. . . . In a rebellion,
When what’s not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen, in a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power i’ the dust.--CORIOLANUS.
In a small apartment, remote from the rest of the guests assembled at
the castle, Sir Duncan Campbell was presented with every species of
refreshment, and respectfully attended by Lord Menteith, and by Allan
M’Aulay. His discourse with the latter turned upon a sort of hunting
campaign, in which they had been engaged together against the Children
of the Mist, with whom the Knight of Ardenvohr, as well as the M’Aulays,
had a deadly and irreconcilable feud. Sir Duncan, however, speedily
endeavoured to lead back the conversation to the subject of his present
errand to the castle of Darnlinvarach.
“It grieved him to the very heart,” he said, “to see that friends and
neighbours, who should stand shoulder to shoulder, were likely to be
engaged hand to hand in a cause which so little concerned them. What
signifies it,” he said, “to the Highland Chiefs, whether King or
Parliament got uppermost? Were it not better to let them settle their
own differences without interference, while the Chiefs, in the meantime,
took the opportunity of establishing their own authority in a manner
not to be called in question hereafter by either King or Parliament?”
He reminded Allan M’Aulay that the measures taken in the last reign
to settle the peace, as was alleged, of the Highlands, were in fact
levelled at the patriarchal power of the Chieftains; and he mentioned
the celebrated settlement of the Fife Undertakers, as they were
called, in the Lewis, as part of a deliberate plan, formed to introduce
strangers among the Celtic tribes, to destroy by degrees their ancient
customs and mode of government, and to despoil them of the inheritance
of their fathers. [In the reign of James VI., an attempt of rather an
extraordinary kind was made to civilize the extreme northern part of the
Hebridean Archipelago. That monarch granted the property of the Island
of Lewis, as if it had been an unknown and savage country, to a number
of Lowland gentlemen, called undertakers, chiefly natives of the shire
of Fife, that they might colonize and settle there. The enterprise
was at first successful, but the natives of the island, MacLeods and
MacKenzies, rose on the Lowland adventurers, and put most of them to
the sword.] “And yet,” he continued, addressing Allan, “it is for
the purpose of giving despotic authority to the monarch by whom these
designs have been nursed, that so many Highland Chiefs are upon
the point of quarrelling with, and drawing the sword against, their
neighbours, allies, and ancient confederates.” “It is to my brother,”
said Allan, “it is to the eldest son of my father’s house, that the
Knight of Ardenvohr must address these remonstrances. I am, indeed, the
brother of Angus; but in being so, I am only the first of his clansmen,
and bound to show an example to the others by my cheerful and ready
obedience to his commands.”
“The cause also,” said Lord Menteith, interposing, “is far more general
than Sir Duncan Campbell seems to suppose it. It is neither limited
to Saxon nor to Gael, to mountain nor to strath, to Highlands nor to
Lowlands. The question is, if we will continue to be governed by the
unlimited authority assumed by a set of persons in no respect superior
to ourselves, instead of returning to the natural government of the
Prince against whom they have rebelled. And respecting the interest of
the Highlands in particular,” he added, “I crave Sir Duncan Campbell’s
pardon for my plainness; but it seems very clear to me, that the only
effect produced by the present usurpation, will be the aggrandisement
of one overgrown clan at the expense of every independent Chief in the
Highlands.”
“I will not reply to you, my lord,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “because
I know your prejudices, and from whom they are borrowed; yet you will
pardon my saying, that being at the head of a rival branch of the House
of Graham, I have both read of and known an Earl of Menteith, who
would have disdained to have been tutored in politics, or to have been
commanded in war, by an Earl of Montrose.”
“You will find it in vain, Sir Duncan,” said Lord Menteith, haughtily,
“to set my vanity in arms against my principles. The King gave my
ancestors their title and rank; and these shall never prevent my acting,
in the royal cause, under any one who is better qualified than myself
to be a commander-in-chief. Least of all, shall any miserable jealousy
prevent me from placing my hand and sword under the guidance of the
bravest, the most loyal, the most heroic spirit among our Scottish
nobility.”
“Pity,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “that you cannot add to this panegyric
the farther epithets of the most steady, and the most consistent. But I
have no purpose of debating these points with you, my lord,” waving
his hand, as if to avoid farther discussion; “the die is cast with you;
allow me only to express my sorrow for the disastrous fate to which
Angus M’Aulay’s natural rashness, and your lordship’s influence, are
dragging my gallant friend Allan here, with his father’s clan, and many
a brave man besides.”
“The die is cast for us all, Sir Duncan,” replied Allan, looking gloomy,
and arguing on his own hypochondriac feelings; “the iron hand of destiny
branded our fate upon our forehead long ere we could form a wish, or
raise a finger in our own behalf. Were this otherwise, by what means
does the Seer ascertain the future from those shadowy presages which
haunt his waking and his sleeping eye? Nought can be foreseen but that
which is certain to happen.”
Sir Duncan Campbell was about to reply, and the darkest and most
contested point of metaphysics might have been brought into discussion
betwixt two Highland disputants, when the door opened, and Annot Lyle,
with her clairshach in her hand, entered the apartment. The freedom of
a Highland maiden was in her step and in her eye; for, bred up in the
closest intimacy with the Laird of M’Aulay and his brother, with
Lord Menteith, and other young men who frequented Darnlinvarach, she
possessed none of that timidity which a female, educated chiefly among
her own sex, would either have felt, or thought necessary to assume, on
an occasion like the present.
Her dress partook of the antique, for new fashions seldom penetrated
into the Highlands, nor would they easily have found their way to a
castle inhabited chiefly by men, whose sole occupation was war and the
chase. Yet Annot’s garments were not only becoming, but even rich. Her
open jacket, with a high collar, was composed of blue cloth, richly
embroidered, and had silver clasps to fasten, when it pleased the
wearer. Its sleeves, which were wide, came no lower than the elbow, and
terminated in a golden fringe; under this upper coat, if it can be so
termed, she wore an under dress of blue satin, also richly embroidered,
but which was several shades lighter in colour than the upper garment.
The petticoat was formed of tartan silk, in the sett, or pattern, of
which the colour of blue greatly predominated, so as to remove the
tawdry effect too frequently produced in tartan, by the mixture and
strong opposition of colours. An antique silver chain hung round
her neck, and supported the WREST, or key, with which she turned her
instrument. A small ruff rose above her collar, and was secured by a
brooch of some value, an old keepsake from Lord Menteith. Her profusion
of light hair almost hid her laughing eyes, while, with a smile and a
blush, she mentioned that she had M’Aulay’s directions to ask them if
they chose music. Sir Duncan Campbell gazed with considerable surprise
and interest at the lovely apparition, which thus interrupted his debate
with Allan M’Aulay.
“Can this,” he said to him in a whisper, “a creature so beautiful and so
elegant, be a domestic musician of your brother’s establishment?”
“By no means,” answered Allan, hastily, yet with some hesitation; “she
is a--a--near relation of our family--and treated,” he added, more
firmly, “as an adopted daughter of our father’s house.”
As he spoke thus, he arose from his seat, and with that air of courtesy
which every Highlander can assume when it suits him to practise it, he
resigned it to Annot, and offered to her, at the same time, whatever
refreshments the table afforded, with an assiduity which was probably
designed to give Sir Duncan an impression of her rank and consequence.
If such was Allan’s purpose, however, it was unnecessary. Sir Duncan
kept his eyes fixed upon Annot with an expression of much deeper
interest than could have arisen from any impression that she was
a person of consequence. Annot even felt embarrassed under the old
knight’s steady gaze; and it was not without considerable hesitation,
that, tuning her instrument, and receiving an assenting look from Lord
Menteith and Allan, she executed the following ballad, which our friend,
Mr. Secundus M’Pherson, whose goodness we had before to acknowledge, has
thus translated into the English tongue:
THE ORPHAN MAID.
November’s hail-cloud drifts away,
November’s sunbeam wan
Looks coldly on the castle grey,
When forth comes Lady Anne.
The orphan by the oak was set,
Her arms, her feet, were bare,
The hail-drops had not melted yet,
Amid her raven hair.
“And, Dame,” she said, “by all the ties
That child and mother know,
Aid one who never knew these joys,
Relieve an orphan’s woe.”
The Lady said, “An orphan’s state
Is hard and sad to bear;
Yet worse the widow’d mother’s fate,
Who mourns both lord and heir.
“Twelve times the rolling year has sped,
Since, when from vengeance wild
Of fierce Strathallan’s Chief I fled,
Forth’s eddies whelm’d my child.”
“Twelve times the year its course has born,”
The wandering maid replied,
“Since fishers on St. Bridget’s morn
Drew nets on Campsie side.
“St. Bridget sent no scaly spoil;--
An infant, wellnigh dead,
They saved, and rear’d in want and toil,
To beg from you her bread.”
That orphan maid the lady kiss’d--
“My husband’s looks you bear;
St. Bridget and her morn be bless’d!
You are his widow’s heir.”
They’ve robed that maid, so poor and pale,
In silk and sandals rare;
And pearls, for drops of frozen hail,
Are glistening in her hair.
The admirers of pure Celtic antiquity, notwithstanding the elegance of
the above translation, may be desirous to see a literal version from the
original Gaelic, which we therefore subjoin; and have only to add, that
the original is deposited with Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham.
LITERAL TRANSLATION.
The hail-blast had drifted away upon the wings of the gale
of autumn. The sun looked from between the clouds, pale as
the wounded hero who rears his head feebly on the heath when
the roar of battle hath passed over him.
Finele, the Lady of the Castle, came forth to see her
maidens pass to the herds with their leglins [Milk-pails].
There sat an orphan maiden beneath the old oak-tree of
appointment. The withered leaves fell around her, and her
heart was more withered than they.
The parent of the ice [poetically taken from the frost]
still congealed the hail-drops in her hair; they were like
the specks of white ashes on the twisted boughs of the
blackened and half-consumed oak that blazes in the hall.
And the maiden said, “Give me comfort, Lady, I am an orphan
child.” And the Lady replied, “How can I give that which I
have not? I am the widow of a slain lord,--the mother of a
perished child. When I fled in my fear from the vengeance
of my husband’s foes, our bark was overwhelmed in the tide,
and my infant perished. This was on St. Bridget’s morn,
near the strong Lyns of Campsie. May ill luck light upon
the day.” And the maiden answered, “It was on St. Bridget’s
morn, and twelve harvests before this time, that the
fishermen of Campsie drew in their nets neither grilse nor
salmon, but an infant half dead, who hath since lived in
misery, and must die, unless she is now aided.” And the Lady
answered, “Blessed be Saint Bridget and her morn, for these
are the dark eyes and the falcon look of my slain lord; and
thine shall be the inheritance of his widow.” And she
called for her waiting attendants, and she bade them clothe
that maiden in silk, and in samite; and the pearls which
they wove among her black tresses, were whiter than the
frozen hail-drops.
While the song proceeded, Lord Menteith observed, with some surprise,
that it appeared to produce a much deeper effect upon the mind of Sir
Duncan Campbell, than he could possibly have anticipated from his
age and character. He well knew that the Highlanders of that period
possessed a much greater sensibility both for tale and song than was
found among their Lowland neighbours; but even this, he thought, hardly
accounted for the embarrassment with which the old man withdrew his eyes
from the songstress, as if unwilling to suffer them to rest on an object
so interesting. Still less was it to be expected, that features which
expressed pride, stern common sense, and the austere habit of authority,
should have been so much agitated by so trivial a circumstance. As the
Chief’s brow became clouded, he drooped his large shaggy grey eyebrows
until they almost concealed his eyes, on the lids of which something
like a tear might be seen to glisten. He remained silent and fixed in
the same posture for a minute or two, after the last note had ceased to
vibrate. He then raised his head, and having looked at Annot Lyle, as if
purposing to speak to her, he as suddenly changed that purpose, and was
about to address Allan, when the door opened, and the Lord of the Castle
made his appearance.