DESOLATION.
Night came down on that scene of lamentation and woe--on more than
eighty human beings who were fashioned in the image of God, and were
yet denied such shelter as He accords to the fox and eagle; but
though their hearths were desolate, and their old hereditary but
humble homes demolished, the clearance could not be deemed complete,
until the people were entirely swept away from the country.
Callum and I obtained shelter with the old priest Father Raoul, who
afforded us a corner of his little hut; the poor man had but one
pallet--and there we remained for a day or two, considering what
steps should be taken to find food for those who were starving in the
now desolate glen, and moreover to provide for ourselves.
Thus I found a temporary home, within a few feet of the spot, where
she, to whom I had ever turned for consolation and comfort, advice
and sympathy, was taking her eternal rest.
Meanwhile fresh cruelties and scenes of horror took place in that
ill-fated glen, where the people were completely given up to the
malevolent fury of Snaggs, who, as a man of the law, had a truly
legal aversion to Highlanders.
The evicted formed a little bivouac on the heather. In one place lay
a sick mother, stretched on a pallet, covered by her husband's plaid;
around her nestled her little ones, gazing with awe and terror at
this unusual scene; on the deathlike visage of one parent and the
stern despair that lurked in the eyes of the other. Fires of turf
and rafters were kindled, and round these, in little booths of rugs
and plaids, nestled the younger children, and infants in cradles.
Amid these the elder children sported and played, ignorant of the
ruin that had come upon them, and in their heedless glee forming a
strong contrast to their grief-stricken parents, whose once high
spirit was crushed and broken now. Such is the effect of tyranny,
starvation, and misrule!
The old soldier, Ian Mac Raonuil, burrowed a hole on the brow of a
hill under a rock, and spread his plaid over it. Herein lay his
wife, nursing a sickly and delicate child, while he with his stouter
sons slept on the sward. The air became chilly, and the cloudy sky
was overcharged with dew; thus many who were sick and ailing,
wandered about like ghosts on the midnight hill, unable to find
either shelter or repose. Premature labour came on the wife of
Gillespie Ruadh; and there, on the bleak side of Ben Ora, the
wretched Highland mother brought her child into the world. Before
morning she expired, and the aged widow Mac Gouran lay also a corpse,
not far from her; for before dawn, there came on a tempest of
lightning, wind, and rain, as if the very elements had conspired with
the petty tyrants of the glen, to destroy the homeless Mac Innons.
And while the blue lightning gleamed between the bare scalp of Ben
Ora and the rifted brow of the Craig-na-tuirc; while the rain like a
ceaseless torrent smoked along the soaking heather, and flooded every
rocky chasm and sandy runnel; while the wind swept over the hills as
if it would have torn up the heath by the roots, our poor people all
nestled together, and, lifting up their voices, sang a psalm with
touching piety. Amid this tempest the mother and her youngling died;
and the beautiful Celtic superstition--that a woman who dies in
childbed, whatever her offences in life--is borne by angels straight
to heaven, was remembered now, as the people whispered it to one
another, and drew comfort from it.
The sufferings of the night left them more wretched than ever.
To shelter the women, and to veil the dead bodies from the view of
the children, a few cabers were propped together, and above these the
men spread their plaids and grey frieze coats; but ere long there was
a cry of alarm, and the infamous Snaggs, with a party of his
levellers and armed constables, came upon them again. Then the
coverings were torn off; the cabers flung aside, and the sick and the
dead were remorselessly exposed to the blaze of the hot morning sun.
The booth which sheltered the children was demolished, and the wife
of Mac Raonuil was dragged from her hole on the hill-side.
In vain did she weep and hold up her babe; in vain did the sick
veteran, her husband, point to his wounded arm, his silver hairs, and
three war-medals; the only reply was fierce abuse for daring to seek
shelter, or to burrow, after a notice of removal had been duly served
upon them.
A few ducks and hens, which had been wandering and scraping among the
ruins of the cottages, were now collected and carried off by the
constables, lest they might afford a day's food to the homeless, who
were threatened with fresh vengeance by those jacks-in-office, if
found in the glen to-morrow. Mr. Snaggs, who always spoke blandly,
quoted Scripture and Blair on the folly of resistance; the beauty of
submission to the will of God, and more especially of the new
proprietor, for 'go they must--a ship was coming round to Loch Ora
with sheep; and on the morrow there would arrive several hampers of a
new species of game with which Sir Horace meant to stock the glen.
Go then, my dear friends,' continued Mr. Snaggs, with a gloating eye
at Minnie, who was kneeling over some sick children; 'go, and the
Lord will provide for you in Canada--"for," as the divine Blair says,
"neither obscurity of station, nor imperfection of knowledge sink
below his regard those who obey and worship him."'
With this trite quotation, the elder and the factor whipped up his
pony, and departed with a couple of fat ducks dangling at its
saddle-bow.
Next morning, the keepers arrived with their hampers of game on a
cart, and as they entered the glen by the lower pass, the original
inhabitants retired by the upper, (bearing their dead, their dying,
the sick, aged, and little ones, slung in plaids over the shoulders
of the stoutest men,) towards the only shelter that remained to
them--and assuredly the last which the Gael would think of
adopting--the old ruined chapel of St. Colme upon the sea-beaten
rocks of the western coast, for, as no Highland landlord will allow
the evicted tenants of another to tarry within his bounds, the
graveyards alone are now the neutral ground. There among the tombs
they formed a new bivouac above the long rank grass that wrapped
their fathers' dust. Close by were the moss-covered and
lichen-spotted ruins of the old chapel, where the owl and the bat had
their nests, and where the sombre ivy grew in luxuriance--a place of
many solemn memories and many legendary terrors.
Location of every kind was refused by the adjacent proprietors; so
with a vast tract of wild and rugged mountains and pathless hunting
forests around them, our people were compelled to herd like cattle
within the circular wall of the burying-ground; for most of the
modern tyrants of the North share alike the love of game, the lust of
gold, and a horror of the Celtic race.
It was on the fourth day that the widow of the Ca-Dearg (whose head
had been fractured by the blow of a baton) died; and a cry for
vengeance against her murderers went up to heaven from the denizens
of that uncouth bivouac, as they committed her body to the earth; and
it was fortunate that all the rifles and weapons of the people had
been seized; for in Callum's breast and mine, there swelled up such a
glow of fury, that we would assuredly have committed some fierce and
retributive act, at which all Britain would have been startled.
'Are we slaves?' exclaimed Callum, furiously; 'I speak in English,
Mac Innon; for, thank heaven, the Gaelic is the _only_ language in
the world that has no word expressive of slavery.'
'A bootless boast,' said I, gloomily; 'and what matters it, when we
may be murdered with impunity?'
'Evil has come upon us like snow upon the mountains, unsought and
unsent for,' said he, as we closed the grave of the soldier's widow;
'poor old woman! Her blood has been shed by a staff that bore the
royal crown and cypher--and for that crown her three brave sons are
fighting in the East. A chial! a Highland soldier, or a Highland
soldier's mother, are of less value than a grouse or plover--a sheep
or a cow; for they cannot be shot for pleasure like the former, nor
fattened to feed the southern market like the latter; and it is for a
Government that treats us thus our soldiers fight and die! _Is
samhach an obair dol a dholaidh!_'
'Alas, yes--silent is the progress of ruin!' I replied, repeating the
proverb; 'but had our glen been in Tipperary, at what premium would
the lives of Snaggs and Sir Horace been insured?'
'Sir Horace has driven us forth, that our glen may be peopled by wild
animals; _but if fire will burn_, by the five wounds of God, and by
the Black Stone of Scone, he will make little of that!' swore Callum,
in a hoarse Gaelic whisper.
There was a dark and savage gleam in his hazel eyes as he spoke; and
though aware that he referred to a project of vengeance, I cared not
then to ask what it was.
Old Mhari was the wise woman and chief adviser and mediciner of the
glen; she placed implicit belief in a hundred charms, spells,
traditions, and absurdities that have come down to us through long
and misty ages--yea, since the days of Fingal; for the supernatural
is full of charms to the mind of a mountaineer. Thus Mhari was the
custodier of one of those sanctified girdles which were usually kept
in many Highland families, and which were bound about women in
childbed. They were impressed with strange and mystic figures; and
the ceremony of binding was accompanied by words of Druidical origin;
but Mhari was sorely perplexed and bewildered when the wife of
Gillespie Ruadh expired amid the tempest, with this ancient girdle of
maternity around her.
In a revengeful spirit, that bordered on the necromantic malevolence
of the olden time, she fashioned an image of clay, which she named
'Ephraim Snaggs,' and selecting a time when the moon was full, placed
it in a runnel which distilled between the rocks from a lonely tarn,
among the sedges of which the dusky water-ouzel laid its eggs, and
where the lazy bittern, whose croak forebodes a storm, made its home;
and she believed that as the stream washed away the clay, and reduced
it to a shapeless mass, and from thence to mere mud, so would the
ungainly person of Mr. Ephraim Snaggs waste, pine, and decay: but
most unfortunately, and greatly to the injury of Mhari's local
reputation, this incantation of the nineteenth century turned out a
complete failure; for though the runnel washed away the image in less
than three days, Snaggs remained unharmed and well as ever; for we
frequently saw him trotting his pony along the mountain path which
led to the house of Sir Horace Everingham.
Though supported by the secret charity of the neighbouring clachans,
our poor people were meanwhile enduring great misery. Their nights
were passed shelterless among the dreary shades of the dead--each
mother with her children clinging round her in terror and hunger; for
their principal sustenance had been herbs, mountain-berries, and cold
water.
Each morning they thanked God that another night was past; and each
night they thanked Him for the sorrowful day that was gone. The wind
whistled drearily from the ocean round the open ruins, and over the
long grassy graves, and bare, bleak headland of St. Colme. It seemed
to bear on its breath a wailing sound, like a dirge of the dying, as
it swept through the old yew-trees--but this, of course, was fancy.
With a heart that vibrated between love and hatred, anger and sorrow,
I thought of Laura Everingham.
If the regret she expressed so prettily and so pithily for her
father's previous severity and his Victor's cruelty was sincere, what
would her emotions be now?
But days passed away, and no message from her ever reached me at that
wretched hut, which the poor but hospitable priest had invited me to
share. This neglect stung me to the soul, and caused an anger that
not even the memory of Laura's winning kindness, the strange
admissions of Snobleigh in the avenue, and the memory of her soft
smile or the beauty of her person could subdue; but I knew not that
during this, our time of calamity, she and Fanny Clavering were
paying a visit to a noble marquis, whose exterminating propensities
have made him famous as one of the chief '_Barriers_ to the
prosperity of Scotland.'
Meanwhile Sir Horace, Sheriff Mac Fee, and Mr. Snaggs, after a
voluminous correspondence with the Board of Supervision, had a
steamer despatched to Loch Ora, to convey our people to Glasgow,
where (without being landed) they were to be thrust like slaves on
board of a vessel bound for America. Their final expatriation was
fully resolved on by the trio; and none of the evicted were consulted
either as to their wishes or destination, as they were alleged to be
poor and ignorant Celts, who knew no language but their native
Gaelic, and were helpless and stricken alike by poverty, sickness,
and a wholesome terror of the powers that be.
The night was pitchy dark and somewhat stormy, when our poor outcasts
saw the steamer that was to convey them for ever from their loved
Highland home, ploughing the lonely waters of the deep salt loch that
opened into the mountains; and a wail of despair ascended from the
bleak burial promontory, as they heard the roar of the escaping
steam, and the plunge of the descending anchor, when the vessel came
to her moorings. Then the red light at her mast-head was watched for
hours by the doomed and expatriated clansmen with emotions which no
pen can describe, or pencil portray.
On this night it was averred that the _white stag_ had been seen to
hover near us in the gloom.
Low down along the base of Ben Ora, round the shore of the mirrored
loch, and in the dark glen they had left, our people saw a wondrous
blaze of light that illuminated the sky--that tinged the clouds with
wavering fire, and lit the cold grey rocks and hills--the waving
woods, and ghastly corries. It widened and grew on every hand, that
marvellous sheet of flame, seeming to embrace the whole country in
its fiery grasp; and with shouts of fear and wonder, the poor people,
while gazing on this phenomenon, forgot for a time their own sorrows,
and the approaching hour of their final expatriation.