THE HARPER'S RANSOM.
Towards the evening of the next day the MacGregors, on their homeward
march, found themselves in the country of the Camerons, at the head
of Loch Arkeig, a long and narrow sheet of water, lying between
rugged mountains, and stretching far away towards Glen Mhor n'Albyn,
or the great valley of Caledonia, which runs diagonally across the
kingdom from the German Sea to the Atlantic. They bivouacked at the
head of the loch, lighted a fire, and having no enemies in the
neighbourhood, prepared to pass the night pleasantly, wrapped in
their plaids, on the soft blooming heather; but first Rob Roy placed
two sentinels on the drove road that led to and from their
halting-place, that perfect security might not be neglected.
The summer night was clear and warm, and every star shone brightly
amid the blue ether; all was stillness and deep silence, save where a
mountain stream, a tributary of Loch Arkeig, swept down, now over
falls and stony rapids, or among bold impending rocks spotted with
lichens and tufted with broom, and now among pale hazel groves and
black clumps of red-stemmed pine.
The MacGregors had scarcely been here two hours, and, weary with
their march and lulled by the hum of the hurrying stream, most of
them were fast asleep, when Rob heard his sentinels in violent
altercation with a stranger; and as the Gaelic language is deficient
neither in expletives nor maledictions, they were plentifully used on
this occasion. On sending Greumoch to ascertain the cause of all
this, he soon returned, with his drawn dirk gleaming in one hand,
while by the other he dragged forward a harper, in whom, by the
firelight, Rob immediately recognized Gillian Ross the Islesman, who
had acted as their guide to Glensheil.
He was a man well up in years; his hair and flowing beard were snowy
white; but his cheek was ruddy, and his eyes had a merry twinkle
which showed that as a son of song he had led a jovial life and a
roving one, though among turbulent clans, in a wild country and in
perilous times.
His kilt and plaid were of the Ross tartan, which is gaily striped
with red, green, and blue; and his clairsach or little Scottish harp
was slung on his back by a belt, and covered with a case of tarpaulin
or tarred canvas--probably a piece of a boat-sail. He carried a
blackthorn stick, and as his occupation was a peaceful one, he had no
weapon save a dirk, which, like the mouth-piece of his sporan, was
gaily adorned with silver. "A spy, a spy!" cried the MacGregors,
starting up and crowding about him with ominous expressions in their
weatherbeaten faces.
"What is the meaning of this, thou son of the son of Alpine?" he
boldly demanded of Rob, in his figurative Gaelic; "the children of
the Gael should not draw their swords on each other, and still less
on a son of song."
"Yet, son of song," replied Rob, drily, "you played those Rosses and
Munroes, and the men of Morar Chattu, into battle against us near
Dounan Diarmed* in Glenshiel--the tomb of one whom Ossian loved. Eh,
what say you to that?"
* A warrior of Fingal, whose grave lies near the manse of Glensheil.
Morar Chattu is the Celtic name of the Earls of Sutherland.
"There have been cold steel and hot blood between our people," began
the harper in a gentler tone.
"True; but that was in the times of old; and now the righteous cause
of our king should make even the false Whigs true, and every clan
unite in one."
"Even the Grahames with the Clan Alpine?" said the harper, with a
cunning smile.
"Yes--even the Grahames with the Clan Alpine!" repeated Rob, stamping
his foot on the heather. "I could find in my heart forgiveness for
them all, would they but join the king."
"When that day comes, the lamb shall share the lair of the lion, and
the cushat-dove shall seek the nest of gled and iolar," replied the
harper, still smiling.
"Whence come you, and where is your home?"
"The Isle of the Pigmies, in the west--far away amid the sea,"
replied the harper with a sigh; "and would, MacGregor, I were there
now, where its black rocks are covered with sheets of snowy foam,
where the wild sea-birds wheel and scream above the breakers, and
where the level sunshine and the rolling sea go far together into its
gloomy caves and weedy chasms."
The harper referred to one of the Western Isles, a little solitary
place, where stand the ruins of a chapel, and where it was believed a
dwarfish race were buried of old; "for many strangers digging deep
into the earth have found, and do yet find," says Buchanan, "little
round skulls and the bones of small human bodies, that do not in the
least differ from the ancient reports concerning pigmies."
"I am grieved, harper, that you should die so far from your kindred
and their burial-place," said Rob, gravely.
"_Die!_ wherefore should I die?" asked the harper, starting, while
his countenance fell.
"Oogh ay!" exclaimed several MacGregors, who were yawning and
crowding round; "just let the bodach be hanged at once, and then we
shall go to sleep again."
"Or would you prefer to be drowned?" said Greumoch; "Loch Arkeig is
close by, and the water there is warm and deep."
"Neither is my wish," said the harper, fiercely; "I am a guiltless
man, and demand my freedom!"
"Why were you in the ranks of the king's rebels at Glensheil?" asked
Rob, sternly.
"I was _not_ in their ranks!"
"You played them into battle."
"But I fought not--nor was I even girded with a sword."
"By my father's soul, that mattered little! A minstrel--a
harper--should not play the traitor like a glaiket gilly."
"I went but to sing of the fight, that the story of it might go down
to future times, even as the battles of our forefathers have come
down by the songs of the bards to us. I went but as Ian Lom went
with Montrose to Inverlochy. Had he fought there and fallen, who
would have told us how he,
The bard of their battles, ascended the height
Where dark Inverlochy o'ershadowed the fight,
And saw the clan Donnell resistless in might!"
"Have you so committed to song our victory at Glensheil?" asked
MacGregor, with a sharp glance; but the harper hung his head. "Ha!
then what sought you _here_ to-night?"
"Was it to spy upon us?" added several MacGregors, with scowling
brows; "answer, Islesman, while your skin is whole!"
"By the Black Stones of Iona, I swear that I knew not you were in the
land of Lochiel!" said the harper, earnestly; "and beware how you
spill my blood, for my mother was one of the Camerons, the sons of
the Soldier of Ovi. I was peacefully pursuing my way to the fair of
Kill-chuimin."
"It may be so," said Rob Roy; "for that fair is almost at hand. Tie
him to a tree; in the morning, I will speak with him again."
The harper submitted in silence, and was bound to a tree, when a
plaid was thrown over him and his harp, as a protection from the dew;
and Greumoch, with a true Highland grin or grimace, gave him a dram,
saying, "As it is the last you are likely to get, drain the quaich."
By dawn the MacGregors were all afoot again; they wiped and rubbed
their weapons to preserve them from rust; shook the crystal dew from
their kilts and plaids; then the pipes struck up a quick step, and
they proceeded on their homeward way, taking with them the harper,
concerning whom Rob Roy had given no instructions, for he was loth to
punish him, though deeming that he deserved to be so.
For two days he conveyed him thus a prisoner, telling him that if he
was actually going to the fair of Kill-chuimin (or the burial-place
of the Cumins, as the Highlanders called Port Augustus) his time
would not be lost, as their way lay so far together.
Towards the evening of the second day, they halted on a wild moorland
waste, called Blair na Carrahan, or the moor of the circles, for
there amid the vast expanse of purple heather were several large
Druidical rings, wherein, it was confidently affirmed, the fairies
always danced on the Eve of St. John; but more especially around a
large obelisk which stood in the centre of one, and was covered with
Runic figures.
When they halted in this desolate place, the harper became alarmed,
and begged so earnestly to be released, that Rob said,--
"You must ransom yourself----"
"Ransom!--do you speak of ransom to one who has not in the world a
coin the size of a herring scale?"
"Ransom yourself by a song or a story, I was about to say. If either
meet with the general approval of my kinsmen, you shall be free--free
as the winds that shake the harebells and the broom on the braes of
Balquhidder; but fail us in song or story, and by the Grey Stone in
Glenfruin, you shall hang--hang like the false cullion I deem you!"
Gillian Ross made a double Highland bow; the cord was taken from his
wrists, and slung with a noose of very unpleasant aspect over the
Druid monolith, for thereon he was to hang, if he failed to win the
general applause.
The poor harper eyed it wistfully, and then seated himself on the
green grass in the centre of the fairy circle, around which the
MacGregors were lounging, with their arms beside them. He uncased
his harp; and after running his fingers rapidly through the strings,
suddenly seemed to change his intention to sing, and said he would
tell them a story. A murmur of assent responded.
On that vast purple moorland, bounded in the distance by the
countless dark-blue mountain peaks of Argyle, a picturesque group
they formed, those weather-beaten clansmen, in their garish tartans,
with their polished weapons, their round targets, and bare legs
stretched upon the heather. Then there was also the green fairy
circle, in the centre of which rose the grey old obelisk, and at its
base reclined the bearded harper on his harp. The sun as he set
beyond the western peaks crimsoned like a sheet of wine the heather
of the Blair na Carrahan, and tipped with ruddy light the harper's
silver beard and the glittering strings of his harp, as he told the
following story, which we render here, not in his poetical and
somewhat inflated Gaelic, but in our own way.