of your low-country scum, for in all the broad
Highlands wandering before and since I never saw the like! “Blood of my
blood, brother of my name!” says our good Gaelic old-word: it made no
insolents in camp or castle, yet it kept the poorest clansmen’s head
up before the highest chief. But there was, even in Baile Inneraora,
sinking in the servile ways of the incomer, something too of honest
worship in the deportment of the people. It was sure enough in the
manner of an old woman with a face peat-tanned to crinkled leather who
ran out of the Vennel or lane, and, bending to the Marquis his lace
wrist-bands, kissed them as I’ve seen Papists do the holy duds in Notre
Dame and Bruges Kirk.
This display before me, something of a stranger, a little displeased
Gillesbeg Gruamach. “Tut, tut!” he cried in Gaelic to the _cailltach_,
“thou art a foolish old woman!”
“God keep thee, MacCailein!” said she; “thy daddy put his hand on my
head like a son when he came back from his banishment in Spain, and I
keened over thy mother dear when she died. The hair of Peggy Bheg’s head
is thy door-mat, and her son’s blood is thy will for a foot-bath.”
“Savage old harridan!” cried the Marquis, jerking away; but I could see
he was not now unpleased altogether that a man new from the wide world
and its ways should behold how much he was thought of by his people.
He put his hands in a friendly way on the shoulders of us on either hand
of him, and brought us up a bit round turn, facing him at a stand-still
opposite the door of the English kirk. To this day I mind well the
rumour of the sea that came round the corner.
“I have a very particular business with both you gentlemen,” he said.
“My friend here, M’Iver, has come hot-foot to tell me of a rumour that
a body of Irish banditry under Alasdair MacDonald, the MacColkitto as
we call him, has landed somewhere about Kinlochaline or Knoydart This
portends damnably, if I, an elder ordained of this kirk, may say so.
We have enough to do with the Athole gentry and others nearer home. It
means that I must on with plate and falchion again, and out on the weary
road for war I have little stomach for, to tell the truth.”
“You’re able for the best of them, MacCailein,” cried John Splendid, in
a hot admiration. “For a scholar you have as good judgment on the field
and as gallant a seat on the saddle as any man ever I saw in haberschone
and morion. With your schooling I could go round the world conquering.”
“Ah! flatterer, flatterer! Ye have all the guile of the tongue our
enemies give Clan Campbell credit for, and that I wish I had a little
more of. Still and on, it’s no time for fair words. Look! Elrigmore.
You’ll have heard of our kittle state in this shire for the past ten
years, and not only in this shire but all over the West Highlands. I
give you my word I’m no sooner with the belt off me and my chair pulled
in to my desk and papers than its some one beating a point of war or a
piper blowing the warning under my window. To look at my history for the
past few years any one might think I was Dol’ Gorm himself, fight and
plot, plot and fight! How can I help it--thrust into this hornets’ nest
from the age of sixteen, when my father (_beannachd leis!_) took me out
warring against the islesmen, and I only in the humour for playing at
shinty or fishing like the boys on the moor-lochs behind the town. I
would sooner be a cottar in Auchnagoul down there, with porridge for my
every meal, than constable, chastiser, what not, or whatever I am, of
all these vexed Highlands. Give me my book in my closet, or at worst let
me do my country’s work in a courtier’s way with brains, and I would ask
no more.”
“Except Badenoch and Nether Lochaber--fat land, fine land, MacCailein!”
said John Splendid, laughing cunningly.
“You’re an ass, John,” he said; “picking up the countryside’s gossip. I
have no love for the Athole and Great Glen folks as ye ken; but I could
long syne have got letters of fire and sword that made Badenoch and
Nether Lochaber mine if I had the notion. Don’t interrupt me with your
nonsense, cousin; I’m telling Elrigmore here, for he’s young and has
skill of civilised war, that there may, in very few weeks, be need of
every arm in the parish or shire to baulk Colkitto. The MacDonald and
other malignants have been robbing high and low from Lochow to Loch
Finne this while back; I have hanged them a score a month at the
town-head there, but that’s dealing with small affairs, and I’m sore
mistaken if we have not cruel times to come.”
“Well, sir,” I said, “what can I do?”
The Marquis bit his moustachio and ran a spur on the ground for a little
without answering, as one in a quandary, and then he said, “You’re no
vassal of mine, Baron” (as if he were half sorry for it), “but all you
Glen Shira folk are well disposed to me and mine, and have good cause,
though that Macnachtan fellow’s a Papisher. What I had in my mind was
that I might count on you taking a company of our fencible men, as John
here is going to do, and going over-bye to Lorn with me to cut off those
Irish blackguards of Alasdair MacDonald’s from joining Montrose.”
For some minutes I stood turning the thing over in my mind, being
by nature slow to take on any scheme of high emprise without some
scrupulous balancing of chances. Half-way up the closes, in the dusk,
and in their rooms, well back from the windows, or far up the street,
all aloof from his Majesty MacCailein Mor, the good curious people
of Inneraora watched us. They could little guess the pregnancy of our
affairs. For me, I thought how wearily I had looked for some rest from
wars, at home in Glen Shira after my years of foreign service. Now that
I was here, and my mother no more, my old father needed me on hill and
field, and Argile’s quarrel was not my quarrel until Argile’s enemies
were at the foot of Ben Bhuidhe or coming all boden in fier of war
up the pass of Shira Glen. I liked adventure, and a captaincy was a
captaincy, but----
“Is it boot and saddle at once, my lord?” I asked.
“It must be that or nothing. When a viper’s head is coming out of
a hole, crunch it incontinent, or the tail may be more than you can
manage.”
“Then, my lord,” said I, “I must cry off. On this jaunt at least. It
would be my greatest pleasure to go with you and my friend M’lver,
not to mention all the good fellows I’m bound to know in rank in
your regiment, but for my duty to my father and one or two other
considerations that need not be named. But--if this be any use--I give
my word that should MacDonald or any other force come this side the
passes at Accurach Hill, or anywhere east Lochow, my time and steel are
yours.”
MacCailein Mor looked a bit annoyed, and led us at a fast pace up to
the gate of the castle that stood, high towered and embrasured for heavy
pieces, stark and steeve above town Inneraora. A most curious, dour,
and moody man, with a mind roving from key to key. Every now and then
he would stop and think a little without a word, then on, and run his
fingers through his hair or fumble nervously at his leathern buttons,
paying small heed to the Splendid and I, who convoyed him, so we got
into a crack about the foreign field of war.
“Quite right, Elrigmore, quite right!” at last cried the Marquis,
pulling up short, and looked me plump in the eyes. “Bide at hame while
bide ye may. I would never go on this affair myself if by God’s grace I
was not Marquis of Argile and son of a house with many bitter foes. But,
hark ye! a black day looms for these our home-lands if ever Montrose
and those Irish dogs get through our passes. For twenty thousand pounds
Saxon I would not have the bars off the two roads of Accurach! And I
thank you, Elrigmore, that at the worst I can count on your service at
home. We may need good men here on Loch Finneside as well as farther
afield, overrun as we are by the blackguardism of the North and the
Papist clans around us. Come in, friends, and have your meridian. I have
a flagon of French brown brandy you never tasted the equal of in any
town you sacked in all Low Germanie.”