What richer picture could the eye desire than this sunlit glory of
harvest colour amid the Highland mountains? The narrow sea-loch itself
below gleams blue as melted sapphire under the radiant and stainless
sky; around it, on the rising slopes, the corn-fields, rough with
fruitful stooks, spread their yellow ripeness in the sun; amid them
shine patches of fresh soft green where the second clover has been cut;
while above hang the sheltering woods, like dark brown shadows; and,
over all, the surrounding hills, bloom-spread as for a banquet of the
gods, raise their purple stain against the blue. Only far off, above
the dim mountains of amethyst in the North, lies a white argosy of
clouds, like some convoy of home-bound India-men becalmed on a summer
sea.
There has been no sound for an hour but the whisper of the warm autumn
wind that the farmer loves for winnowing his grain, the drone of
a velvety bee sometimes in the blue depth of a hare-bell, and the
crackle of the black broom-pods bursting in the heat. The furry brown
rabbits that pop prudently out of sight in the mossy bank are silent as
shadows; the red squirrel that runs along the dyke top and disappears
up a tree makes no chatter; and even the shy speckled mavis that bobs
bright-eyed across the path is voiceless, for among the birds this is
the silent month.
Less and less, as the narrow road rises through the fir woods, grows
the bit of blue loch seen far behind under the branches, and the little
clachan in the warm hollow over the brow of the hill is shut from
the world on every side by the deep and silent forests of fragrant
pine. Wayside flowers are seeding on the time-darkened thatch of
these sequestered dwellings. There, with branches of narrow pods, the
wallflower clings; and the spikes of the field-mustard ripen beside
the golden bullets of the ox-eyed daisy. On a chair at the door of one
of the cottages an ancient granny is sunning herself, counting with
feeble fingers the stitches on her glancing knitting wires. A frail old
body she is, set here, neat and comfortable, by some loving hand, to
enjoy, it may be, the sunshine of her last autumn on earth. Withered
and wrinkled are her old cheeks with the cares of many a winter, and
it seems difficult to recall the day when she was a ripe-lipped,
merry reaper in the corn-fields; but under her clean, white mutch the
grey old eyes are undimmed yet as they watch, heedful and lovingly,
the movements of the little maid tottering about her knee. Where are
her thoughts as she sits there alone, hour after hour, in the silent
sunshine? Is she back in the dusk among the sweet-scented hay-ricks,
listening with fluttering heart to the whispers of her rustic lover?
Is it a sunny doorway where she sits crooning for happiness over the
baby on her knee? the little one that is all her own--and his. Or is it
a winter night as she kneels in the flickering light by the bedside,
feeling the rough, loving hand relax its grasp, while she sees the
shadow pass across the wistful face, and knows with breaking heart that
she is alone? These are the peaceful scenes of peasant life; alas, that
they should ever be darkened by the shadow of the sword!
[Illustration]
Granny can speak no English, or she might have something to say of the
great disaster that befell the clans on the moor close by in her
father’s time. For not far beyond the little clachan the road emerges
on the open heath, and there, where the paths cross, lies the great,
grey boulder on which the terrible duke stood to survey the field just
before the battle. Not even then was he aware how nearly his birthday
carousals of the night before, at Nairn, had been surprised and turned
into another slaughter of Prestonpans. So perilously sometimes does the
sword of Damocles tremble over an unconscious head. His troops, well
rested and provisioned, were fresh as that April morning itself, while
the poor clansmen in the boggy hollow to the right, divided in their
councils, and famishing for treacherous lack of bread, were exhausted
by the fruitless twenty-four mile surprise march of the night. Yet
they came on, these clansmen, half an hour later, like lions; plunging
through the bog, sword in hand, in the face of the regulars’ terrific
blaze of musketry, cutting Cumberland’s first line to pieces, and
rushing on the second line to be blown to atoms at sword’s length.
The yellow corn is being shorn to-day where the clans were mowed down
then. Here was spilt the best blood of the Highlands. Close by, the
brave Keppoch, crying out as he charged alone before the eyes of his
immovable Macdonalds that the children of his tribe had forsaken him,
threw his sword in the air as a bullet went into his heart. Wounded, at
the tall tree to the west fell Cameron of Lochiel; and in the little
valley beyond, the defeated Prince Charles, as he fled, paused a moment
to bid his army a bitter farewell. The road here at the corn-field’s
edge dips a little yet, where the fatal bog once lay, and ten yards
to the left still springs the Dead Men’s Well, to which so many poor
fellows crawled during the awful succeeding night to allay the tortures
of their thirst before they died. Here the gigantic MacGillivray,
leader that day of the clan M’Intosh, fell dead as, with his last
strength, he bore to the spring a little wounded boy whom he had heard
at his side moaning for water.
A better fate the bravery of these men deserved, misguided though they
might be; for the victors gave no quarter to wounded or prisoners,
and the soul shudders yet at thought of the horrors that followed the
battle. It was not enough that disabled men should be clubbed and
shot, and barns full of them burned to ashes; but to this day in many
a quiet glen lie the remains of hamlets ruined in cold blood, and
tales are told of the dark vengeance taken by the victorious soldiery
upon defenceless women, little children, and old men. Well was it,
perhaps, for those who had fallen that they lay here at rest under the
heather--they could not know the cruel fate of wife or child. To other
lips was left the wail for “Drummossie; oh, Drummossie!” At rest they
were, these hot and valiant hearts, plaided and plumed as warriors wish
to lie, in their long bivouac under the open heaven. Not the first nor
the last of their race, either, were they to fall, scarred with the
wounds of war; for, less than a mile away, under the lichened cairns of
Clava, do not the ashes rest of the chiefs their ancestors, slain in
some long-forgotten battle of the past, and waiting, like these, for
the sound of the last _réveille_?
Here, on each side of the road, can still be made out the trenches
where the dead were buried, according to their tartans it is said; and,
while the rest of the moor is purple with heather, these sunken places
alone are green. On the edge of the corn-field rises a stone, inscribed
“Field of the English; they were buried here”; and at the end of each
trench on the moor stands a rude slab bearing the name of its tribe. A
singular pathos attends two of these stones, on which is written, not
M’Intosh or Stewart or Fraser, but “Mixed Clans.”
Round the oval moorland of the battle rise thick fir-woods now, dark
and mournful. Sometimes the winds of the equinox, as they roar through
these, recall the deadly rolling musketry of long ago. But the air
to-day scarcely whispers in the tree-tops, and sunshine and silence
sleep upon the resting-place of the gallant dead. Only some fair,
white-clad girls, who have come up from Inverness to read the battle
inscription on the great boulder-cairn, are plucking a spray of heather
from the Camerons’ grave.