THE NEISH'S HEAD.
It fell about the Martimas time,
When winds blow snell and cauld.
That Adam o' Gordon said to his men,
Where will we get a hauld?
See ye not yon fair castle
Stands on yon lily lea?
The laird and I hae a deadly feud,
And the lady I fain would see.
_Adam o' Gordon._
For ages, a feud had existed between the MacNabs and MacNeishes, two
tribes of considerable strength and influence, who, without having
any marked limits to their territories, possessed that wild and
mountainous district which lies around Lochearn.
The former of these clans was a bravich of the Siol Alpin, and took
its name (_i.e._, the sons of the abbot) from the ancient head of the
Kuldee Abbey of Glendochart; and, during the reign of James IV., they
had successfully carried fire and sword into the land of their
enemies, who possessed the district then known as the Neishes'
Country, lying between Comrie and Lochearn, comprising the Pass of
Strathearn, Dundurn, the Hill of St. Fillan, Glentiarkin, and part of
Glenartney. Embittered by old traditionary wrongs, transmitted
orally by sire to son, from age to age, the rancour of these two
tribes was without a parallel, even in the annals of ancient Celtic
ferocity and lust of vengeance; and fired by the memory of a thousand
real or imaginary acts of aggression the boys of each generation,
while sitting on their fathers' knees, longed to be men, that they
might bend the bow or bear the tuagh and claymore against their
hereditary enemies.
On one occasion, the MacNeishes had carried off the holy bell of St.
Fillan, a relic of remote antiquity, which in those days stood on a
tombstone in the burial-ground of the saint's church, and was
venerated by all; but it was miraculously restored; for this bell,
like the old bells of Soissons, in Burgundy, and of St. Fillan's, in
Meath, had the strange power of extricating itself from the hands of
the spoilers, and came back through the air to Strathfillan, ringing
merrily all the way; but the circumstance of its abstraction greatly
increased the hostility between the rival tribes.
In this petty war, the chief of the MacNabs fell, being slain by an
arrow from the bow of Finlay MacNeish, his enemy; but he left twelve
sons and his widow, Aileen, a daughter of the clan Donald (the race
of the Sea) to carry on the feud; and animated by hate and fury, this
woman, stern by nature and savage in purpose, seemed to have no
thought, no hope for, or idea of, the future, but as they might serve
"to _feed_ her revenge," which aimed at the destruction of the
Neishes, root and branch, and the ultimate capture of their territory.
By her instigation, gathering all their fighting-men for one decisive
effort for the supremacy of the district, her sons marched from
Kennil House, and the two clans met in battle with nearly a thousand
swordsmen on each side, in a wild and pastoral vale, named
Glenboultachan, between two high and solitary mountains on the
northern shore of Lochearn. Each was led by its chief, and they
rushed at once down the green slope to mingle in close and mortal
strife, with wild yells, bitter epithets and invectives, while the
war-cries rang and the pipers blew, as additional incentives to
slaughter and enthusiasm. Plying their sharp broadswords or long
poleaxes with both hands, for greater freedom in the work of death,
they tossed targets and plaids, breastplates and lurichs of steel,
aside; and so that work, ever so rapid and terrible in a Highland
battle, went fearfully on.
This battle took place on St. Fillan's Day, 1522, and the MacNabs
bore with them the crook of the saint to ensure victory. It was
borne by the MacIndoirs, who were the hereditary standard-bearers of
MacNab, and had been custodiers of the crook ever since the death of
St. Fillan, in 649, an office in which they were confirmed by a royal
charter of King James II., in 1437. It is of solid silver, twelve
inches long, elaborately carved, and having on one side a precious
stone; on the other, the effigy of our Saviour, and was the same
relic which, with the saint's arm-bone, Robert the Bruce had with him
at the field of Bannockburn.[*]
[*] In 1818 the last of the MacIndoirs, a Highland emigrant, took
this valuable relic with him to America, and it is now preserved,
with the letters and charters of James II., in the township of
MacNab, in Canada.
The morning sun, when pouring his light between the parted clouds
athwart that gloomy mountain gorge, lighted up a terrible and
bewildering scene, which Aileen MacNab, from the summit of a rocky
peak, surveyed in gloomy joy, with her grey, dishevelled hair hanging
over her shoulders, as she knelt on ashes strewn crosswise on the
heather; and there, with a crucifix before her, and a rosary on her
wrist, she implored God and St. Fillan to grant her children and her
tribe a victory; and then she left her orisons, to shoot a shaft from
her dead husband's bow, among the press of combatants that fought
like a herd of tigers in the glen beneath her. Then she would again
prostrate herself upon the ashes and before her cross, which was made
of the aspen--for of _that wood_, saith old tradition, the true cross
was made; hence the tree is accursed, and its leaves shall never rest.
Wedged together in a dense and yelling mass, the two clans were all
mingled pellmell in wild _mêlée_, fighting man to man, scorning to
seek quarter, and scorning to yield it. Heads were cloven through
helmets of steel, bosoms pierced through lurichs of tempered rings,
while hands and limbs were swept off as the sharp wind may sweep the
withered reeds from a frozen brook in winter; and the long
sword-blades, that flashed in the sun, seemed to whirl without
ceasing, like a huge _chevaux de frize_, grinding all to death
beneath them.
Conspicuous above all this fiery throng, like the Destroying Angel or
the Spirit of Carnage, wearing three eagle's feathers in the cone of
his helmet, and clad in a lurich of shining rings, which covered his
whole bulky form from his neck to the edge of his kilt, towered the
eldest son of Aileen, named _Ian Mion, Mac an Abba_ (_i.e., smooth_
John, the son of the abbot), an ironical sobriquet bestowed upon him
in consequence of the roughness of his aspect and the coarse, grim,
unyielding nature of his character. He bent all his energies to
capture the Neishes' banner, which bore their crest, viz., a cupid
with his bow in the dexter, and an arrow in the sinister hand, with
the motto, _Amicitiam trahit amor_. The tall and bearded bearer was
soon cloven down by Ian Mion, and the embroidered banner became the
trophy of his prowess and daring.
On the other side, Finlay MacNeish, a chief of great age, but of
wondrous strength and activity, fought with unparalleled bravery; but
John MacNab and his eleven brothers bore all before them, and
repeatedly hewed a bloody lane through the ranks of their foemen. At
last their followers began to prevail; and in wild desperation and
despair at the slaughter of his people, on beholding three of his
sons perish by his side, and on finding the disgrace of defeat
impending, the aged chief of the Neishes placed his back to a large
rude granite block, which still marks the scene of this conflict,
and, poising overhead his two-handed sword, stood like a lion at bay.
His vast stature, his known strength and bravery, as he towered above
the fray, with his white hair streaming in the wind (the clasps of
his helmet having given way, he had lost it); the wild glare of his
grey and haggard eyes; the blood streaming from his forehead, which
had been wounded by an arrow, and from his long, uplifted sword,
which (like the claymore of Alaster MacColl) had a remarkable
accessory, in the shape of an iron ball, that slid along the back of
the blade to give an additional weight to every cut,--all this
combined, made the bravest of the MacNabs pause for a moment ere they
encountered him; but after a dreadful struggle, in which he slew many
of his assailants, the brave old man sank at last under a score of
wounds inflicted by swords and daggers; and as his grey hairs mingled
with the bloody heather, and were savagely trampled down, the
triumphant yell of the MacNabs made the blue welkin ring and the
mountains echo; while his people were swept from the field, and
perished in scores as they fled, being hewed down on all sides by the
swords and axes of the MacNabs, or pierced by their arrows; and the
red lichens which spot the old grey stone in Glenboultachan are still
believed by the peasantry to be the encrusted blood of the chief of
the Neishes.
With MacCallum Glas, their bard, about twenty of the tribe escaped,
and took refuge on a wooded islet at the eastern end of Lochearn,
where, in wrath and sorrow, they could lurk and plan schemes of
revenge, which the all-but total extinction of their name and number
rendered futile; while the victorious MacNabs, after sweeping their
whole country of cattle, and destroying all their farms, cottages,
and dwellings, returned to hold high jubilee in Kennil House, the
fortified residence of their chief, which stands upon a rocky
isthmus, near the head of Loch Tay, and to inter their dead in the
old burial-place of the abbot's children, Innis Bui--a greenswarded
islet in the Dochart, where their graves are still shaded by a grove
of those dark and solemn pines which were always planted by the Celts
of old to mark where the tombs of their people lay; and there the
impetuous Dochart, after rushing in foam over a long series of
cascades, under the shadow of the giant Benlawers, ends its wild
career in the Tay.
The slain of the enemy were stripped by the victors, and, by order of
the remorseless Lady Aileen, were left as food for the wolf and
raven. A few were interred by Alpin Maol (_i.e._ the Bald), an old
monk of Inchaffray, who officiated as priest of the church of St.
Fillan. He came to survey that terrible field at the close of eve;
and of all the stately men who lay there on the blood-stained
heather, gashed by wounds, and with their glazing eyes upturned to
heaven, or lying half immersed in a tributary of Lochearn, towards
which, many had crawled in their thirst and suffering, he found only
_one_ who survived. The rest, to the number of hundreds around, were
dead. They lay in piles, amid vast gouts of blood and broken
weapons, and tufts of heather uptorn by the clutches of the dead in
their death-agony.
The wounded man proved to be the aged chief of the Neishes, whom the
priest, Father Alpin, with the assistance of his sacristan, bore to a
place of concealment, and, when his wounds were healed, conducted him
in secret to the islet in the loch, where the remnant of his people
were lurking, and where he found his daughter Muriel--a child of two
years of age--the sole survivor of all his once numerous household;
for in their mad fury the fierce MacNabs had spared no living thing,
but swept all the land from Comrie to the beautiful banks of
Lochearn, killing even the house and hunting-dogs of the vanquished.
In every dwelling the _clach-an-eorna_, or rude mortar, then used for
shelling barley by means of a wooden pestle, was broken and
destroyed. The creel-houses, or wicker-work edifices, used as
hunting-lodges, and even every _baile mhuilainn_, or mill-town, was
burned and ruined, that never more might the Neishes find shelter or
food. All the land was veritably burned up, as when ferns were
burned in autumn--a Celtic superstition long since forgotten.
The feeble old chief was received with tears by the relics of his
tribe; and these tears spoke more than a thousand languages of all
they had suffered, and were ready yet to endure, for him and the now
tarnished honour of their fallen race.
In a roughly-constructed hut, or creel-house, so named from being
formed of stakes driven into the earth, with turf and wattled twigs
between, the remnant of the MacNeishes lived the lives of outlaws;
and having secured the only boat that lay in Lochearn, they were wont
to make sudden and hostile descents on all sides of the lake, and
suddenly at night, when least expected, the cries of those they were
slaughtering without mercy arose with the flames of blazing cottages
amid the wooded wilderness, and marked where they were dealing out
vengeance on the spoilers. Then by a sudden retreat to their boat,
they would gain the shelter of their isle, and there, defying all
pursuit, would subsist for days on the precarious plunder won in
these midnight creaghs or forays.
Penury, privation, and the despair of retrieving what they had lost,
or of ever being able to make any resolute stand against the
conquerors, made them wilder, more desperate, and savage, than any
other landless and broken tribe,--even than the MacGregors in the
days of James VI. They subsisted entirely by plunder, winning their
daily food by the sword and the bow; and, ere a year was passed,
their garments consisted of little else than the skins of deer and
other wild animals. Thinly peopled as that mountain district was at
all times, the operations of Finlay MacNeish and his twenty desperate
men rendered it more desolate than ever; for the MacNabs and their
adherents, finding the vicinity of Lochearn so troubled and
dangerous, removed their families, with their flocks and herds, to a
distance from its shores; but still, while the outlaws on the isle
kept possession of their boat, and destroyed every other that was set
afloat in the loch, they were enabled to lead their lawless life in
security; while the government of the regent, John Duke of Albany,
who had never much power at any time beyond the Highland border, gave
itself no concern whatever in the matter, for the duke resided
principally in France.
From the residence of these outlaws, the green islet which is in the
middle of the lower part of Lochearn is still named the Isle of the
Neishes.
The future fate of the few stout men who adhered to him, their chief,
cost him but little thought. He knew that they would, too probably,
all die in detail, falling, as their forefathers fell, by the edge of
the sword; but the future of his little daughter, the last of all his
race, pressed heavy on the old man's soul, for he would rather have
seen her in her grave than the prisoner, it might be the bondswoman,
of the abhorred MacNabs. He would gladly have committed her to the
care of Alpin Maol, the priest of St. Fillan, that she might be sent
to the abbot of Inchaffray, and by him be placed in the charge of
some noble lady or holy woman; but the priest abode where his church
stood, far from the isle of bondage, in the very heart of the enemy's
country, and the aged Finlay had no means of communicating with him
by message or letter.
Muriel was now three years old, and her beauty was expanding as her
days increased. She was pale and colourless, but her hair was jetty
black, and her quiet dark eyes expressed only sadness and melancholy
thoughts, for, child though she was, the _sauvagerie_ which
surrounded her, and the sombre gloom of her white-haired sire, a man
whose whole heart and soul, whose every thought and plan and prayer
were dedicated to retributive vengeance, impressed her with awe; and
she shrank from all his grim followers save MacCallum Glas, or the
grey son of Columba the citharist, the bard of the tribe, to whose
care her mother had committed her on that night of horror in which
she perished in their burning mansion, the night succeeding the
defeat in Glenboultachan.
The darkness of Muriel's eyes contrasted powerfully with the dazzling
purity of her skin, which the tribe believed to be the result of a
charm given to her mother by a certain wise-woman, who advised her to
dip violets in goat's milk and morning dew, and to bathe the child
therewith; for, according to an old Celtic recipe, "Anoint thy face
with the milk of goats in which violets have been dipped, and there
is not a chief in the glens but will be charmed with thy beauty."
So said the citharist in his song; but MacNeish, as he made the sign
of the cross on her pure and innocent brow, exclaimed,--
"Thou art but a fool, grey Callum, for, by the great stone of
Glentiarkin! her beauty cometh from no other charm than the breath of
her Maker."
And in every foray he sought to bring some gaud or trinket of silver
or of gold to deck his daughter, the child of his old age, the last
of his doomed race; the little idol who shed a ray of light upon his
melancholy and desperate household in that wild and desolate isle.
So passed a year.