STORY CONTINUED--"ERIS-SKENE!"
"Horsed on a speckled steed, Biserta's king
Traversed the extended line from wing to wing
To close the loose array he gave command--
Ten thousand lances flamed in every band;
And twice five squadrons in the van of war."--_RONCISVALLES_.
Now, when too late, the bereaved king thought he could willingly have
bestowed his Cora upon even the humble huntsman, and believed he
could happily have seen her the wife of Mac Ian, or of any honest man
who would love her as she deserved to be loved; but now he had lost
her in a moment, and in a manner so terrible that it seemed like a
judgment direct from the hand of Heaven upon him, for his pride and
severity; for, thought he,--
"I may control the bodies of my subjects, or those of my children,
but God hath given me no power over the hearts or consciences of
either. Woe is me! for the brightest diamond has fallen from my
crown, and never more will my old bosom swell while she strikes her
harp to the 'Battle of Cattraeth,' or never more will she soothe me
to sleep with the low sad song of 'The Owl,' when the north wind
soughs down the leafless glen, and the frozen lynn hangs owre the
beetling craig like the beard on an auld carles chin. Oh, Cora!
Cora!"
And the old king kept poor Cora's harp in his bed-chamber, and often
in the stillness of midnight he wept, while his thin and wrinkled
hands wandered among the strings, and woke their old familiar sounds
again and again, till her voice seemed to mingle with them.
Now it happened that although her Arabian steed was drowned, the
princess, by some blessed miracle of Providence, escaped; for she had
been caught in her descent by one of the spouts or boiling streams
that ascended upward from the bottom of the den, and unseen among the
clouds of light and vapoury spray was flung far over a ledge of rocks
into the smoother water beyond; and while the king, her sire, and all
his bearded thanes, in their steel caps and iron lurichs, were
beating their breasts, calling upon all the saints, and fixing their
eyes upon the hazy horrors of the gulf below the lynn, she was swept
gently onward, in a dream as it were; and then the hands of some one
seemed to buoy her up; then she felt herself conveyed into a dark and
shady chasm of rock, overhung by a gorgeous mass of wild-roses and
ivy, honeysuckle and sweetbrier; and there, upon a bank of daisies
and violets, kind hands laid her gently down--a hot breath came upon
her cheek, as some one tenderly parted her soft and wet dishevelled
hair from her chilled and pallid cheek; and after remaining long
insensible, she opened her eyes to meet the enraptured face of the
bold Mac Ian Rua, for he it was who had saved her.
No other leech than love was necessary to bring the half-drowned
princess to life. Her heart soon beat with joy, and amid the double
raptures of her escape and reunion with her lover, she forgot the
sorrow of her bereaved father, and the terror of her friends on the
summit of the cascade, from which she had been so awfully
precipitated and so miraculously saved; and for the fleeting hours of
that soft summer day till the sun sank behind the hills of
Lanarkshire, she listened to the adventures of her banished lover,
and heard him repeat a hundred times over all he had endured in
danger, absence, doubt, and grief, while hovering in disguise near
the court of the king; how he had accompanied her step by step from
the palace in Fife to the banks of the Clyde; and how by the goodness
of Heaven he had chanced to be at hand, and ready to save her from a
death so terrible, by plunging boldly into the fierce and seething
flood beyond the waterfall.
Love, like death, levels all distinctions,--and indeed he knows of
none; thus, the daughter of the king assured Mac Ian that her passion
was yet unchanged; and laving their clasped hands in the water that
flowed at their feet--that perilous water from which Cora had so
wondrously escaped--after the old fashion of Scottish lovers, they
vowed to be leal and true, and wished that if one deserted or forgot
the other, that God and the saints might so desert and forget the
faithless and untrue.
Now this wish was doubtless very wrong, yet they were not punished
for it, neither were they again separated; but to reward them for all
they had suffered during Mac Ian's exile, and to seal their faith for
ever, they received the nuptial blessing from a poor Gillie
Dhia--that is, a culdee, or servant of God--who dwelt in a cell of
rock in the wood of Cadzow; and then, to avoid all discovery, they
crossed the Forth, the Tay, and Don, and travelled far north till
they reached the forest of Glenfiddich. There Mac Ian built a bower,
over the door of which he placed the antlers of a stag; and their
daily food was furnished by his spear and bow, while the princess
spun with her own white hands, to clothe herself and the
bright-haired children with which God had blessed them; and thus, far
from courts and camps, and the troubles of council and debate, they
lived in happiness, in peace, and in seclusion.
Eight years passed away, and though the poor old king had never
forgotten his lost daughter, he had learned to think calmly over the
events of that terrible day at Cora's Lynn, and eight times as the
mournful anniversary returned he shut himself up in a chamber,
darkened and hung with sackcloth; and there he repeated those solemn
prayers which the Church ordains shall be said for the dead; and
solemnly he rehearsed them while the hot tears coursed over his
silver beard: they were for the soul of his daughter, who was yet
living in her birchen bower, and singing to her little ones among the
woods that shroud the rolling Fiddich.
Aged though he was, the din of war now summoned Malcolm II. to the
field, against those common foemen of the British Isles, the
half-pagan and wholly barbarous Danes.
Sueno, King of Denmark, who then reigned in England, having driven
Ethelred, monarch of that country, into Normandy, had an implacable
hatred at Malcolm for yielding succour and assistance to the English,
whom the Danes were rapidly crushing; and he resolved to send an army
which should assail in his own dominions the King of the Scots, of
whose title--Rex Victoriosissimus--he was jealous and impatient.
Landing in Murrayshire, under Enotus, in the year 1009, the Danes
overthrew in battle the Scottish forces which opposed them; they took
the Castle of Nairn, and cutting through the neck of land on which it
stood, brought the sea round it, and named it Burg for the time; the
fortresses of Elgin and Forres were next taken, and for nearly a year
they held them; being the longest period that those invaders retained
possession of Scottish earth, while alive, at least. They also took
the Castle of Balvenie, and therein Enotus built a great chamber,
which is still named the Danes' Hall. In the following year Malcolm
marched against them in person with a powerful army, formed in three
great columns, under Kenneth, Thane of the Isles, Græme, Thane of
Strathearn, and Dunbar, Thane of Lothian; for they were yet feal men
and true to the old king whose daughter they had loved so well.
Clad in a byrne, formed of steel rings, which were sewn flat upon a
leathern tunic, and having on his head a square helmet, like those
last worn by the guards of Charles the Bald, surmounted by a diadem,
the venerable monarch rode at the head of his troops, who--although
he wore a tunic of blue silk crossed by a white St. Andrew's saltire
of the same material (which was then so rare and costly),--were
mostly clad in long lurichs, with helmets of iron, and carried
targets and swords, axes and mauls of ponderous weight, with bows and
spears, having leaf-shaped blades of bronze or tempered steel. The
wild clans of Galwegia marched beneath the banner of their lord, all
clad in tartans, dyed with checks of purple and dark red, violet and
blue, while their long locks flowed under their caps of iron; and
they had their sturdy arms bare, as well as their legs, which were
kilted to the knee. _Albyn! Albyn!_ was their battle cry, and with
the sound of the harp, the horn, and pipe, they roused their fiery
hearts, when, after a march of some weeks' duration, they came in
sight of the foe, drawn up in array of war, near the old Pictish
Tower of Balvenie, then named the House of St. Beyne the Great--which
stands on a high green bank overlooking the Fiddich and the rich
landscape through which it wanders, where the dark firs cast the
shadow of their solemn cones upon its lonely waters.
South-west of the castle the barbarous Danes were formed in deep
ranks, all mailed in byrnes of iron rings, and bosses sown upon cloth
or leather, with hauberks and painted surcoats to the knee, with
spears and axes of steel and bronze, and ponderous iron maces that
swung at the end of clubs and chains; while above their heads waved
the enchanted banner with the Black Raven, which had never been
unfurled without ensuring victory.
The mighty scalp of Benrinnes was shining in the warm glow of the
rising sun; the snow-white mist was rising from the side of
Corriehabbie, and the valley, the wood and water, rock and heather,
all that make the scenery of the Fiddich so wild, so bold, and
beautiful, were glowing under a warm summer sun; while the yells of
the red-haired Danes on one side, the braying of mountain pipes on
the other, the twanging of bows, and hiss of passing arrows announced
that the battle was beginning.
The lonely heron and the mountain eagle were scared from rock and
river by the flashing of the steel; but the cries of the combatants
brought the gled and the hawk from the four winds of heaven, and high
in mid-air, with outstretched wings, they overhung the nearing hosts,
expectant of their coming feast--the flesh of horse and man.
This was the anniversary of the day on which he had lost his
daughter, and the heart of Malcolm II. was oppressed, and full of
dark and dire forebodings: so he anticipated both defeat and death.
The first charge was a furious one, and the onset was deadly and
disastrous. The Danes plied the poleaxe, their national weapon, with
savage fury; the Scots charged with their long pikes and two-handed
swords, while swift and surely shot the archers on both sides from
the rear ranks of the closing columns. Steel helmets and byrnes of
shining rings, bucklers of tempered iron, and targets of thick
bull-hide were cut by the sword, cloven by the axe, or pierced by the
barbed arrow, or by the spear that was launched from afar; and
unhappily in the early part of the battle, Kenneth of the Isles,
Græme of Strathearn, and Dunbar of Lothian, fell from their horses,
each struck by a mortal wound; for the first had the axe of Enotus
the Dane driven through the brass umbo of his shield and the iron
cone of his helmet, sheer down to his teeth; the second had his heart
pierced through, byrne and buff, by a leaf-shaped javelin; and the
third had a double-edged _seax_ driven repeatedly through his body.
Valiantly fought the venerable king, and as fast as men fell, their
places were supplied; but disheartened by the sudden loss of the
three greatest chiefs in the land, his soldiers began to give way,
and with a triumphant yell the heavily-armed Danes pressed on
them--their eyes sparkling with rage and the lust of blood, while the
horse-hair of their helmets mingled with their long and tangled locks
and the wild volume of their shaggy beards.
Enotus, the Danish general, a powerful and gigantic warrior mounted
on a white charger, and clad in a hauberk of burnished rings, with
the skin of a bear floating from his shoulders on which the claws
rested while the skull of the monster grinned above his basinet, soon
singled out the King of Scotland, whom he knew by his venerable
aspect, his silver beard, and the diadem of golden trefoils that
encircled his helmet, which had three upright feathers of the
iolar--for the Scottish king is the chief of all the Scottish
chiefs;--and (though around him fought Gillemichael, Earl of Fife,
Alan, Thane of Sutherland, who defeated the Danes on the nmir of
Drumilea, Hugo of the Rutherford, whose ancestor twelve hundred years
before had conducted King Reuther through the Tweed against the
Britons, Crinian, Thane of Dunbar, and others, the very flower of the
land), with his tremendous mace the Dane by one blow dashed out the
brains of the royal charger, and by a second would assuredly have
slain the king had not a sturdy warrior of the Murrayland, clad in
striped breacan and wearing the long Celtic lurich to his bare knees,
at that moment cloven the mighty Scandinavian almost in two by one
stroke of his tuagh, or Scottish battle-axe.
"Well fare thee, my stalwart soldier," cried Malcolm; "for thou hast
saved thy king!"
His protector re-mounted him on the white steed of the slaughtered
Dane, and blowing his bugle to collect the scattered Scots, plunged
into the thickest of the conflict, parting the foes before him like a
field of corn.
"By the stone of Fate," cried the King, shortening his reins and
grasping his sword, "yonder blast never came from other horn than the
bugle of Mac Ian Rua!"
So said all who heard it.
"And if yonder fellow proved to be Mac Ian?" said the king's
Secretary, wiping his bloody sword in the mane of his horse, "what
then, sire?"
"Then he should have the best earldom in the north, were it but for
the sake of her he loved and lost," said the brave old King, as he
spurred once more to battle; but alas! disheartened by the loss of
three of their greatest leaders, despite the bravery of Malcolm, and
the fiery example of this warrior of the Murrayland, the Scots began
to give way and retreat, but with their faces and weapons to the foe,
until they gained an old rampart formed of turf, trees, and stones,
the relic of former wars.
There the king's preserver encountered Enrique, the second Danish
leader, and, under Malcolm's eye, cut off his head, and holding it
aloft with one hand and his dagger with the other, cried, in Gaelic,--
"_Eris-skene!_--by this knife I did it."
"Eriskene, my brave man, thy name shall be," said the King; but
natheless these valiant deeds, the Scots were still borne back in
disorder.
Malcolm was swept away with the crowd of fugitives, who were all
wedged in a narrow valley, till he found himself near an old chapel
at Mortlach, which was dedicated to Saint Molach, the bishop and
confessor, a Scot who, in the seventh century, was the assistant of
St. Boniface of Ross, and whose bones lay in that sequestered fane.
Here the king raised his gauntletted hands to heaven, and prayed that
the holy saint would intercede with God and St. Andrew for Scotland
and her people, vowing that, if they obtained a victory, he would
increase the chapel by three lengths of his spear, and make the
church of a bishoprick dedicated to Heaven and its service. Wheeling
round at that moment, he found a third Danish captain close by him,
and slew him by one thrust of his lance, and restored courage to the
Scots.
"Victory! Victory!" cried Malcolm; "God and St. Andrew for Scotland!"
Like a torrent the Scots again rushed through the narrow vale, and
again many a tartan plaid and many an eagle's wing was dyed in the
reddest blood of Denmark. So furious was their new onset, that the
Danes were swept along the valley like dry leaves before a stormy
wind, and, over a field strewn with gashed corpses and bleeding men,
were driven in headlong flight towards the sea. The slaughter was
terrible!
Not a man of them saw the sun sink behind the great ridge of
Benrinnes; and when daylight faded in the west, the king found
himself breathless, weary, and alone in a silent and sequestered
place, where a brawling stream, flowing from a deep copse-wooded
glen, mingled its waters with those of the Fiddich, which roll from
the mountains down to the Lowlands of Banftshire.
The gloomy pines were shaking their wiry cones in the soft evening
wind; a deep blue, darkening into a dusky purple, tinted the distant
hills; the evening star was glimmering amid the blush that lingered
in the west; and the king sat down by a tree to think and to pray.
After the fury, the excitement, and slaughter of the past day, his
neart felt oppressed by its own thoughts, and a glow of rapture
struggled with his sorrow, for Heaven had that day accorded victory
to his people; and kneeling on the grass, there, in solitude and
unseen, he raised his aged eyes and hands in thanksgiving and in
prayer to God and the patron saint of Mortlach.
While he was praying thus, there came a child with a pitcher to draw
water at the stream--a little golden-haired girl of eight years,
whose face was beautiful as that of an angel, and whose bare feet, as
they brushed the heather-bells, seemed white as new-fallen snow. She
did not perceive the king as she stooped over the water in a cool and
shady spot, and sang while her vessel filled.
"What is this that stirs within me," sighed the king, who was
troubled by the sight of this child, and whose heart yearned for for
the fairness and the beauty of her face, with the brightness and
softness of her eyes, reminded him of Cora, when she was a child;
and, that nothing might be wanting to complete this dear illusion,
the girl sang the soft, low song of "The Owl;" and as the poor old
king, still remaining on his knees, listened breathlessly, he almost
seemed to hear the voice of Cora mingling, as of old, with the notes
of her harp; "but Cora," thought he, "is sleeping in her grave among
the unblest waters of the Clyde, and her harp is in her silent
chamber, far away beyond the mighty Grampians and the broad Firth of
Tay, in the lonely Castle of Dunfermline."
The King now called the child to him, and though her first impulses
were fear and flight, on hearing his voice, and beholding a stranger
so brilliantly armed, the reverence of his aspect and the kindness of
his manner soothed and delighted her, and she approached with
timidity and curiosity mingled in her charming little face. The eyes
of Malcolm filled, and his heart swelled as he gazed on her, and
would fain have kissed, but feared to alarm her.
"Child," said he, "ken ye where I may find a bield wherein to rest me
for the night; I am an auld man and a weary one, for I have fought in
battle this lee-lang summer day."
"My mother bydes on Fiddich side," replied the child, "and though she
dreads all strangers, she cannot fear you, for ye are auld and kind;
and my father is a strong man whom none dare wrong, for he is the
boldest archer on the Braes of Auchindoune."
"My name is Malcolm Mac Kenneth," said the King; "auld I trow I
be--yea ten times your age, my bairn, but give me your hand in mine
and lead on."
Leaning on his long sword, with his silver tresses floating over his
mailed shoulders, the king walked along, led by the smiling child,
who peeped upward at him timidly from time to time through her
clustering curls, as they went through a daisied haugh, and among the
sweetly scented hawthorn birks. She soon prattled and talked to the
_auld knycht_, as if she had known him for all the years of her
little life; and when the good king felt the warm glow of the evening
on his cheek, and saw the bright flowers that spangled the banks of
the stream, and when he heard the rustle of the summer leaves, and
the merry brawl of the mountain burn mingling with the glad voices of
children, he felt himself young again, and his heart grew light and
joyous as he forgot the corpse-strewn field that lay near the old
Tower of Balvenie and all along the shore of the rushing Fiddich.
"Little one," said the King, "who taught thee the song of 'The Owl'?"
"My mother," replied the child.
The King sighed heavily; then after a pause, he asked,--"And thy
name, little one--what is it?"
"Cora----"
"Cora!" he reiterated, and bursting into tears, pressed her to his
breast; "I might have guessed it--Cora! what other name could be
borne by one so bright, so beautiful, and so innocent; but be not
alarmed my poor little one, for I once had a Cora like thee."
"Oh, here we byde, and yonder is my mother!" said the child, who was
terrified by the stranger's emotion; and now they found themselves
before a hunter's cot, the walls and roof of which were formed of
turf and clay; and over the door of which were the branching antlers
of a stag. Around it was a thicket of dark hawthorns, with all their
white blossoms in full and fragrant bloom,--for as the reader has no
doubt long since surmised, this was the humble dwelling of Mac Ian
Rua which the king approached, and the beautiful matron who stood at
its lowly door, with two babies at her knee and one in her arms, was
his daughter Cora; yet the king, whose mind was full of her, knew her
not; for she no longer wore the rich attire, the garments of
many-coloured silk, the jewels and golden armlets of old, with which
he had last seen her; but a homespun kirtle and linen tunic with
sleeves that reached only to her white elbows; and about her tresses,
which once waved round her head like a golden halo, was plaited a
plain linen fillet--the _heafodes roegel_, or headrail of the Lowland
peasant woman--an adoption from the Saxons--who dwelt beyond the
English border.
The King gazed upon her earnestly, yet he knew her not; and though he
was older and his face was more wrinkled,--though his eyes were sad
and haggard, and his hair, which had been grey, was now white as the
snows of Ben Mhor, Cora knew her parent--that princely sire who had
loved her so well of old--and all the daughter gushed up in her
heart; yet not a word could she sajr, but gazed upon him trembling
with sorrow and remorse, with fear, with love, and hope, while her
children clung to her skirts, and she pressed to her bosom their
youngest born--the child of Mac Ian Rua, the banished huntsman.
"Good woman, I seek but a night's shelter in your sheiling, till my
train can join me," said the King; "be not alarmed, I am a Scottish
soldier, and have been fighting all day down the waterside. The foes
are vanquished, and the King is safe. Allow me to enter; and believe
that kindness will not be unrewarded. My name is Malcolm Mac
Kenneth."
The tongue of Cora was without words. Silently she led Malcolm into
her humble hut, and silently placed a seat for him, spreading the
softest deerskin under his feet,--for her gentle heart was full of
old thoughts and loving memories that came crowding fast and
remorselessly upon her--summoned back, as it were, by the sound of
her father's voice; yet that voice was sadder in tone, and more
tremulous than it was wont to be of old; and that conviction stirred
her hoart of hearts, and crossing her hands upon her bosom, she
thought,--"Oh, pardon me, God--for it is I who have caused this!"
"Hast thou no words to welcome me, good woman, or does this armour,
even when on an auld man's back, so scare thee?" said the King,
kindly, taking one of the children on his knee, as he perceived that
she was gazing eagerly, mournfully, and with awe upon him, as he sat
near the little window, with his silver tresses glittering in the
light of the west, and his wrinkled hand resting on the flaxen head
of his little conductress.
Cora could control her emotions no longer!
"Father--sire!" she exclaimed wildly, as she threw herself upon the
clay floor and embraced his knees; "oh, father! dost thou not know
me? Have these few years so sorely changed me? I am Cora--thine own
Cora, who was swept down the Lynn of Clyde. Beloved father and
king--behold me at thy feet! Oh thou whom I have so cruelly and so
wickedly forsaken in thine old age, pardon and forgive me, lest these
younglings should forsake me in turn; forgive me and bless me, though
I have sinned against God and thee!"
These words terrified the old king as if a spirit had spoken them.
He held her from him at arm's length, and his eyes wandered over her
face and person with an expression of fear and wonder.
"I am Cora, the little child that clambered at your knee, and nestled
in your bosom, in old Dunfermline Tower," she exclaimed,
passionately; "I am Cora whose cheek was once so dimpled--whose hair
was so bright--whose little mouth you kissed so often and so
kindly----"
"Cora was drowned! oh day of horror--horror--horror!" replied the
troubled King; "she is dead and at rest."
"She is not, for I am she."
"Thou?" he exclaimed.
"I."
"Impossible!"
"I. Oh father, am I indeed so changed?"
A glare shot over the king's keen eyes; he trembled, and stretching
out his hands, drew her towards him, but a cloud came over his brow,
and pausing, he said,--
"And these children?"
"Are the offspring of Mac Ian Rua."
"Born of thee?"
"My father,--oh, my father!"
"Born of the daughter of Scotland?" he added, bitterly.
"My heart, long steeped in sorrow, will burst at last. In pity,
father, have mercy on us."
"And where is the lawless traitor who stole thee from me, and hath
concealed thee for these many long years, my daughter?"
"Say rather, where is he who saved me when the greatest and noblest
in the land--yea, even Kenneth of the Isles and Dunbar of Lothian,
hung back."
"Kenneth of the Isles and Dunbar of Lothian are both lying dead in
their armour by the walls of Balvenie;--God rest them! they fought
and fell for our dear Scotland. But Mac Ian; where is he?"
"Yonder he comes down the glade, with a stag on his back,--your
favourite huntsman, so ready of hand and true of aim; the same Mac
Ian Rua as of old," said Cora, in a trembling voice.
"Heaven be praised, my daughter, I have found thee; yet oh, to find
thee thus!"
"Oh, embrace me, or I shall die; let me feel your cheek on mine once
more, my father!"
"Come, then--come to my old heart," said the King, as he sobbed; for
it was a rude old age, when even kings had human hearts, and nobles
were not without them.
"Forgive me my sins against thee," said Cora, in a choking voice.
"They are forgiven."
"And my husband--Mac Ian Rua?"
"Even he, too, is forgiven," said the King, as the door of the hut
was thrown open, and the tall huntsman, fresh from the pursuit, and
still clad in his lurich--the same stalwart warrior who had that day
slain Enrique and Enotus, and saved his monarch's life, and whose
loud bugle blast had rallied the Scottish bands--stood before Cora
and her father, with astonishment and fear in his eyes, while one
hand grasped his axe, and the other the antlers of the stag, and his
ruddy children clung joyously to his sturdy legs.
To dwell longer on this scene would mar its effect.
The huntsman was forgiven, and the old king spent the happiest night
of his long life with his daughter on one side of him, and her
husband on the other, while his grandchildren clambered about him,
and in wild glee rolled about the floor the glittering helmet which
was encircled by a diadem.
He told them how he had pined and sorrowed, and how deep his grief
had been,--for Cora was ever the object around which all his
affections had been entwined,--and how desolate his heart, his
hearth, and home had been since her loss.
Then Cora related, that with the exception of bitter remorse at
times, how happily they had dwelt in this green bower beside the
Fiddich, far away from courts and kings, with their children budding
round them, maintained by the fruit of her own industry and the skill
of Mac Ian's hand.
They supped that night on venison broiled on a wooden spit, with
cakes of Cora's baking, and nut-brown ale of her husband's brewing.
When the old king was disencumbered of his armour, Mac Ian and he sat
over their cans and fought the battle thrice again; and when he lay
down to sleep on a soft bed of freshly-pulled heather and smooth
skins--the spoils of fell and forest--Cora produced a clairshach, or
harp cf humble form, and once more sang him to sleep, as of old, by
the warlike lay of the king of bards; that soul-stirring lay he loved
so well--"The Battle of Cattraeth;"--and often, as his eyes were
closing, the old man raised himself with a flush of ardour, as she
related the slaughter of the men of Dunedin in Anuerins' burning
words, which told how, among the Pagan Saxons, "were three hundred
warriors arrayed in gilded armour--three loricated bands, each with
three commanders wearing torques of gold."
With early morning came the king's train. They had traced him to the
hut, and all flushed with victory, pursuit, and slaughter, Duncan,
Earl of Caithness, Nicholas, the secretary, Hugo of the Rutherford,
Crinian, Thane of Dunbar, Gillemichael, Earl of Fife, and others,
stood by his humble couch of skins, and after reporting the utter
extermination of the Danes, heard him relate the joyous and wondrous
discovery he had made overnight.
In Scotland there were great rejoicings for the restoration of the
long lost Cora, and there could no longer be competition or discord
about her hand; for Græme, Dunbar, and Kenneth lay dead on the field
of Mortlach, and she was now a wedded woman. For his bravery in
saving first the life of Cora from the waters of the Clyde, and
secondly the life of the king in battle, the huntsman, Mac Ian, was
made thane of a thanedom in the shire of Rhynfrew; and Malcolm gave
him a coat of arms, which his descendants bear to the present time.
Moreover, he nobly fulfilled the vow he had made to St. Molach, by
adding to the chapel thrice the length of his long Scottish spear;
thus it became, as we may still see it, a church, and he made it the
cathedral of the diocese of Mortlach, of which St. Beyne was the
first bishop, and Nechtan the last, when the see was translated by
King David I. to Aberdeen, and enriched in all its revenues: and in
memory of the bloody field so auspiciously won by the saint's
intercession, he desired that the heads of Enrique, Enotus, and
another valiant Dane, should be built into the wall, and there _to
this hour_ we may still see them, bare, white, and ghastly, with
their teeth grinning from the stonework, and in the brow of each is
the broken mark of the blow under which he died.
In that church is the shrine of St. Molach, whose festival was held
on the 25th of June, and who became famous all over Scotland, but
especially in Ross-shire and Argyle, where another church was built
in his honour at Lismore.
Such was the story of the princess and the huntsman; and the moral of
it is, that we should never despair, for the spokes in the wheel of
fortune follow each other so fast that all are uppermost in their
turn. Thus, the once despised Mac Ian Rua became the head of a great
house, still named ERSKINE, in memory of his words at Mortlach; and
Malcolm II. gave him for his cognizance a hand holding a dagger, with
the motto, "Je pense plus," and a shield _argent_, with a pale,
_sable_; then as Mac Ian loved the Clyde--for there he had won the
beautiful Cora--Malcolm gave him the lands, barony, and castle of
Erskine, and from his marriage sprung a race that never failed their
king or country--the loyal and noble Earls of Mar.*
Such was the story of the Admiral, an old legend, which, as before
mentioned, I have given in my own words rather than his; for many
parts of the narrative, as _he_ told it, would not have been
over-intelligible to landsmen.
* The death of Cora, at Cora Lynn, is an ancient legend, still
remembered in Clydesdale. The scene of the Battle of Mortlach is
still marked by many sepulchral mounds, full of bones and broken
armour. The bishopric is said to have originated in the king's vow,
and it was confirmed by a bull of Pope Benedict VIII. The charter of
erection by the king is still preserved in the chartulary of
Aberdeen. It begins in the usual form "Malcolmus Rex Scottorum," and
consists of only five or six lines, and ends with "Teste meipso apud
Forfar, octavo die mensis Octobris, anno regni mei sexto."