No ghost story is more widely known or better authenticated than
that of Duncan Campbell of Inverawe. It has been made the subject
of an address before this Association by the late Robert O. Bascom
at the meeting of July 30, 1901, and has been repeated in many
forms and in various publications but it will bear still one more
repetition. The following is taken from Parkman’s “Montcalm and
Wolfe” and is the story as was told by Dean Stanley and endorsed by
the family of the hero of the tale:
“The ancient castle of Inverawe stands by the banks of the Awe,
in the midst of the wild and picturesque scenery of the Western
Highlands. Late one evening, before the middle of the last
century, as the laird, Duncan Campbell, sat alone in the old
hall, there was a loud knocking at the gate; and, opening it, he
saw a stranger, with torn clothing and kilt besmeared with blood,
who in a breathless voice begged for asylum. He went on to say
that he had killed a man in a fray, and that the pursuers were
at his heels. Campbell promised to shelter him. “Swear on your
dirk!”[35] said the stranger; and Campbell swore. He then led
him to a secret recess in the depths of the castle. Scarcely was
he hidden when again there was a loud knocking at the gate, and
two armed men appeared. “Your cousin Donald has been murdered,
and we are looking for the murderer!” Campbell, remembering his
oath, professed to have no knowledge of the fugitive; and the
men went on their way. The laird, in great agitation, lay down
to rest in a large dark room where at length he fell asleep.
Waking suddenly in bewilderment and terror, he saw the ghost of
the murdered Donald standing by his bedside, and heard a hollow
voice pronounce the words: “Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been
shed. Shield not the murderer.” In the morning Campbell went to
the hiding place of the guilty man and told him that he could
harbor him no longer. “You have sworn on your dirk” he replied;
and the laird of Inverawe, greatly perplexed and troubled, made a
compromise between conflicting duties, promised not to betray his
guest, led him to the neighboring mountain (Ben Cruachan) and hid
him in a cave.[36]
In the next night, as he lay tossing in feverish slumbers, the
same stern voice awoke him, the ghost of his cousin Donald stood
again at his bedside, and again he heard the same appalling
words: “Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been shed. Shield not the
murderer!” At break of day he hastened, in strange agitation,
to the cave; but it was empty, the stranger had gone. At night,
as he strove in vain to sleep, the vision appeared once more,
ghastly pale, but less stern of aspect than before. “Farewell,
Inverawe!” it said; “Farewell, till we meet at TICONDEROGA!”
The strange name dwelt in Campbell’s memory. He had joined the
Black Watch, or Forty-Second Regiment, then employed in keeping
order in the turbulent Highlands. In time he became its major;
and, a year or two after the war broke out, he went with it to
America. Here, to his horror, he learned that it was ordered to
the attack of Ticonderoga. His story was well known among his
brother officers. They combined among themselves to disarm his
fears; and when they reached the fatal spot they told him on the
eve of the battle, “This is not Ticonderoga; we are not there
yet; this is Fort George.”[37] But in the morning he came to
them with haggard looks. “I have seen him! You have deceived me!
He came to my tent last night! This is Ticonderoga! I shall die
today!” and his prediction was fulfilled.”
As will be seen by the preceding pages, Inverawe lived nine days
after the battle and was not even mortally wounded if it had been
possible in those times to have had antiseptic treatment, but the
real point of the legend is that he had been warned of Ticonderoga
when he did not know there was such a place, years before there was
any prospect of his being sent there and when Ticonderoga was only
the Indian name for a point of land on a lake in the wilderness of
a far off continent.
To one interested no place could be more fascinating than old
Inverawe;[38] everything connected with it breathes of legend
and romance and naturally this was one of the first places
visited in our Black Watch pilgrimage last summer. Taynuilt, the
railroad station nearest Inverawe is a small village across the
Awe and about a mile away as the crow flies, but to drive to our
destination, one must follow the road two miles up the River to the
old bridge which was being built at the time that the Major left
for the war in America in 1756. The builder was Captain William
Pitman apparently a good friend of Duncan of Inverawe as he charged
him with the safe keeping during his absence of his daughter Janet
and his favorite dog. History does not record what happened to
the dog but the Captain married the daughter and in time Inverawe
became her property.
[Illustration: Two Views of Library