"Lady Alice, Lady Louise,
Between the wash of the tumbling seas----"
I
When Bran the Blessed, as the story goes, followed the white bird on the
Last Questing, knowing that return was not for him, he gave gifts to his
followers. To Heliodorus he gave the gift of winning speech, and
straightway the man went south to the Italian seas, and, becoming a
scholar, left many descendants who sat in the high places of the Church.
To Raymond he gave his steel battle-axe, and bade him go out to the
warrior's path and hew his way to a throne; which the man forthwith
accomplished, and became an ancestor in the fourth degree of the first
king of Scots. But to Colin, the youngest and the dearest, he gave no
gift, whispering only a word in his ear and lying a finger on his
eyelids. Yet Colin was satisfied, and he alone of the three, after
their master's going, remained on that coast of rock and heather.
In the third generation from Colin, as our elders counted years, came
one Colin the Red, who built his keep on the cliffs of Acharra and was a
mighty sea-rover in his day. Five times he sailed to the rich parts of
France, and a good score of times he carried his flag of three stars
against the easterly vikings. A mere name in story, but a sounding piece
of nomenclature well garnished with tales. A master-mind by all
accounts, but cursed with a habit of fantasy; for hearing in his old age
of a land to the westward, he forthwith sailed into the sunset, and
three days later was washed up, a twisted body, on one of the outer
isles.
So far it is but legend, but with his grandson, Colin the Red, we fall
into the safer hands of the chroniclers. To him God gave the unnumbered
sorrows of story-telling, for he was a bard, cursed with a bard's
fervours, and none the less a mighty warrior among his own folk. He it
was who wrote the lament called 'The White Waters of Usna,' and the
exquisite chain of romances, 'Glede-red Gold and Grey Silver.' His tales
were told by many fires, down to our grandfathers' time, and you will
find them still pounded at by the folk-lorists. But his airs--they are
eternal. On harp and pipe they have lived through the centuries; twisted
and tortured, they survive in many song-books; and I declare that the
other day I heard the most beautiful of them all murdered by a band at a
German watering-place. This Colin led the wanderer's life, for he
disappeared at middle-age, no one knew whither, and his return was long
looked for by his people. Some thought that he became a Christian monk,
the holy man living in the sea-girt isle of Cuna, who was found dead in
extreme old age, kneeling on the beach, with his arms, contrary to the
fashion of the Church, stretched to the westward.
As history narrowed into bonds and forms the descendants of Colin took
Raden for their surname, and settled more firmly on their lands in the
long peninsula of crag and inlets which runs west to the Atlantic. Under
Donald of the Isles they harried the Kings of Scots, or, on their own
authority, made war on Macleans and Macranalds, till their flag of the
three stars, their badge of the grey-goose feather, and their on-cry of
"Cuna" were feared from Lochalsh to Cantire. Later they made a truce
with the King, and entered into the royal councils. For years they
warded the western coast, and as king's lieutenants smoked out the
inferior pirates of Eigg and Toronsay. A Raden was made a Lord of Sleat,
another was given lands in the low country and the name Baron of
Strathyre, but their honours were transitory and short as their lives.
Rarely one of the house saw middle age. A bold, handsome, and stirring
race, it was their fate to be cut off in the rude warfare of the times,
or, if peace had them in its clutches, to man vessel and set off once
more on those mad western voyages which were the weird of the family.
Three of the name were found drowned on the far shore of Cuna; more than
one sailed straight out of the ken of mortals. One rode with the Good
Lord James on the pilgrimage of the Heart of Bruce, and died by his
leader's side in the Saracen battle. Long afterwards a Raden led the
western men against the Cheshire archers at Flodden, and was slain
himself in the steel circle around the king.
But the years brought peace and a greater wealth, and soon the cold
stone tower was left solitary on the headland, and the new house of
Kinlochuna rose by the green links of the stream. The family changed its
faith, and an Episcopal chaplain took the place of the old mass-priest
in the tutoring of the sons. Radens were in the '15 and the '45. They
rose with Bute to power, and they long disputed the pride of Dundas in
the northern capital. They intermarried with great English houses till
the sons of the family were Scots only in name, living much abroad or in
London, many of them English landowners by virtue of a mother's blood.
Soon the race was of the common over-civilised type, graceful,
well-mannered, with abundant good looks, but only once in a generation
reverting to the rugged northern strength. Eton and Oxford had in turn
displaced the family chaplain, and the house by the windy headland grew
emptier and emptier save when grouse and deer brought home its fickle
masters.