The Well of the Heads E-Book

Stuart McHardy

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 393

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The origins of the Scottish clans go back over a thousand years, and for centuries these extended networks of families dominated life in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The warriors of the clan, fiercely loyal to each other and to their chief, were well known for their extraordinary courage and military skills. Retold by one of Scotland's most acclaimed storytellers, these stories illustrate the drama and the dynamism of a society which lived close to nature, had little in the way of material wealth but which boasted a remarkable treasure house of stories that were passed down over generations.

Leseprobe

The Well of the Heads

The Well of the Heads

And Other Tales of the Scottish Clans

by

Stuart McHardy

First published in 2005 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Stuart McHardy 2005

The moral right of Stewart McHardy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 10: 1 84158 385 5

ISBN 13: 978 1 84158 385 3

ePUB ISBN: 978 1 78885 302 6

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by XXX

To all those whose hearts are in the Highlands

Contents

Introduction

Highland Honour

Real Highland Hospitality

The Silver Spoon

Origins

A Grand Archer

Son of the Carpenter

Native Intelligence

The Sweetest Bite

Using the Head

The Tables Turned

Donald Og

Highland Candlesticks

On the Battlefield

In Roman Times

The Battle of the North Inch 45

The Battle of Harlaw

The Battle of the Park

Big Duncan of the Axe

The Battle of the Shirts

The Battle of Mulroy

The Loch of the Sword

No Honour Here

A Talented Man

The False Bride

The Word of a Campbell

Donald Gorm

The Ladies

Colonel Anne

Fair Annie and the Black Colonel 116

Mary Cameron

Morag of the Heads

The Old Woman of Moy

MacLaine and the Ugly Woman 129

Man’s Inhumanity to Man

The Smooring of the MacDonalds 135

And Blood Shall Lead to Blood 138

The Slave Ship

An Expensive Meal

A Cruel and Savage Chief

Magic and Superstition

The MacLeods and the Fairies 168

The Magic Candle

A Change in the Weather

A Dish Best Served Cold

The Well of the Seven Heads 183

An Eye for an Eye

The Night is the Night

Donald Cam Macaulay

Stickability

The Chief who Asked too Much 207

The Well of the Head

A Gentle Giant

A Revenger’s Tale

Introduction

In the Highlands of Scotland till modern times there lived a warrior-society that in many ways resembled those that flourished all over Europe in the Iron Age over two thousand years ago. Focused on the central role of the warrior, the Scottish clan system, built round the ties of blood, continued to exist alongside the modern rapidly industrialising society of eighteenth-century Britain. The clans were united by claims of common descent from a distant ancestor and such ancestors could have been Picts, Scots or even Norsemen – the peoples who roamed first millennium Scotland. The warriors of the clan, fiercely loyal to each other and to the chief, the centre of all clan life, were known for their remarkable courage and endurance, selfless loyalty and highly developed military skills. Not for nothing were they considered the best fighting men in the world. These skills in time formed the backbone of the British armies that conquered the world – the Highland regiments.

The tales collected here illustrate the drama and dynamism of a society that lived close to nature, had little in the way of material wealth but was possessed of an intellectual treasure-house of story and song. That tradition gives us instances of outstanding bravery and cold-hearted deceit, loyalty to the death and the eeriness of the magic and the supernatural.

There are also a couple of stories of clan origin, ‘A Grand Archer’ being a direct echo of the ancient Norse myth of Orvandel, while the ‘Son of the Carpenter’ illustrates the roughness of humour that can exist in traditional material. The stories were told round the peat fires of the Highland clans and in many Lowland areas, and served for both entertainment and moral education. Young men learned how to behave, and how not to behave, through such stories. These stories make no claim to being historically accurate. As an example of what can happen, the story of the Battle of Harlaw eventually gave rise to the ballad that claimed that 40,000 men came from the Western Isles, an impossibly large number. Many of these stories might similarly have exaggerated the numbers of warriors involved, but this does not matter. The telling of the stories was an integral part of both Gaelic-speaking and Scots-speaking societies and derived from much older traditions amongst both the Gaelic-speaking Scots and the Picts, who spoke a language akin to Old Welsh.

While historians obsess about the written word – though increasingly it is becoming obvious that much of Scotland’s supposed early documentation has been ‘adjusted’ for propaganda purposes – the storytellers respected what we might call the psycho-sociological realities that underpin the stories. Stemming from ancient traditions that flourished for millennia without the written word, the stories here give us pictures of an ancient, essentially tribal society that lived in tandem with the emerging modern world.

Much of the material here, as befits a society in which every able man was a warrior, revolves around battle and raiding. Every man was a warrior, but warriors are not soldiers and the men of the clan had ties of blood to the men who led them. They were not linked to their leaders by feudalism but by kinship relationships that had survived intact for incredible lengths of time. Some of these stories concern women of the clans, and it is hardly surprising that they too became involved in battle. Women were always respected in Highland society, though as ever there were exceptions to the general behaviour. Just as there were always men whose self-interest led them to breaking the honour code, so there were men whose lust overpowered whatever sense of decency they might have had. There are tales here of revenge, the dish best served cold. There are also instances of blood-chilling cruelty as in ‘The Smooring of the MacDonalds’. However, when we see the remarkable loyalty that could exist within clans, and the remarkable sense of honour and fairness shown in the story ‘Real Highland Hospitality’, it is difficult to credit the later government-driven propaganda depicting the Highlander as a thieving savage.

The figure of the Highland warrior, and particularly that of the clan chief, has been the subject of a great deal of Romantic wishful-thinking over the years. They lived in a society that was perhaps an anachronism even by the the eighteenth century, but for those born into it, this was all the world they knew. Hopefully these tales will entertain and help give a picture of what was the last Celtic-speaking warrior society in Europe. By understanding that society better we might yet develop a truer picture of the real history of Scotland.

Edinburgh, 2005

Stuart McHardy

Highland Honour

Real Highland Hospitality

Now for as long as people could remember the Highlanders had loved to hunt. While in the olden times the favourite target would have been the wild boar, a truly ferocious and fearless beast, whose indomitable spirit saw it used as a warrior symbol in many societies, by the Middle Ages it had been hunted to extinction. The main target for hunters then became the red deer, beloved of the kings of Scotland as well as the warriors of the Highland clans. Even to this day, stalking for red deer plays a considerable part in the economy of many Highland estates. Although they enjoyed the hunt, it wasn’t just for sport and it was long believed in the Highlands that venison was good for you, especially if you were ill or had been wounded. It also provided a considerable part of most people’s diet. The importance of deer in Highland society can be seen in the stories of the great hero Finn MacCoul, which formed a central part of Highland Gaelic lore. His original name was Demne, which some think meant little deer; his wife Sadv was turned into a deer by a malevolent Druid and their son was called Oisin, or Ossian, which meant fawn.

From an early age Highland lads were instructed in hunting the deer and many of them were addicted to the thrill of the chase. One time a couple of Lamonts from Castle Toward in Cowal were hunting in Forest of Etive. One of them was the son of the chief of the Lamonts who had not long come to manhood. They were heading towards Inverlochy when they met up with the son of MacGregor of Glenstrae and a couple of his friends who were also out hunting. Neither group had had much luck so they decided to try their hand together. The day proved fruitless and that evening the five of them ended up at Kingshouse Inn in Glencoe. What happened next has never been satisfactorily explained, but somehow the two young men fell out. They exchanged words. One thing led to another, and finally young MacGregor lay dead on the floor from a blow by Lamont’s dirk! At once Lamont took to his heels and ran off into the hills.

He travelled through the mountains in the hours of darkness, sure that MacGregor’s companions would be hot on his heels and in the morning before dawn had streaked the sky he came down into Glen Strae, through which the river runs into the northern waters of Loch Awe. He had made remarkable time over rough ground in the dark and was close to exhaustion. Seeing a light shining from a nearby house he went to the door and knocked. When it was answered by a fine-looking, older man he asked for hospitality and protection.

‘Aye, I will give you hospitality and you will be under my protection till tomorrow morning, come what may,’ said the older man. So Lamont was taken into the house and given food. Soon the household was astir, and presently there was another knock at the door, which was again answered by the older man himself. There stood a group of MacGregors, faces drawn, come to tell their chieftain that his son had been killed by Lamont. For the young Cowal lad had come direct to the door of Glenstrae himself, the father of the man he had killed! Behind Glenstrae his wife and daughters heard the news and burst into lamentations. Their cries grew even louder when the men at the door said they had trailed Lamont to the chief’s house. Glenstrae had given hospitality and protection to the killer of his own son.

‘Let us have him,’ cried one of the men at the door.

‘No, he is my guest,’ came the reply in a voice cracking with grief.

‘But he has killed your son,’ came another voice.

‘Let no one hurt a hair on this lad’s head,’ the words came slowly, ‘for MacGregor has given his word. He shall be safe while he remains under my roof. Now go.’

The house was filled with keening and crying and the womenfolk tried to persuade Glenstrae to hand over the young Lamont to his men. But he was adamant. The rules of Highland hospitality were one thing and the word of the MacGregor was another. No matter the horror and despair in is heart, he would not go back on his word. His son’s body was brought back and a great funeral was held, and all the while Lamont was inside the chief’s house. The clan seethed against the Cowal man, but there was nothing to be done, although many wished to do something. And so it was that one day soon after, just as the dawn broke, Glenstrae came out from his house fully armed, with Lamont at his side. Both men were prepared for a considerable journey, and under the watchful eyes of a couple of dozen armed MacGregors, their chief led the killer of his son away. They passed down through Glen Shira with never a word spoken between them. They reached Dundarave Point on Loch Fyne where MacGregor procured a boat for Lamont to row over to Cowal. As the young man got into the boat MacGregor spoke: ‘I have fulfilled my vow. Once you are on the other side you are no longer under my protection and I can defend you no longer. You will have to take your own chances. Flee for thy life and may God forgive you for what you have done.’

And the old man turned away broken-hearted, to take the road home. Lamont rowed like a madman, and once on the other side he made as fast a pace as he could till he gained the security of his own lands round Castle Toward. Never again did he stray far from his own home, as he knew that the MacGregors roamed far and wide and that there was no chance they would forget him! As for Glenstrae, he lived on for many years, and into the time that the whole country seemed to have turned against the MacGregors, from the king down. He was driven from his ancestral home and his kin were scattered to the winds. So it happened that old MacGregor found himself in the wild country of Cowal, alone and friendless.

One day he arrived at the door of Castle Toward and asked to see Lamont, by now chief himself. When Lamont asked who was asking to see him he was told, ‘One who knows the Law of Hospitality.’

Realising who his visitor must be he ran down to the gate of the castle and brought the white-haired old man in to his home. It was here that MacGregor of Glenstrae spent his last days, under the protection of one he himself had saved, and when he passed on he was buried in the kirkyard at Cowal, far, far away from the lands of his MacGregor forbears in Glenstrae.

The Silver Spoon

In Glen Nevis there is a knoll near the old fort of Dun Dige called Cnoc na mi Chomairle, ‘the Hillock of Evil Counsel’. The name comes from an incident that took place in the distant past. The people in the immediate area, the MacSorlies, who later became part of Clan Cameron, were much like all the other people of the time and their men were often involved in following the ways of the School of the Moon, in that they would go out in the long moonlit September nights to lift the cattle of distant clans. This raiding was generally in the country far to the east over the mountains, and the people they raided were often members of the Clan Chattan. This was a confederation of various clans encompassing the Davidsons, the Farquharsons, the Mackintoshes, the MacPhersons, Shaws and others. Over the generations the MacSorlies and the Clan Chattan were often at odds and had come to see each other as traditional enemies. Now at the time we are looking at the chief of the MacSorlies decided that the situation was intolerable. Any time any of his men met with a member of Clan Chattan there was a fight and too many of his clansmen were being killed in what he thought of as essentially pointless battles. It was getting to the stage where it was impossible for any of the MacSorlies to go into Strathspey or further east without trouble.

He therefore resolved to invite a number of the leading men of Clan Chattan to come to Glen Nevis for a parley. He wished to come to a peaceful agreement with the Easterners. The day came, and the men of Clan Chattan, more than a dozen of them, comprising chieftains from a variety of different clans, came to Dun Dighe. They were given the very best of hospitality and all day long discussions went on. There were many old scores brought up and negotiations were at times very delicate, but the Clan Chattan men saw some sense in what MacSorlie was suggesting. Both sets of clansmen knew they would never be able to exclude the possibility of some of their number raiding the others’ cattle but the endemic hostility between the two clans was clearly of no benefit to anyone.

At last, as the evening drew on, agreement was reached and hands were shaken all round. As the Clan Chattan men prepared to leave and cover a few miles before darkness, MacSorlie called on his piper to play them off with a tune. It is said that the tune he decided to play was a fateful one indeed. He played the traditional rallying tune of the Camerons, ‘Sons of the Dogs come here and get Flesh’. This was immediately taken as an insult by the men of Clan Chattan, whose symbol of course was the cat.

Dismissing his piper with heavy words MacSorlie tried to placate the Clan Chattan men. ‘You have my word,’ he pleaded, ‘no insult was meant to any of you at all. That piper is just a stupid and arrogant fool. We have done well here today by agreeing a peace. Please do not allow the actions of one stupid oaf to undo all that we have achieved here today.’

His words fell on deaf ears. Like Highland warriors throughout the centuries the Chattan men, feeling their honour had been insulted, would brook no apology. The sense of Highland honour was closely intertwined with each individual’s sense of himself, and pride, once offended, precluded the possibility of apology. So, muttering words of vengeance about to come, the Clan Chattan men set off eastwards. Having invited them onto his lands and given them hospitality, they were under MacSorlie’s protection by the code of the Highlands so he had little choice but to watch as his enraged guests headed off. The MacSorlies, though they greatly outnumbered the Clan Chattan deputation, could only stand by as the angry group headed off. They did not go far, and very soon afterwards they stopped on the knoll, watched by a group of MacSorlies from a distance.

The first to speak was Uilleam Farquharson from Deeside: ‘Well, we have two choices,’ he said. ‘We can head back home and gather up more of the lads and come back and let these damned MacSorlies pay the price of insulting the men of Clan Chattan.’

‘Aye,’ Ewan MacPherson burst in, ‘Let’s get as many lads as we can and come back and wipe out these scum . . .’.

‘Och, hold on now Ewan,’ interjected Callum Shaw, a grey-haired warrior in his late forties and the oldest of the men present, ‘I am thinking that Uilleam has something more to say. Isn’t that right Uilleam?’

Farquharson smiled grimly, ‘Aye. As I was about to say Ewan, we can go back for more of the lads or we can head back homewards for a bit and come back tonight. MacSorlie and his whelps will not be expecting that now, will they?’

There were muttered words of approval as the group on the knoll thought this over. It was only a matter of minutes before all had agreed and the party of warriors headed off towards the east, followed for a few miles by a larger group of MacSorlies. However, as night was falling, the MacSorlies, certain that the Clan Chattan men were well on their road home, turned back towards their own homes. They knew well that the Clan Chattan men would seek vengeance for the insult but had been fooled into thinking that they had time to prepare for the eventual attack. They headed back to Dun Dighe and told MacSorlie that the enemy had left their lands.

However, it wasn’t long before the warriors of the Cat were backtracking towards Dun Dighe. MacSorlie, accepting that they had headed back east, had posted no sentries, so under the cover of darkness and in complete silence the men of Clan Chattan fell on the clachan at Dun Dighe. Creeping silently into the houses they slit the throats of every man, woman and child they could find, including the chief and all his immediate family! But one of the chief’s sons heard something and awoke to find himself surrounded by the Clan Chattan men, managing to raise a shout before he was struck down. The few of his relatives still living were alerted and took to the hills, while behind them the houses of the clachan burst into flames.

Amongst the MacSorlies who got away was young lain, the chief’s son, who was taken off by one of his father’s oldest battle companions, Torquil Mor. Realising what had happened as he awoke in the night in the chief’s house Torquil had grabbed the infant and a handful of heirlooms from the kitchen before escaping through a window. As he headed into the hills he turned to look back at the clachan at Dun Dighe. Each and every house, including the fine big hall where he had spent so many grand nights with his chief, were all ablaze. Still he had no time to mourn; he had to make sure the young chief was safe, so he headed up into the hills.

The Clan Chattan men headed home in the night, leaving the clachan at Dun Dighe ablaze with the bodies of several dozen MacSorlies lying dead in their own beds. There never were very many members of the wee clan and this sorely reduced their numbers. Only a week or so later the Easterners returned with a much larger force and hunted down as many of the MacSorlies as they could find. Many of them were forced to take to the hills to survive as the raiding party set about firing their houses and lifting all the cattle and other goods they could lay their hands on.

Now Torquil knew that his first duty was to keep the young lad alive. The youngster was not much more than eighteen months old at the time and the pair of them lived frugally in the hills for almost two years. Torquil, like most Highlanders, could live pretty well off the land when he had to, and he was careful not to let even the other MacSorlies in the area know that he had saved the chief’s son. After a couple of years, having passed the winters with an old aunt who lived alone high in the hills above Glen Roy, he thought that the time was ripe to make his next move. As a result of living rough for all that time he was bit ragged-looking, and the lad himself was clad in little more than a scrap of plaid and animal skins. Thus the pair of them looked like beggars when they arrived at the door of Inverlair in Glen Spean. Here MacSorlie’s sister, Beothag, lived with her husband’s people the MacDonnels.

She had been devastated by the slaughter at Dun Dighe and had pleaded with her husband to revenge her on the men of Clan Chattan. This was not an action that he was prepared to take at the time, but ever since that fateful night relationships between the MacDonnells and the Clan Chattan had been growing steadily worse and she still had hopes that her people would be revenged. Because they had been such a small clan there were no other viable claimants to the chiefship and she had reluctantly accepted that the MacSorlies would simply be absorbed into the other clans in the area. As for Dun Dighe, the clachan there was left as it had been after the night-time raid on the MacSorlies.

So it was that one morning she came to her door to find a warrior with his plaid cowled over his head and with a wee lad at his heels.

‘Good morning, lady, I was wondering if it might be possible for the lad and I to get something to eat,’ the man asked.

She looked at the tattered pair before her and smiled sadly.

‘Of course,’ said she, ‘there is plenty porridge here for you and the wee lad; come on into the kitchen,’ and led the pair into the house. There she filled a big bowl of porridge from the pot on the fire and put it down on the table where the man and the boy had been shown to sit. She handed the bowl to the man and placed a jug of milk on the table beside him. As he was still a toddler the man clearly intended feeding the lad himself. She watched as he reached inside his tattered plaid and pulled out a spoon which he dipped in the porridge. It was a silver spoon. Puzzled a bit by how this clearly poor man should have such a rare and valuable item, she leaned over to look more closely. Just as the wee lad took the first mouthful of the porridge she let out a gasp. She knew that spoon. It had her grandfather’s crest on it; it had been in her family for generations and she herself had been fed with it as a child. She drew back, her hand going to her throat, and let out a cry. At once her husband and two other men ran into the kitchen, all of them with their dirks drawn. At that the old warrior seated at the table pulled the plaid from over his head, stood up and bowed to Beothag.

‘Oh my heavens, Torquil, is it you? And is this young lain?’ her voice shook with a maelstrom of emotion. As Torquil nodded the tears sprang from her eyes and she moved to pick up the boy and clasp him to her breast.

MacDonell, looking on, knew what he had to do. He would bring his brother-in-law’s son up as his own. He would be educated and trained as a chief and when the time came; well, they would wait and see. As for Torquil, he would be well-rewarded and given a place in his household for as long as he lived.

So lain was raised as if he had been one of MacDonnell’s own children. He was fostered out to a close relative of MacDonnell, and at the age of seventeen he was told the full story of his birth and early life. Soon after that he went with Beothag back to Glen Nevis and with help of the MacDonnells the clachan of Dun Dighe was restored. The surviving MacSorlies, once they heard that the young chief had survived, flocked back to the area and once more they began to thrive. Over in the east the men of Clan Chattan heard that a son of the MacSorlie had reclaimed his father’s heritage and knew that there would be a reckoning. But they knew also that he had been raised among the MacDonnells and they were reluctant to take them on. And after Dun Dighe was rebuilt, no MacSorlie would ever allow a cat inside it!

Origins

A Grand Archer

Now Malcolm Canmore was a great king, it is said. Not only did he rule wisely within the borders of Alba, he was known throughout Europe, maybe because his wife, the saintly Margaret, was herself of mixed English and Hungarian descent. Now kings have the habit of giving each other gifts as tokens of friendship, though sometimes it must be said such gifts were more in the way of distractions while devious plots were being laid; such is the nature of kings, such behaviour today being more the remit of politicians. However, one European king had given Malcolm a present of something that had never been seen or heard of in Scotland before. The story tells us it was a great beast which the local people considered to be akin to a frog or a toad, but from what we can tell it was probably a crocodile. Whatever the beast was it had a fearsome appetite and once the king had installed it on Eilean na Peiste – ‘the isle of the beast’ – in the River Don, he set about arranging for it to be fed. Such was its appetite that he placed a tax of one animal per croft per year on the countryside. Now this was a swingeing tax indeed, but for the widow MacLeod it spelt disaster. She had only the one cow, and the milk from it, combined with her careful husbandry of her garden, kept her alive. She had a son who helped her out, but he had a wife and a baby son of his own to feed and the widow was a fiercely independent woman. She was also possessed of a biting tongue.

One day, just after the announcement of the tax, her son came to visit. ‘You claim to be of the blood of Torquil of the Eagles,’ she spat at her son, reminding him of the eponymous founder of their clan, ‘but there is no blood of the MacLeods in your veins, just water. You sit there by my fire while that Southron king takes the very food from my mouth. Call yourself a MacLeod warrior? Ochone, ochone what is to be become of me?’

MacLeod sat there silent under this tirade. Sure enough, he realised the situation. And his mother was right in what she was saying. What right had this Southron to come into their country and take the very food from the mouth of the poor? Nevertheless, he sat there saying nothing as his mother ranted and raged, till at last he went off into the night with her curses following him like a rabid dog. But he knew what he was about to do. Returning to his own house he quietly let himself in, listening to make sure his wife and child were sleeping. He then went to the place in the eaves where he kept his bow and quiverful of arrows. Like all men of his time he was a fully trained warrior, but he was known to be far and away the best archer for miles around. Stories were told that he could hit the eye of a fly at forty paces and bring down a twelve-point stag from half a mile away with his bow. He knew these stories to be a bit more than the truth, but he was sure of his skills, and steadfast in his intentions. Carefully unstringing the bow he wrapped the bowstring in greased cloth before putting it inside a well-greased leather pouch, which he slipped next to his skin inside his shirt. Then he headed off into the night, closing the door softly behind him.

He slipped through the night, down to the banks of the river opposite Eilean na Peiste and lowered himself into the freezing cold waters with as little noise as possible. With his quiver over his back and his bow in his teeth he swam swiftly out to the island. Once there he heaved himself ashore, and quickly pulling out the pouch with the still-dry bow-string in it he restrung his bow. He took two arrows from his quiver, notching one to the bowstring and gripping the other between his teeth. Then he began to move stealthily along the island which was no more than 50 yards long and about 20 to 30 yards wide. He smelt the animal before he saw it. Then he heard it move, and dropping to one knee in the faint moonlight he saw a great gleaming pair of eyes looking straight at him through the underbrush. Quick as a flash he sighted, drew and fired. His arrow flew straight into the left eye and a great roar erupted as the beast lurched back and fell over on its side. He had got it with his first shot. However, the noise had awakened the king’s men who were guarding the beast on the banks of the river, and suddenly both banks were lined with armed men holding torches aloft. Boats were launched east and west of the island and MacLeod realised that escape was impossible. Still, he had done what he intended, and his mother would have food for the winter. As to what would now happen to his wife and child he dared not think.

MacLeod was taken prisoner and held in the dungeon of a nearby castle, till just a few days later, when the king had arranged to hold a justice moot on the nearby Gallows Hill. When MacLeod was brought before him the king was in no mood for mercy.

‘You insolent pup. That creature was a royal gift from a great king from many hundreds of miles away over the sea and you thought you could just kill it as if it were one of your Highland wolves. Well you can think of how clever that was as you hang. String him up,’ he said, snapping his fingers at a nearby officer of his guard.

‘Ah, sire, can I have a word?’ a voice came from his left side. It was Alan Durward, a close and trusted friend.

‘What is it?’ asked the king, holding his hand up as the officer stepped forward to take MacLeod off to the great gallows set up just a few paces away.

‘Well, you see this MacLeod is just the best archer we have in the district and we have been relying on him for training up the young lads. And you know you were saying yourself just recently that we have need of more archers, sire,’ said Durward gently. The king sat still, looking at MacLeod, his hands tied behind his back and held firmly by two of the guard. The young man looked straight back at him, head held high. Just then there was a commotion in the crowd nearby and a young woman clutching an infant to her breast burst from the assembled people. She ran forward and threw herself at the king’s feet.

‘Oh sire, please spare him. He is all I and my son and his poor old mother have in all the world; he is a dear, dear man, please sire . . .’, and she burst into tears as her husband looked grimly on.

The king sat still for another minute, and then he spoke. ‘Here is my judgement. You, MacLeod, are an archer of some repute it seems. So guards, take his wife and child over to the other side of the river and place a peat on her head. If you can shoot the peat off her head without harming either of them MacLeod, your life shall be spared,’ and the king smiled, a wee grim smile. The watching crowd sucked in their breath. The river here was only 20 or 30 yards wide, but from here on the hillside the shot was more than 100 yards.

So the young woman and her child were taken across the river in a boat and a peat was placed on her head. She gathered all her strength and stood as straight and still as she could. Then MacLeod’s bow and quiver were brought and at a nod from the king his bonds were cut. He reached out for his bow and flexed it a couple of times. The he reached to the quiver and took an arrow which he placed between his teeth before taking another arrow and notching it to the bowstring. The entire crowd fell silent.

MacLeod raised his bow, and just as he sighted the tiny peat on his wife’s head, his hands began to shake. There was a great sigh from the crowd as he lowered the bow. The king smiled. Again MacLeod lifted the bow, but yet again his hand shook. Again there was a great sigh from the crowd and the king’s smile broadened. So this great archer was not up to the challenge. Well, he thought, he will just have to hang. He was just about to raise his hand and give the order when MacLeod whipped up the bow, sighted and fired more quickly than seemed possible. The arrow flew across the river and cleanly took the peat off his wife’s head. The entire crowd erupted into cheering, and relieved of the bow and arrow MacLeod was brought to face the king.

‘Well MacLeod, you have shown your skill with the bow right enough, and as I have said, you shall be spared. But tell me, what was the second arrow for?’ he asked quizzically. The young man answered loud and clear, ‘That sire, was for you if I missed or harmed my wife or son.’ and there was great indrawing of breath from all the lords and soldiers around the king. How dare any man speak to the king like that! ‘Well,’ said the king, ‘I can see you are a brave and honest man, and I daresay you might have managed to kill me despite the presence of my guard. I have need of men like you. Will you become one of my guard and swear to protect and serve me?’

MacLeod looked long and hard at the king. There was absolute silence as they all waited to hear what he would say.

‘I am afraid I must refuse the honour, your majesty. After what you put me and my family through today I could not swear to be as loyal as you would require,’ and as he said this, for the first time he bowed his head to the king. All around were stunned. The man had been given his life and now he was throwing the honour of being one of the king’s guard right back in the king’s face. Surely he must hang now!

Suddenly the king laughed. ‘I see they breed their men tough up here right enough. You are as hardy a man as I have met in my life. You can go free, but from now on by order of the king you shall be called Hardy.’ And from that day on it was as the king said, and in time the sons of the man born MacLeod became known as MacHardies.

Son of the Carpenter

In the Middle Ages much of the country of Scotland was still occupied by people living in clans whose way of life had in many ways remained unchanged for millennia. Like their far-distant ancestors they lived in closely knit family groups, herding the hardy black cattle of the Highlands and growing a limited range of foodstuffs. They were essentially self-sufficient, but through trade could acquire high-quality armaments and a limited range of luxuries from other parts of Britain and mainland Europe. By this period the clans were individually known by the name of some notable ancestor. Some of these names, like my own [McHardy], are said to have come about by bravery bordering on stupidity, and others, like Forbes, as a result of heroic battles against human or animal adversaries. There are other stories however, which tell of ancestors not just being brave but pretty smart with it.

One such tale concerns the MacIntyres, a clan who for many generations provided the hereditary pipers to the MacDonalds of Clanranald and the Menzies clans. They also seem to have had some sort of relationship with the MacDonalds’ hereditary enemies, the Campbells. Strangely enough they had the right to the Clan Donald badge, the heath plant, and the clan Campbell war-cry Cruachan! Traditionally they occupied the lands around Glen Noe and Loch Etive, and like many of the western clans they were originally of Norse or mixed Norse–Gael ancestry. As it is, the difference between the Norse and the Gael would appear to have been more of language and culture than any variation in ethnicity. The name itself means ‘the son of the Carpenter’ and there are different versions of who this carpenter was. Some say he was a nephew of Somerled, the first Lord of the Isles, who saved his uncle’s ship from sinking while others tell a different story.

That story is that the first of the MacIntyres was a MacDonald, either from Skye or the nearby mainland. Like all of the men of his clan he was as accustomed to travelling on water as on land, and he spent much of his life in his small boat off the coast. Somehow he broke the laws of his kin in a serious fashion, and in fact so bad was his misdeed that he was towed a long way out to sea in an old leaky boat and cast adrift. Before his companions left him they removed the bung from the hole in the bottom of the boat. Thus it would be only a matter of time before the boat would fill with water and he would be alone. His companions raised the sail in their own boat, and tacking into the onshore wind they were soon were a good way off. As soon as they had gone off a bit, he struck his left thumb in the bung hole.

From where he was the coast was below the horizon and so he would most probably drown long before he could swim ashore. Certainly his situation appeared hopeless, but as he bailed out some of the water with his right hand he thought, ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’

Having got rid of some of the water in the boat it became clear to him that his situation wasn’t getting any worse, though he was aware, as all the people of the west coast were, that the weather could change very quickly. If a squall came up he would be finished but he refused to despair. Luckily the sea remained calm and the wind stayed relatively light from the shore. It might have been light but it was still slowly taking him ever farther from the shore and safety. He kept scanning the horizon every few minutes, and after a couple of hours he saw a sail further out to sea that seemed to be heading towards the shore. He had to attract the attention of the occupants, but he was crouched down in the bottom of the boat, held there by his thumb. If he removed it and they didn’t see him, he was finished. But if he didn’t succeed in alerting them he would be no better off. Something had to be done. Luckily he had managed to retain his sgian dubh when he had been manhandled onto the boat. With no hesitation he took the knife in his right hand and slashed right through the base of his left thumb. Stopping only to rip a piece off his plaid to staunch the bleeding, he then whipped off his plaid and whirled it round and round while shouting at the top of his voice. It wasn’t long before he was spotted from the other boat.

The crew of the other boat, a considerably larger vessel, changed course and came to rescue him. They were men of another clan and when they saw just how had managed to bung the boat’s hole they said that it was as fine a piece of carpentry work as they had ever seen. They then took him to their own lands further up the coast where they did what they could to treat his wound. Once the word went round the community of what he had done he was known to one and all as an T-saoir, the Carpenter, and so his descendants became the MacIntyres . . .

Native Intelligence

The Sweetest Bite

Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel was the chief of Clan Cameron in the middle of the seventeenth century. From the age of twelve, he was brought up in the household of Campbell of Argyll who was a relation of his mother. Now Argyll was a leading Covenanter but Ewen always leaned towards being a Royalist, a sentiment that was greatly strengthened in 1645 when he watched the execution of the Royalist prisoners, captured at the Battle of Philiphaugh in Newark Castle, Selkirk. If Argyll thought this would bring young Lochiel into the Covenanting fold he was much mistaken. In fact Ewen had secretly met with a group of these, mainly Irish Catholic prisoners, and their courage in the face of their imminent execution made a lasting impression on him. So by the time he returned to lead his clan after the death of his grandfather Allan, he was firmly in the Royalist camp. Now although Argyll had had plans to have him educated at Oxford, Ewen had shown from an early age that he was a true Highland warrior and was what in modern terms would be called ‘a man of action’. He was never loath to lead his clan in disputes with other Highland chiefs, and in the period between 1652 and 1669 he showed himself to be a master of Highland tactics in his battles with the Covenanters. The nature of such campaigning was essentially guerrilla warfare, a type of fighting that clan warriors were particularly suited to. In fact it might be fair to say that for many of the Highlanders there was little difference between going to war and their traditional habit of cattle-raiding on other clans!

Now in 1654 Scotland was effectively under a military occupation by Cromwell’s Protestant government in England, with General Monk in charge of the army. It had been decided to build a series of forts to try to control the Highland clans, many of whom were either Episcopalians or Catholics and supported the Stewarts’ claim to the thrones of England and Scotland. One of these was at Inverlochy, in the shadow of Ben Nevis and Ewen kept a close eye on the construction. Such were the numbers of English troops sent to construct the fort that Ewen decided a full-scale assault on it was unlikely to succeed. However he kept a watching brief on the work, living in the nearby hills with a group of about thirty of his most trusted clansmen. One day a large working party came out in two ships up Loch Eil to get timber from the woods at Achdalie on the north side of the loch. Now the English troops numbered about 140, and they were armed with muskets. Ewen decided that with their broadswords, dirks, targes, bows and arrows as well as a fair number of muskets, the greatly outnumbered Camerons could gainfully attack this much larger force, as long as they had the advantage of surprise. Some of his clansmen were horrified at the suggestion. No Highland warrior would ever admit to fear, but the thought of attacking a force almost five times as large as their own struck them as utter madness. Ewen, however, was not to be dissuaded and such was the loyalty of the Camerons to their dashing young chief that the entire group accepted that they would just have to go along with him, even if he was mad! The government troops were strung out through the wood at Achdalie when with no warning they were attacked by the Camerons.