[Frontispiece: The Black Watch in Canada. P. 267]
LEGENDS
OF
THE BLACK WATCH:
OR,
Forty-second Highlanders.
BY
JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "HOLLYWOOD HALL," ETC., ETC.
_NEW EDITION._
LONDON:
ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, AND ROUTLEDGE,
FARRINGDON STREET,
NEW YORK: 66, WALKER STREET.
1860.
[_The Author reserves the right of translation._]
LONDON
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS,
CHANDOS STREET.
PREFACE.
Woven up with an occasional legend or superstition gleaned among the
mountains from whence its soldiers came, the warlike details and many
of the names which occur in the following pages, belong to the
military history of the country and of the brave Regiment whose title
is given to our Book.
It is generally acknowledged that but for the retention of the kilt
in the British service, and for the high character of those regiments
who wear it> the military _name_ of Scotland had been long since
forgotten in Europe, and her national existence had been as
completely ignored during the Wars of Wellington as in those of
Marlborough; nor in times more recent had the electric wire announced
that, when the cloud of Russian horse came on at Balaclava and our
allies fled, "the Scots stood firm."
The kilt alone indicated _their_ country, as our Scots Lowland
regiments are clad like the rest of the Line. The martial and
picturesque costume of the ancient clans which is now so completely
identified with modern Scotland, is one of the few remnants of the
past that remain to her; and it is remarkable that it has survived so
long; for it was the garb of those adventurous Greeks who fought
under Xenophon, and of those hardy warriors who spread the terror of
the Roman name from the shores of the Euphrates on the east, to those
of the Caledonian Firths upon the west.
It was the best public service of the great Pitt when he first
rallied round the British throne, as soldiers of the Highland
Regiments, the men of that warlike race, who had been so long
inimical to the House of Hanover.
"I sought for merit wherever it was to be found," said he; "it is my
boast that I was the first minister who looked for it and found it on
the mountains of the north. I called it forth, and drew into your
service a hardy and intrepid race of men, who, when left by your
jealousy, became a prey to the artifice of your enemies, and who, in
the war before the last, had well nigh gone to have overturned the
State. These men in the last war were brought to combat by your
side; they served with fidelity as they fought with honour, and
conquered for you in every part of the world."
Highlander and Lowlander are now so mingled by intermarriage that
there is scarcely a subject in the northern kingdom without more or
less Celtic blood in his or her veins; and to this mixture of race,
which unites the fire and impatience of the former to the steady
perseverance of the latter, Scotland owes her present prosperity.
The Clans are passing away, and with them a thousand great and
glorious historical and romantic associations; while, by the rapid
spread of education, even their language cannot long survive; "but
when time shall have drawn its veil over the past as over the
present--when the _last_ broadsword shall have been broken on the
anvil, and the shreds of the _last_ plaid tossed to the winds upon
the cairn, or been bleached within the raven's nest, posterity may
look back with regret to a people who have so marked the history, the
poetry, and the achievements of a distant age;" and who, in the ranks
of the British army, have stood foremost in the line of battle and
given place to none!
20, DANUBE STREET, EDINBURGH,
_October_, 1859.
CONTENTS.
I. THE STORY OF FARQUHAR SHAW
II. THE SEVEN GRENADIERS
III. THE LOST REGIMENT--A LOVE STORY
IV. MASSACRE AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY
V. THE WIFE OF THE RED COMYN--MY GRANDFATHER'S STORY
VI. STORY OF THE GREY MOUSQUETAIRE--A FRAGMENT OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR
VII. THE LETTRE DE CACHET
VIII. THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN GRANT
IX. THE STORY OF DICK DUFF
X. THE FOREST OF GAICH--OR THE CAPTAIN DHU
NOTES
LEGENDS
OF
THE BLACK WATCH,
I.
THE STORY OF FARQUHAR SHAW.
This soldier, whose name, from the circumstances connected with his
remarkable story, daring courage, and terrible fate, is still
remembered in the regiment, in the early history of which he bears so
prominent a part, was one of the first who enlisted in Captain
Campbell of Finab's independent band of the _Reicudan Dhu_, or Black
Watch, when the six separate companies composing this Highland force
were established along the Highland Border in 1729, to repress the
predatory spirit of certain tribes, and to prevent the levy of black
mail. The companies were independent, and at that time wore the clan
tartan of their captains, who were Simon Frazer, the celebrated Lord
Lovat; Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell; Grant of Ballindalloch;
Alister Campbell of Finab, whose father fought at Darien; Ian
Campbell of Carrick, and Deors Monro of Culcairn.
The privates of these companies were all men of a superior station,
being mostly cadets of good families--gentlemen of the old Celtic and
patriarchal lines; and of baronial proprietors. In the Highlands,
the only genuine mark of aristocracy was descent from the founder of
the tribe; all who claimed this were styled _uislain_, or gentlemen,
and, as such, when off duty, were deemed the equal of the highest
chief in the land. Great care was taken by the six captains to
secure men of undoubted courage, of good stature, stately deportment,
and handsome figure. Thus, in all the old Highland regiments, but
more especially the _Reicudan Dhu_, equality of blood and similarity
of descent, secured familiarity and regard between the officers and
their men--for the latter deemed themselves inferior to no man who
breathed the air of heaven. Hence, according to an English engineer
officer, who frequently saw these independent companies, "many of
those private gentlemen-soldiers have gillies or servants to attend
upon them in their quarters, and upon a march, to carry their
provisions, baggage, and firelocks."
Such was the composition of the corps, now first embodied among that
remarkable people, the Scottish Highlanders--"a people," says the
Historian of Great Britain, "untouched by the Roman or Saxon
invasions on the south, and by those of the Danes on the east and
west skirts of their country--the _unmixed remains_ of that vast
Celtic empire, which once stretched from the Pillars of Hercules to
Archangel."
The Reicudan Dhu were armed with the usual weapons and accoutrements
of the line; but, in addition to these, had the arms of their native
country--the broadsword, target, pistol, and long dagger, while the
sergeants carried the old Celtic _tuagh_, or Lochaber axe. It was
distinctly understood by all who enlisted in this new force, that
their military duties were to be confined _within_ the Highland
Border, where, from the wild, predatory spirit of those clans which
dwelt next the Lowlands, it was known that they would find more than
enough of military service of the most harassing kind. In the
conflicts which daily ensued among the mountains--in the sudden
marches by night; the desperate brawls among Caterans, who were armed
to the teeth, fierce as nature and outlawry could make them, and who
dwelt in wild and pathless fastnesses secluded amid rocks, woods, and
morasses, there were few who in courage, energy, daring, and activity
equalled Farquhar Shaw, a gentleman from the Braes of Lochaber, who
was esteemed the _premier_ private in the company of Campbell of
Finab, which was then quartered in that district; for each company
had its permanent cantonment and scene of operations during the
eleven years which succeeded the first formation of the Reicudan Dhu.
Farquhar was a perfect swordsman, and deadly shot alike with the
musket and pistol; and his strength was such, that he had been known
to twist a horse-shoe, and drive his _skene dhu_ to the hilt in a
pine log; while his activity and power of enduring hunger, thirst,
heat, cold and fatigue, became a proverb among the companies of the
Watch: for thus had he been reared and trained by his father, a
genuine old Celtic gentleman and warrior, whose memory went back to
the days when Dundee led the valiant and true to the field of
Rinrory, and in whose arms the viscount fell from his horse in the
moment of victory, and was borne to the house of Urrard to die. He
was a true Highlander of the old school; for an old school has
existed in all ages and everywhere, even among the Arabs, the
children of Ishmael, in the desert; for they, too, have an olden time
to which they look back with regret, as being nobler, better, braver,
and purer than the present. Thus, the father of Farquhar Shaw was a
grim _duinewissal_, who never broke bread or saw the sun rise without
uncovering his head and invoking the names of "God, the Blessed Mary,
and St. Colme of the Isle;" who never sat down to a meal without
opening wide his gates, that the poor and needy might enter freely;
who never refused the use of his purse and sword to a friend or
kinsman, and was never seen unarmed, even in his own dining-room; who
never wronged any man; but who never suffered a wrong or affront to
pass, without sharp and speedy vengeance; and who, rather than
acknowledge the supremacy of the House of Hanover, died sword in hand
at the rising in Glensheil. For this act, his estates were seized by
the House of Breadalbane, and his only son, Farquhar, became a
private soldier in the ranks of the Black Watch.
It may easily be supposed, that the son of such a father was imbued
with all his cavalier spirit, his loyalty and enthusiasm, and that
his mind was filled by all the military, legendary, and romantic
memories of his native mountains, the land of the Celts, which, as a
fine Irish ballad says, was THEIRS
Ere the Roman or the Saxon, the Norman or the Dane,
Had first set foot in Britain, or trampled heaps of slain,
Whose manhood saw the Druid rite, at forest tree and rock--
And savage tribes of Britain round the shrines of Zernebok;
Which for generations witnessed all the glories of the Gael,
Since their Celtic sires sang war-songs round the sacred fires of Baal.
When it was resolved by Government to form the six independent
Highland companies into one regiment, Farquhar Shaw was left on the
sick list at the cottage of a widow, named Mhona Cameron, near
Inverlochy, having been wounded in a skirmish with Caterans in
Glennevis, and he writhed on his sickbed when his comrades, under
Finab, marched for the Birks of Aberfeldy, the muster-place of the
whole, where the companies were to be united into one battalion,
under the celebrated John Earl of Crawford and Lindesay, the last of
his ancient race, a hero covered with wounds and honours won in the
services of Britain and Russia.
Weak, wan, and wasted though he was (for his wound, a slash from a
pole-axe, had been a severe one), Farquhar almost sprang from bed
when he heard the notes of their retiring pipes dying away, as they
marched through Maryburgh, and round by the margin of Lochiel. His
spirit of honour was ruffled, moreover, by a rumour, spread by his
enemies the Caterans, against whom he had fought repeatedly, that he
was growing faint-hearted at the prospect of the service of the Black
Watch being extended beyond the Highland Border. As rumours to this
effect were already finding credence in the glens, the fierce, proud
heart of Farquhar burned within him with indignation and unmerited
shame.
At last, one night, an old crone, who came stealthily to the cottage
in which he was residing, informed him that, by the same outlaws who
were seeking to deprive him of his honour, a subtle plan had been
laid to surround his temporary dwelling, and put him to death, in
revenge for certain wounds inflicted by his sword upon their comrades.
The energy and activity of the Black Watch had long since driven the
Caterans to despair, and nothing but the anticipation of killing
Farqnhar comfortably, and chopping him into ounce pieces at leisure,
enabled them to survive their troubles with anything like Christian
fortitude and resignation.
"And this is their plan, mother?" said Farquhar to the crone.
"To burn the cottage, and you with it."
"Dioul! say you so, Mother Mhona," he exclaimed; "then 'tis time I
were betaking me to the hills. Better have a cool bed for a few
nights on the sweet-scented heather, than be roasted in a burning
cottage, like a fox in its hole."
In vain the cotters besought him to seek concealment elsewhere; or to
tarry until he had gained his fall strength.
"Were I in the prime of strength, I would stay here," said Farquhar;
"and when sleeping on my sword and target, would fear nothing. If
these dogs of Caterans came, they should be welcome to my life, if I
could not redeem it by the three best lives in their band; but I am
weak as a growing boy, and so shall be off to the free mountain side,
and seek the path that leads to the Birks of Aberfeldy."
"But the Birks are far from here, Farquhar," urged old Mhona.
"_Attempt_, and _Did-not_, were the worst of Fingal's hounds,"
replied the soldier. "Farquhar will owe you a day in harvest for all
your kindness; but his comrades wait, and go he must! Would it not
be a strange thing and a shameful, too, if all the Reicudan Dhu
should march down into the flat, bare land of the Lowland clowns, and
Farquhar not be with them? What would Finab, his captain, think? and
what would all in Brae Lochaber say?"
"Yet pause," continued the crones.
"Pause! Dhia! my father's bones will soon be clattering in their
grave, far away in green Glensheil, where he died for King James,
Mhona."
"Beware," continued the old woman, "lest you go for ever, Farquhar."
"It is longer to _for ever_ than to Beltane, and by that day I must
be at the Birks of Aberfeldy."
Then, seeing that he was determined, the crones muttered among
themselves that the _tarvecoill_ would fall upon him; but Farquhar
Shaw, though far from being free of his native superstitions, laughed
aloud; for the tarvecoill is a black cloud, which, if seen on a
new-year's eve, is said to portend stormy weather; hence it is a
proverb for a misfortune about to happen.
"You were unwise to become a soldier, Farquhar," was their last
argument.
"Why?"
"The tongue may tie a knot which the teeth cannot untie."
"As your husbands' tongues did, when they married you all, poor men!"
was the good-natured retort of Farquhar. "But fear not for me; ere
the snow begins to melt on Ben Nevis, and the sweet wallflower to
bloom on the black Castle of Inverlochy, I will be with you all
again," he added, while belting his tartan-plaid about him, slinging
his target on his shoulder, and whistling upon Bran, his favourite
stag-hound; he then set out to join the regiment, by the nearest
route, on the skirts of Ben Nevis, resolving to pass the head of
Lochlevin, through Larochmohr, and the deep glens that lead towards
the Braes of Rannoch, a long, desolate, and perilous journey, but
with his sword, his pistols, and gigantic hound to guard him, his
plaid for a covering, and the purple heather for a bed wherever he
halted, Farquhar feared nothing.
His faithful dog Bran, which had shared his couch and plaid since the
time when it was a puppy, was a noble specimen of the Scottish hound,
which was used of old in the chase of the white bull, the wolf, and
the deer, and which is in reality the progenitor of the common
greyhound; for the breed has degenerated in warmer climates than the
stern north. Bran (so named from Bran of old) was of such size,
strength, and courage, that he was able to drag down the strongest
deer; and, in the last encounter with the Caterans of Glen Nevis, he
had saved the life of Farquhar, by tearing almost to pieces one who
would have slain him, as he lay wounded on the field. His hair was
rough and grey; his limbs were muscular and wiry; his chest was broad
and deep; his keen eyes were bright as those of an eagle. Such dogs
as Bran bear a prominent place in Highland song and story. They were
remarkable for their sagacity and love of their master, and their
solemn and dirge-like howl was ever deemed ominous and predictive of
death and woe.
Bran and his master were inseparable. The noble dog had long been
invaluable to him when on hunting expeditions, and now since he had
become a soldier in the Reicudan Dhu, Bran was always on guard with
him, and the sharer of all his duties; thus Farquhar was wont to
assert, "that for watchfulness on sentry, Bran's two ears were worth
all the rest in the Black Watch put together."
The sun had set before Farquhar left the green thatched clachan, and
already the bases of the purple mountains were dark, though a red
glow lingered on their heath-clad summits. Lest some of the Cateran
band, of whose malevolence he was now the object, might already have
knowledge or suspicion of his departure and be watching him with
lynx-like eyes from behind some rock or bracken bush, he pursued for
a time a path which led to the westward, until the darkness closed
completely in; and then, after casting round him a rapid and
searching glance, he struck at once into the old secluded drove-way
or Fingalian road, which descended through the deep gorge of
Corriehoilzie towards the mouth of Glencoe.
On his left towered Ben Nevis--or "the Mountain of Heaven"--sublime
and vast, four thousand three hundred feet and more in height, with
its pale summits gleaming in the starlight, under a coating of
eternal snow. On his right lay deep glens yawning between pathless
mountains that arose in piles above each other, their sides torn and
rent by a thousand water-courses, exhibiting rugged banks of rock and
gravel, fringed by green waving bracken leaves and black whin bushes,
or jagged by masses of stone, lying in piles and heaps, like the
black, dreary, and Cyclopean ruins "of an earlier world." Before him
lay the wilderness of Larochmohr, a scene of solitary and solemn
grandeur, where, under the starlight, every feature of the landscape,
every waving bush, or silver birch; every bare scalp of porphyry, and
every granite block torn by storms from the cliffs above; every
rugged watercourse, tearing in foam through its deep marl bed between
the tufted heather, seemed shadowy, unearthly, and weird--dark and
mysterious; and all combined, were more than enough to impress with
solemnity the thoughts of any man, but more especially those of a
Highlander; for the savage grandeur and solitude of that district at
such an hour--the gloaming--were alike, to use a paradox, soothing
and terrific.
There was no moon. Large masses of crape-like vapour sailed across
the blue sky, and by gradually veiling the stars, made yet darker the
gloomy path which Farquhar had to traverse. Even the dog Bran seemed
impressed by the unbroken stillness, and trotted close as a shadow by
the bare legs of his master.
For a time Farquhar Shaw had thought only of the bloodthirsty
Caterans, who in their mood of vengeance at the Black Watch in
general, and at him in particular, would have hewn him to pieces
without mercy; but now as the distance increased between himself and
their haunts by the shores of the Lochy and Eil, other thoughts arose
in his mind, which gradually became a prey to the superstition
incident alike to his age and country, as all the wild tales he had
heard of that sequestered district, and indeed of that identical glen
which he was then traversing, crowded upon his memory, until he,
Farquhar Shaw, who would have faced any six men sword in hand, or
would have charged a grape-shotted battery without fear, actually
sighed with apprehension at the waving of a hazel bush on the lone
hill side.
Of many wild and terrible things this locale was alleged to be the
scene, and with some of these the Highland reader may be as familiar
as Farquhar.
A party of the Black Watch in the summer of 1738, had marched up the
glen, under the command of Corporal Malcolm MacPherson (of whom more
anon), with orders to seize a flock of sheep and arrest the
proprietor, who was alleged to have "lifted" (_i.e._, stolen) them
from the Camerons of Lochiel. The soldiers found the flock to the
number of three hundred, grazing on a hill side, all fat black-faced
sheep with fine long wool, and seated near them, crook in hand, upon
a fragment of rock, they found the person (one of the Caterans
already referred to) who was alleged to have stolen them. He was a
strange-looking old fellow, with a long white beard that flowed below
his girdle; he was attended by two huge black dogs of fierce and
repulsive aspect. He laughed scornfully when arrested by the
corporal, and hollowly the echoes of his laughter rang among the
rocks, while his giant hounds bayed and erected their bristles, and
their eyes flashed as if emitting sparks of fire.
The soldiers now surrounded the sheep and drove them down the hill
side into the glen, from whence they proceeded towards Maryburgh,
with a piper playing in front of the flock, for it is known that
sheep will readily follow the music of the pipe. The Black Watch
were merry with their easy capture, but none in MacPherson's party
were so merry as the captured shepherd, whom, for security, the
corporal had fettered to the left hand of his brother Samuel; and in
this order they proceeded for three miles, until they reached a
running stream; when, lo! the whole of the three hundred fat sheep
and the black dogs turned into clods of brown earth; and, with a wild
mocking laugh that seemed to pass away on the wind which swept the
mountain waste, their shepherd vanished, and no trace of his presence
remained but the empty ring of the fetters which dangled from the
left wrist of Samuel MacPherson, who felt every hair on his head
bristle under his bonnet with terror and affright.
This sombre glen was also the abode of the _Daoine Shie_, or Good
Neighbours, as they are named in the Lowlands; and of this fact the
wife of the pay-sergeant of Farquhar's own company could bear
terrible evidence. These imps are alleged to have a strange love for
abstracting young girls and women great with child, and leaving in
their places bundles of dry branches or withered reeds in the
resemblance of the person thus abstracted, but to all appearance dead
or in a trance; they are also exceeding partial to having their own
bantlings nursed by human mothers.
The wife of the sergeant (who was Duncan Campbell of the family of
Duncaves) was without children, but was ever longing to possess one,
and had drunk of all the holy wells in the neighbourhood without
finding herself much benefited thereby. On a summer evening when the
twilight was lingering on the hills, she was seated at her cottage
door gazing listlessly on the waters of the Eil, which were reddened
by the last flush of the west, when suddenly a little man and woman
of strange aspect appeared before her--so suddenly that they seemed
to have sprung from the ground--and offered her a child to nurse.
Her husband, the sergeant, was absent on duty at Dumbarton; the poor
lonely woman had no one to consult, or from whom to seek permission,
and she at once accepted the charge as one long coveted.
"Take this pot of ointment," said the man, impressively, giving Moina
Campbell a box made of shells, "and be careful from time to time to
touch the eyelids of our child therewith."
"Accept this purse of money," said the woman, giving her a small bag
of green silk; "'tis our payment in advance, and anon we will come
again."
The quaint little father and mother then each blew a breath upon the
face of the child and disappeared, or as the sergeant's wife said,
seemed to melt away into the twilight haze. The money given by the
woman was gold and silver; but Moina knew not its value, for the
coins were ancient, and bore the head of King Constantine IV. The
child was a strange, pale and wan little creature, with keen, bright,
and melancholy eyes; its lean freakish hands were almost transparent,
and it was ever sad and moaning. Yet in the care of the sergeant's
wife it throve bravely, and always after its eyes were touched with
the ointment it laughed, crowed, screamed, and exhibited such wild
joy that it became almost convulsed.
This occurred so often that Moina felt tempted to apply the ointment
to her own eyes, when lo! she perceived a group of the dwarfish
Daoine Shie--little men in trunk hose and sugar-loaf hats, and little
women in hoop petticoats all of a green colour--dancing round her,
and making grimaces and antic gestures to amuse the child, which to
her horror she was now convinced was a bantling of the spirits who
dwelt in Larochmohr!
What was she to do? To offend or seem to fear them was dangerous,
and though she was now daily tormented by seeing these green imps
about her, she affected unconsciousness and seemed to observe them
not; but prayed in her heart for her husband's speedy return, and to
be relieved of her fairy charge, to whom she faithfully performed her
trust, for in time the child grew strong and beautiful; and when,
again on a twilight eve, the parents came to claim it, the woman wept
as it was taken from her, for she had learned to love the little
creature, though it belonged neither to heaven nor earth.
Some months after, Moina Campbell, more lonely now than ever, was
passing through Larochmohr, when suddenly within the circle of a
large green fairy ring, she saw thousands, yea myriads of little imps
in green trunk hose and with sugar-loaf hats, dancing and making
merry, and amid them were the child she had nursed and its parents
also, and in terror and distress she addressed herself to them.
The tiny voices within the charmed circle were hushed in an instant,
and all the little men and women became filled with anger. Their
little faces grew red, and their little eyes flashed fire.
"How do _you_ see us?" demanded the father of the fairy child,
thrusting his little conical hat fiercely over his right eye.
"Did I not nurse your child, my friend?" said Moina, trembling.
"But how do you _see us_?" screamed a thousand little voices.
Moina trembled, and was silent.
"Oho!" exclaimed all the tiny voices, like a breeze of wind, "she has
been using our ointment, the insolent mortal!"
"I can alter that," said one fairy man (who being three feet high was
a giant among his fellows), as he blew upward in her face, and in an
instant all the green multitude vanished from her sight; she saw only
the fairy ring and the green bare sides of the silent glen. Of all
the myriads she had seen, not one was visible now.*
* This, and the two legends which follow, were related to me by a
Highlander, who asserted, with the utmost good faith, that they
happened in Glendochart; but I have since seen an Arabian tale, which
somewhat resembles the adventure of the sergeant's wife.
"Fear not, Moina," cried a little voice from the hill side, "for your
husband will prosper." It was the fairy child who spoke.
"But his fate will follow him," added another voice, angrily.
Full of fear the poor woman returned to her cottage, from which, to
her astonishment, she had been absent ten days and nights; but she
saw her husband no more: in the meantime he had embarked for a
foreign land, being gazetted to on ensigncy; thus so far the fairy
promise of his prospering proved true.*
* His "fate" would seem to have followed him, too; for he was killed
at Ticonderoga, when captain-lieutenant of the Black Watch.--See
_Stewart's Sketches_.
Another story flitted through Farquhar's mind, and troubled him quite
as much as its predecessors. In a shieling here a friend of his,
when hunting, one night sought shelter. Finding a fire already
lighted therein he became alarmed, and clambering into the roof sat
upon the cross rafters to wait the event, and ere long there entered
a little old man two feet in height. His head, hands, and feet were
enormously large for the size of his person; his nose was long,
crooked, and of a scarlet hue; his eyes brilliant as diamonds, and
they glared in the light of the fire. He took from his back a bundle
of reeds, and tying them together, proceeded to blow upon them from
his huge mouth and distended cheeks, and as he blew, a skin crept
over the dry bundle, which gradually began to assume the appearance
of a human face and form.
These proceedings were more than the huntsman on his perch above
could endure, and filled by dread that the process below might end in
a troublesome likeness of himself, he dropped a sixpence into his
pistol (for everything evil is proof to lead) and fired straight at
the huge head of the spirit or gnome, which vanished with a shriek,
tearing away in his wrath and flight the whole of the turf wall on
one side of the shieling, which was thus in a moment reduced to ruin.
These memories, and a thousand others of spectral Druids and tall
ghastly warriors, through whose thin forms the twinkling stars would
shine (but these orbs were hidden now) as they hovered by grey cairns
and the grassy graves of old, crowded on the mind of Farquhar; for
there were then, and even now are, more ghosts, devils, and
hobgoblins in the Scottish Highlands than ever were laid of yore in
the Red Sea. Nor need we be surprised at this superstition in the
early days of the Black Watch, when Dr. Henry tells us, in 1831, that
within the last twenty years, when a couple agreed to marry in
Orkney, they went to the Temple of the Moon, which was semicircular,
and there, on her knees, the woman solemnly invoked the spirit of
Woden!
Farquhar, as he strode on, comforted himself with the reflection that
those who are born at night--as his mother had a hundred times told
him he had been--_never saw spirits_; so he took a good dram from his
hunting-flask, and belted his plaid tighter about him, after making a
sign of the cross three times, as a protection against all the
diablerie of the district, but chiefly against a certain malignant
fiend or spirit, who was wont to howl at night among the rocks of
Larochmohr, to hurl storms of snow into the deep vale of
Corriehoilzie, and toss huge blocks of granite into the deep blue
waters of Loch Leven. He shouted on Bran, whistled the march of the
Black Watch, "to keep his spirits cheery," and pushed on his way up
the mountains, while the broad rain drops of a coming tempest plashed
heavily in his face.
He looked up to the "Hill of Heaven." The night clouds were
gathering round its awful summit, wheeling, eddying, and floating in
whirlwinds from the dark chasms of rock that yawn in its sides. The
growling of the thunder among the riven peaks of granite overhead
announced that a tempest was at hand; but though Farquhar Shaw had
come of a brave and adventurous race, and feared nothing earthly, he
could not repress a shudder lest the mournful gusts of the rising
wind might bear with them the cry of the Tar' Uisc, the terrible
Water Bull, or the shrieks of the spirit of the storm!
The lonely man continued to toil up that wilderness till he reached
the shoulder of the mountain, where, on his right, opened the black
narrow gorge, in the deep bosom of which lay Loch Leven, and, on his
left, opened the glens that led towards Loch Treig, the haunt of Damn
mohr a Vonalia, or Enchanted Stag, which was alleged to live for
ever, and be proof to mortal weapons; and now, like a tornado of the
tropics, the storm burst forth in all its fury!
The wind seemed to shriek around the mountain summits and to bellow
in the gorges below, while the thunder hurtled across the sky, and
the lightning, green and ghastly, flashed about the rocks of Loch
Leven, shedding, ever and anon, for an instant, a sudden gleam upon
its narrow stripe of water, and on the brawling torrents that roared
down the mountain sides, and were swelling fast to floods, as the
rain, which had long been falling on the frozen summit of Ben Nevis,
now descended in a broad and blinding torrent that was swept by the
stormy wind over hill and over valley. As Farquhar staggered on, a
gleam of lightning revealed to him a little turf shieling under the
brow of a pine-covered rock, and making a vigorous effort to
withstand the roaring wind, which tore over the bare waste with all
the force and might of a solid and palpable body, he reached it on
his hands and knees. After securing the rude door, which was
composed of three cross bars, he flung himself on the earthen floor
of the hut, breathless and exhausted, while Bran, his dog, as if awed
by the elemental war without, crept close beside him.
As Farquhar's thoughts reverted to all that he had heard of the
district, he felt all a Highlander's native horror of remaining in
the _dark_ in a place so weird and wild; and on finding near him a
quantity of dry wood--bog-pine and oak, stored up, doubtless, by some
thrifty and provident shepherd--he produced his flint and tinder-box,
struck a light, and, with all the readiness of a soldier and
huntsman, kindled a fire in a corner of the shieling, being
determined that if it was the place where, about "the hour when
churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead," the brownies were
alleged to assemble, they should not come upon him unseen or unawares.
Having a venison steak in his havresack, he placed it on the embers
to broil, heaped fresh fuel on his fire, and drawing his plaid round
Bran and himself, wearied by the toil of his journey on foot in such
a night, and over such a country, he gradually dropped asleep,
heedless alike of the storm which raved and bellowed in the dark
glens below, and round the bare scalps of the vast mountain whose
mighty shadows, when falling eastward at eve, darken even the Great
Glen of Albyn.
In his sleep, the thoughts of Farquhar Shaw wandered to his comrades,
then at the Birks of Aberfeldy. He dreamt that a long time--how long
he knew not--had elapsed since he had been in their ranks; but he saw
the Laird of Finab, his captain, surveying him with a gloomy brow,
while the faces of friends and comrades were averted from him.
"Why is this--how is this?" he demanded.
Then he was told that the Reicudan Dhu were disgraced by the
desertion of three of its soldiers, who, on that day, were to die,
and the regiment was paraded to witness their fate. The scene with
all its solemnity and all its terrors grew vividly before him; he
heard the lamenting wail of the pipe as the three doomed men marched
slowly past, each behind his black coffin, and the scene of this
catastrophe was far, far away, he knew not where; but it seemed to be
in a strange country, and then the scene, the sights, and the voices
of the people, were foreign to him. In the background, above the
glittering bayonets and blue bonnets of the Black Watch, rose a lofty
castle of foreign aspect, having a square keep or tower, with four
turrets, the vanes of which were shining in the early morning sun.
In his ears floated the drowsy hum of a vast and increasing multitude.
Farquhar trembled in every limb as the doomed men passed so near him
that he could see their breasts heave as they breathed; but their
faces were concealed from him, for each had his head muffled in his
plaid, according to the old Highland fashion, when imploring mercy or
quarter.
Lots were cast with great solemnity for the firing party or
executioners, and, to his horror, Farquhar found himself one of the
twelve men chosen for this, to every soldier, most obnoxious duty!
When the time came for firing, and the three unfortunates were
kneeling opposite, each within his coffin, and each with his head
muffled in a plaid, Farquhar mentally resolved to close his eyes and
fire at random against the wall of the castle opposite; but some
mysterious and irresistible impulse compelled him to look for a
moment, and lo! the plaid had fallen from the face of one of the
doomed men, and, to his horror, the dreamer beheld _himself_!
His own face was before him, but ghastly and pale, and his own eyes
seemed to be glaring back upon him with affright, while their aspect
was wild, sad, and haggard. The musket dropped from his hand, a
weakness seemed to overspread his limbs, and writhing in agony at the
terrible sight, while a cold perspiration rolled in bead-drops over
his clammy brow, the dreamer started, and awoke, when a terrible
voice, low but distinct, muttered in his ear--
"Farquhar Shaw, bithidth duil ri fear feachd, ach cha bhi duil ri
fear lic!"*
* A man may return from an expedition; but there is no hope that he
may return from the grave.--_A Gaelic Proverb_.
He leaped to his feet with a cry of terror, and found that he was
_not_ alone, as a little old woman was crouching near the embers of
his fire, while Bran, his eyes glaring, his bristles erect, was
growling at her with a fierce angry sound, that rivalled the
bellowing of the storm, which still continued to rave without.
The aspect of this hag was strange. In the light of the fire which
brightened occasionally as the wind swept through the crannies of the
shieling, her eyes glittered, or rather glared like fiery sparks; her
nose was hooked and sharp; her mouth like an ugly gash; her hue was
livid and pale. Her outward attire was a species of yellow mantle,
which enveloped her whole form; and her hands, which played or
twisted nervously in the generous warmth of the glowing embers,
resembled a bundle of freakish knots, or the talons of an aged bird.
She muttered to herself at times, and after turning her terrible red
eyes twice or thrice covertly and wickedly towards Farquhar, she
suddenly snatched the venison steak from amid the flames, and, with a
chuckle of satisfaction, devoured it steaming hot, and covered as it
was with burning cinders.
On Farquhar secretly making a sign of the cross, when beholding this
strange proceeding, she turned sharply with a savage expression
towards him, and rose to her full stature, which was not more than
three feet; and he felt, he knew not why, his heart tremble; for his
spirit was already perturbed by the effect of his terrible dream, and
clutching the steel collar of Bran (who was preparing to spring at
this strange visitor, and seemed to like her aspect as little as his
master) he said--
"Woman, who are you?"
"A traveller like yourself, perhaps. But who are _you_?" she asked
in a croaking voice.
"Do you know our proverb in Lochaber--
What sent the messengers to hell,
But asking what they knew full well?"
was the reply of Farquhar, as he made a vigorous effort to restrain
Bran, whose growls and fury were fast becoming quite appalling; and
at this proverb the eyes of the hag seemed to blaze with fresh anger,
while her figure became more than ever erect.
"Oich! oich!" grumbled Farquhar, "I would as readily have had the
devil as this ugly hag. I have got a shelter, certainly; but with
her 'tis out of the cauldron and into the fire. Had she been a
brown-eyed lass, to a share of my plaid she had been welcome; but
this wrinkled cailloch----down, Bran, down!" he added aloud, as the
strong hound strained in his collar, and tasked his master's hand and
arm to keep him from springing at the intruder.
"Is this kind or manly of you," she asked, "to keep a wild brute that
behaves thus, and to a woman too? Turn him out into the storm; the
wind and rain will soon cool his wicked blood."
"Thank you; but in that you must excuse me. Bran and I are as
brothers."
"Turn him out, I say," screamed the hag, "or worse may befall him!"
"I shall not turn him out, woman," said Farquhar, firmly, while
surveying the stranger with some uneasiness; for, to his startled
gaze, she seemed to have grown _taller_ within the last five minutes.
"You have a share of our shelter, and you have had all our supper;
but to turn out poor Bran--no, no, that would never do."
To this Bran added a roar of rage, and the fear or fury which blazed
in the eyes of the woman fully responded to those, of the now
infuriated staghound. The glances of each made those of the other
more and more fierce.
"Down, Bran; down, I say," said Farquhar. "What the devil hath
possessed the dog? I never saw him behave thus before. He must be
savage, mother, that you left him none of the savoury venison steak;
for all the supper we had was that road-collop from one of
MacGillony's brown cattle."
"MacGillony," muttered the hag, spreading her talon-like hands over
the embers; "I knew him well."
"You!" exclaimed Farquhar.
"I have said so," she replied with a grin.
"He was a mighty hunter five hundred years ago, who lived and died on
the Grampians!"
"And what are five hundred years, to me, who saw the waters of the
deluge pour through Corriehoilzie, and subside from the slope of Ben
Nevis?"
"This is a very good joke, mother," said poor Farquhar, attempting to
laugh, while the hideous old woman, who was so small when he first
saw her as to be almost a dwarf, was now, palpably, veritably, and
without doubt, nearly a head taller than himself; and watchfully he
continued to gaze on her, keeping one hand on his dirk and the other
on the collar of Bran, whose growls were louder now than the storm
that careered through the rocky glen below.
"Woman!" said Farquhar, boldly, "my mind misgives me--there is
something about you that I little like; I have just had a dreadful
dream."
"A morning dream, too!" chuckled the hag with an elfish grin.
"So I connect your presence here with it."
"Be it so."
"What may that terrible dream foretell?" pondered Farquhar; "for
morning dreams are but warnings and presages unsolved. The blessings
of God and all his saints be about me!"
At these words the beldame uttered a loud laugh.
"You are, I presume, a Protestant?" said Farquhar, uneasily.
At this suggestion she laughed louder still, but seemed to grow more
and more in stature, till Farquhar became well-nigh sick at heart
with astonishment and fear, and began to revolve in his mind the
possibility of reaching the door of the shieling and rushing out into
the storm, there to commit himself to Providence and the elements.
Besides, as her stature grew, her eyes waxed redder and brighter, and
her malevolent hilarity increased.
It was a fiend, a demon of the wild, by whom he was now visited and
tormented in that sequestered hut.
His heart sank, and as her terrible eyes seemed to glare upon him,
and pierce his very soul, a cold perspiration burst over all his
person.
"Why do you grasp your dirk, Farquhar--ha! ha!" she asked.
"For the same reason that I hold Bran--to be ready. Am I not one of
the King's Reicudan Dhu? But how know you my name?"
"'Tis a trifle to me, who knew MacGillony."
"From whence came you to-night?"
"From the Isle of Wolves," she replied, with a shout of laughter.
"A story as likely as the rest," said Farquhar, "for that isle is in
the Western sea, near unto Coll, the country of the Clan Gillian.
You must travel fast."
"Those usually do who travel on the skirts of the wind."
"Woman!" exclaimed Farquhar, leaping up with an emotion of terror
which he could no longer control, for her stature now overtopped his
own, and ere long her hideous head would touch the rafters of the
hut; "thou art either a liar or a fiend! which shall I deem thee?"
"Whichever pleases you most," she replied, starting to her feet.
"Bran, to the proof!" cried Farquhar, drawing his dirk, and preparing
to let slip the now maddened hound; "at her, Bran, and hold her down.
Good, dog--brave dog! oich, he has a slippery handful that grasps an
eel by the tail! at her, Bran, for thou art strong as Cuchullin."
Uttering a roar of rage, the savage dog made a wild bound at the hag,
who, with a yell of spite and defiance, and with a wondrous activity,
by one spring, left the shieling, and dashing the frail door to
fragments in her passage, rushed out into the dark and tempestuous
night, pursued by the infuriated but baffled Bran--baffled now,
though the fleetest hound on the Braes of Lochaber.
They vanished together in the obscurity, while Farquhar gazed from
the door breathless and terrified. The storm still howled in the
valley, where the darkness was opaque and dense, save when a solitary
gleam of lightning flashed on the ghastly rocks and narrow defile of
Loch Leven; and the roar of the bellowing wind as it tore through the
rocky gorges and deep granite chasms, had in its sound something more
than usually terrific. But, hark! other sounds came upon the skirts
of that hurrying storm.
The shrieks of a fiend, if they could be termed so;--for they were
shrill and high, like cries of pain and laughter mingled. Then came
the loud deep baying, with the yells of a dog, as if in rage and
pain, while a thousand sparks, like those of a rocket, glittered for
a moment in the blackness of the glen below. The heart of Farquhar
Shaw seemed to stand still for a time, while, dirk in hand, he
continued to peer into the dense obscurity. Again came the cries of
Bran, but nearer and nearer now; and in an instant more, the noble
hound sprang, with a loud whine, to his master's side, and sank at
his feet. It was Bran, the fleet, the strong, the faithful and the
brave; but in what a condition! Torn, lacerated, covered with blood
and frightful wounds--disembowelled and dying; for the poor animal
had only strength to loll out his hot tongue in an attempt to lick
his master's hand before he expired.
"Mother Mary," said Farquhar, taking off his bonnet, inspired with
horror and religious awe, "keep thy blessed hand over me, for my dog
has fought with a demon!" ......
It may be imagined how Farquhar passed the remainder of that
morning--sleepless and full of terrible thoughts, for the palpable
memory of his dream, and the episode which followed it, were food
enough for reflection.
With dawn, the storm subsided. The sun arose in a cloudless sky; the
blue mists were wreathed round the brows of Ben Nevis, and a
beautiful rainbow seemed to spring from the side of the mountain far
beyond the waters of Loch Leven; the dun deer were cropping the wet
glistening herbage among the grey rocks; the little birds sang early,
and the proud eagle and ferocious gled were soaring towards the
rising sun; thus all nature gave promise of a serene summer day.
With his dirk, Farquhar dug a grave for Bran, and lined it with soft
and fragrant heather, and there he covered him up and piled a cairn,
at which he gave many a sad and backward glance (for it marked where
a faithful friend and companion lay) as he ascended the huge
mountains of rock, which, on one hand, led to the _Uisc Dhu_, or Vale
of the Black Water, and on the other, by the tremendous steep named
the Devil's Staircase, to the mouth of Glencoe.
In due time he reached the regiment at its cantonments on the Birks
of Aberfeldy, where the independent companies, for the first time
were exercised as a battalion by their Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir Robert
Munro of Culcairn, who, six years afterwards, was slain at the battle
of Falkirk.
Farquhar's terrible dream and adventure in that Highland wilderness
were ever before him, and the events subsequent to the formation of
the Black Watch into a battalion, with the excitement produced among
its soldiers by an unexpected order _to march into England_, served
to confirm the gloom that preyed upon his spirits.
The story of how the Black Watch were deceived is well known in the
Highlands, though it is only one of the many acts of treachery
performed in those days by the British Government in their
transactions with the people of that country, when seeking to lessen
the adherents of the Stuart cause, and ensnare them into regiments
for service in distant lands; hence the many dangerous mutinies which
occurred after the enrolment of all the _old_ Highland corps.
This unexpected order to march into England caused such a dangerous
ferment in the Black Watch, as being a violation of the principles
and promise under which it was enrolled, and on which so many
Highland gentlemen of good family enlisted in its ranks, that the
Lord President Duncan Forbes of Culloden, warned General Clayton, the
Scottish Commander-in-Chief, of the evil effects likely to occur if
this breach of faith was persisted in; and to prevent the corps from
revolting _en masse_, that officer informed the soldiers that they
were to enter England "solely to be seen by King George, who had
never seen a Highland soldier, and had been graciously pleased to
express, or feel great curiosity on the subject."
Cajoled and flattered by this falsehood, the soldiers of the Reicudan
Dhu, _all unaware that shipping was ordered to convey them to
Flanders_, began their march for England, in the end of March, 1743;
and if other proof be wanting that they were deluded, the following
announcement in the _Caledonian Mercury_ of that year affords it:--