THE EVICTION.
Whispering of these things, the men of the glen recrossed the
mountains, but slowly and silently, for the voice of the pipe was
heard no more on the gloomy heath; the boom of the climbing waves had
died away on the distant beach, and evening was reddening the dun
heathy slopes of the Ben when we drew near our home, and a cry of
alarm burst from those who were in front of our funeral party. Large
columns of smoke were seen to ascend from the hollow, and to curl in
the clear air between us and the sky.
A chill came over the hearts of those who accompanied me. As for
myself, I deemed, as I have said, that misfortune had shot the
sharpest shafts at me, and now that I had nothing more in this world
to care for, or to fear; but yet I felt a sore pang, when, on
arriving at a gorge of the hills, rightly named Gar-choine, or The
Place of Lamentation, for there the Campbells had once defeated the
Mac Innons, we came in sight of the beautiful natural amphitheatre of
Glen Ora, and saw thirty columns of smoke ascending from as many
cottages, and uniting in one broad and heavy cloud of vapour, that
rolled like mist along the mountain sides. On the slope of the hill
were clustered a crowd of women and children, screaming and
lamenting, while at the far extremity of the glen, where the narrow
and winding road that led to Inverness dipped down towards the
Caledonian Canal, we perceived a train of carts laden with
furniture--the miserable household gear of our poor cotters; while
the bayonets of a party of soldiers who escorted it--like a Spanish
treasure or a Roman triumph--flashed a farewell ray in the setting
sun, for resistance had been anticipated by Mr. Ephraim Snaggs; and
thus he had borrowed an unwilling party from the detachment which
usually garrisons the secluded barrack at Fort William.
The glensmen paused on the brow of the hill which overlooked their
desecrated homes, and their voices rose with their clenched hands in
one heavy and terrible imprecation; then with a shout they rushed
down towards their wives and little ones, where a fresh scene of
grief and sorrow awaited them; for now we were homeless, and
'landless, landless,' as ever were the race of Alpine in the last
century.
Snaggs and the Sheriff had taken their measures well to evict the
people, destroy their dwellings, and seize the furniture when no
resistance could be offered; by choosing a time when all the men of
the glen were absent at my mother's interment. Yet they took nearly
as many precautions before venturing up the side of the Loch Ora, as
if the clans were still in their most palmy days, when Lachlan Mohr
feasted his brave men on the best beeves of the Campbells, and had
five hundred targets, and as many claymores, hung in his hall.
The barbarous cruelties exercised by a neighbouring Duchess and a
canting Marquis upon the poor, had so greatly exasperated the Mac
Innons, that at fairs and elsewhere, they had been in the habit of
openly threatening an armed resistance to any attempt to evict them
from the glen, where they--the aboriginal race--had dwelt for ages
before Laird or Peer or feudal parchments had a name in the land.
Callum's character and mine were well known to be reckless, bold, and
even desperate; thus Messieurs Snaggs and Mac Fee took their measures
wisely, and accordingly selected the time for attack, when the whole
of the male population were at the grave of the Mac Innons.
The rural police of the adjacent districts were secretly ordered to
hold tryst in a wood about six miles distant. There they arrived
about midnight, and received a harangue from Sheriff Mac Fee on the
majesty of the law; there an oath was administered to them, and there
Mr. Snaggs quoted Blair, and gave them that which proved much more
acceptable--a jorum of whisky and ale. On mustering their forces,
these worthy officials found that, including themselves, the
Procurator Fiscal and a couple of clerks, with the police, they had
only thirty men, but as well armed with hatchets, crow-bars, levers
and pickaxes, as if they were about to invest the Redan. Doubtful
still of success, application had been made to the Commandant at Fort
William for a Serjeant's party of twelve men from the Irish
Fusileers, with twenty rounds of ball-cartridge each, as there was a
fear that the same rifles which had done such wonders at the recent
Gathering, might cover the legal person of the great moralist. Thus
the whole _possé_ marched in array of battle into the glen, where, to
the terror and dismay of the women, they appeared about half an hour
after the last of the funeral procession had disappeared over the
summit of the hill.
An immediate and indiscriminate attack was made upon the cottages and
on the old jointure-house; and amid the shrieks, outcries, tears and
lamentations of the women, the usual work of eviction and destruction
progressed with as much spirit as if Huske, Hawley, Cumberland and
Co., had left the infernal shades to visit upper air. Delay and
mercy were craved alike in vain by these poor people. In vain did
more than one young mother hold her new-born babe aloft; in vain did
the daughters of those who fought with Moore and Wellington, implore
pity, on bended knees, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, as they
clung about the knees of Snaggs and Mac Fee; but each was "sullen as
Ajax," and bent on upholding the dignity of the law and of wealth.
The inmates were summoned to come forth, and if they refused, were
roughly dragged out, some with babes at their breasts, and batoned
with such brutality, that the Irish Fusileers, whose hearts revolted
at the police, and who in their own land had seen too much of similar
work, used the butts of their muskets against the limbs of the law,
and thus offered some protection to our women.
Every article of furniture was flung out; box-beds were torn down;
chairs, tables, kail-pots, and kettles, spinning-wheels, caups,
quaighs and luggies, clothing and delft, were thrown on the sward,
and in many instances destroyed in a spirit of sheer recklessness.
Every little object which time, tenderness, or association made
valuable in the humble eyes of the cottagers was demolished or
carried off. The domestic shrine was rifled; its _lares_
desecrated--its household gods destroyed. Everything eatable or
drinkable was at once appropriated by the plunderers. The thatch was
torn down; crow-bars and levers were applied to the huge
boulder-stones, which in many instances formed the corners of the
poor huts, and by one or two wrenches, the whole fabric was tumbled
in a heap of ruin. The cabers and couples were cut through by saws
or axes; and thus every hut, house, barn, stable, and hen-roost were
destroyed. The old jointure-house was gutted of its furniture, every
vestige of which was piled on carts with the miserable chattels of
the people, and driven off towards the nearest market-town; not an
article of my property escaped, save a few old seals and rings,
which, with my father's sword, old Mhari and Minnie concealed about
their persons. Then the mansion was unroofed; the doors hewn down;
the windows dashed out; and the floors torn up and burned, to render
it totally uninhabitable. Thus from house to house, from cot to cot,
and from barn to byre, went these ministers of destruction; the sick
were dragged from their beds; the aged mother of Alisdair Mac Gouran,
a woman in her ninetieth year, and whose grey head had not left her
pillow for three years, was borne out and flung on the damp hill
side. Women scarcely recovered from the pains of maternity--and
others on the point of becoming mothers, were alike brought forth,
and those who resisted, or vainly attempted to save some prized
article, though of little value, were beaten with batons until forced
to relinquish their hold.
Seated by her fire, Widow Gillian (the relict of a soldier whose
patronymic was Ca-Dearg), and who was the mother of three sons in our
Highland Division, boldly refused to come forth, or to yield up her
husband's silver medals, of which they endeavoured to deprive her.
Rendered desperate and frantic, this woman, though aged, seemed stout
and active; she clung, shrieking, to the posts of her bed; but the
police tore her away. Then she caught wildly at the jambs of a door;
but her fingers were soon bruised or broken by batons, and one
constable tired of her screaming, dealt her a blow which fractured
her skull, and covered her long grey hair with blood. Then she
became insensible. Flora, her daughter, one of the prettiest girls
in the glen, when seeking to defend her, received a kick in the
breast, from which she never recovered.
Fire was now applied to all the remaining cottages, and their roofs
of thatch, turf, and heather, with their old dry rafters of resinous
mountain pine, burned bravely. The work of destruction was nearly
complete.
Then the sheriff mounted his horse; Snaggs bestrode his trotting
garron; the carts laden with such furniture as had not been burned,
broken, or deemed worthless, were put in motion; the few sheep and
cattle of the people were collected, and accompanied by the
constables who were laden with everything they could lay hands upon,
and surrounded by the pitying soldiers with their bayonets fixed,
Messrs. Fungus Mac Fee, Ephraim Snaggs, and the Fiscal, headed the
plunder of the glen, and departed, leaving that once beautiful little
mountain-village a heap of smoking ruins--every hut levelled flat, or
sinking amid smoke, flame, and dust--the jointure-house reduced to
four bare walls; while the women and their little ones, bathed in
tears, or covered with cuts, blood, and bruises, remained in a stupor
of silent astonishment and horror at this irreparable destruction,
which divested them of shelter, of food, furniture, clothing, and
everything, and just when the rain-charged clouds of night were
descending on the hills.
Let not the English reader deem this atrocious scene overdrawn. In
Sutherland, Inverness, and Ross, in Moidart and the Isles, such have
been enacted with even greater brutality since the beginning of this
century. Yet the brave, hardy, frugal and patient Highlanders have
endured it without complaint. In form of law, murders have been
committed in open day--but then it was merely the manslaughter of a
few Highland paupers, to enforce the dignity of ducal wealth and the
majesty of feudal law.
'Thus it is,' says the brave old General Stewart, 'that the love of
speculating in the brute creation, has invaded these mountains, into
which no foreign enemy could ever penetrate, and has expelled a brave
people whom no invader could ever subdue. It has converted whole
glens and districts, once the abode of a bold, vigorous, and
independent race of men, into scenes of desolation.'