Glencoe

by John Prebble

  Though a chief inherited his rank and privileges by birth, from an early age he had to convince his people that he deserved them, to prove his valour and his talent for leadership. This he could best do in war, or in cunning and successful cattle-raids. Long before his father's death he gathered about him a band of hot-blooded, quarrelsome young men from gentry and commons, each anxious to earn an enduring stanza of encomium in the Bard's next composition. The earning was frequently bloody. ‘It was usual,’ said Martin Martin, ‘to make a desperate incursion upon some neighbour or other that they were in feud with, and they were obliged to bring by open force the cattle they found in the lands they attacked, or die in the attempt.’ When the heir became chief, these young men formed his luchd-tagh, his bodyguard, which among the MacDonalds had its origin in the house-carles who once surrounded Angus Og in war. From his luchd-tagh the chief chose his officers, and such body-servants as his armour-bearer and henchman, usually a foster-brother whose privilege it was to enjoy a double portion of meat at table, and to take upon his own shield or body any blow in battle that the chief was too busy to deal with himself.

  Though the custom was obsolescent by the end of the seventeenth century, MacIain the Twelfth had probably been acknowledged as chief in the old way of the hills, set atop a great pyramid of stones while his bodyguard stood about him with bonnets cocked and weapons in their hands. When MacIain was given his father's sword and the white rod of leadership, the Bard began a lengthy recitation of his family's honour, courage and liberality, to impress the people and to remind the new chief that as much and more would be expected of him.

  It was believed in the Highlands, and particularly by the MacDonalds themselves, that all men of Glencoe were poets from birth, and it was said that if one of them could not readily put his tongue to verse when invited then his paternity was open to doubt. In a country without any substantial written culture, where oral traditions jealously preserved were the inspiration of life, this glorious claim probably had some truth in it. The spirit of man is instinctively poetic, seeking expression in imagery, and only an age that has abdicated its emotions to professionals has forgotten this. If Glencoe in the seventeenth century was not a nursery of poets, they were certainly made welcome there, and paid for their board with the rich coin of their verse. Ordinary men touched poetry in the names they gave to the land in which they lived. A rock on the north wall was The Anvil of the Mist, a black tarn where they once fought over the division of cattle was The Little Loch of Blood, and a burn rising musically from the earth was The Water of Singing Birds. For all things in their way of life, the savagery and the sweetness, they sought an immortality in verse, but most of it died when their voices were stilled.

  The best remembered of Glencoe's bards lived in the time of MacIain the Twelfth, and Achtriachtan was their birthplace and home. Like other poets of their age, they found the stuff of their inspiration in what they dimly recognized as the beginning of the end of their society, in the self-destructive feuds, the dragging civil wars, the invasion of Lowland authority. There was Angus the son of Red Alasdair MacDonald of Achtriachtan, and there was John the son of Ranald the Younger, but the greatest of them was Ranald of the Shield, the author of a sad and elegiac lament for the execution of Charles I. He is said to have been still alive in February 1692, though by then he must have been a very old man. He was not only a fine poet, with an unashamed admiration for his own talent, but also a skilled and cunning fighting-man. He fought at Inverlochy in 1645 when the ‘grey blades of Clan Donald’ cut down the Campbells, and six years later he was wounded in the bloody hedgerow fight outside Worcester. He earned his name during those wars. A captured English dragoon, looking at the Highlanders who surrounded him, said that if his sword were returned to him he would be happy to fight any one of them for his life. Ranald accepted the challenge and, although the Englishman was the better swordsman, the Highlander had the advantage of a bull-hide shield and triumphed. Ranald had two sons, both of whom lived almost as long as he and were as ready with verse and sword.

  Most of the common people of Glencoe who were MacIain's children are now lost in an empty anonymity. There were Rankins and MacColls toward Ballachulish, MacPhails by Laroch, and Hendersons at Carnoch and Achnacone. Where they are remembered as individuals – like Big Henderson of the Chanters, MacIain's hereditary piper – all that is known of them can be told in as brief a sentence. But the remembrance of one man lasted until sheep drove men from the glen of the dogs. He was Gilleas-buig Mor, Big Archibald MacPhail, and generation by generation the people of Argyll continued to talk of him as if he had passed by their doors that morning. A hundred years ago a woodsman of Argyll, John Dewar, spent the last years of his life putting such Highland memories to paper,* and thus saved Big Archibald MacPhail from oblivion.

  There was more brawn than brain to Big Archibald, and it was probably the humour of the man's adventures that kept his memory alive. ‘He was a very strong man,’ says the story recorded in the Dewar Manuscripts, ‘he was very expert at the sword, and he had no fear of any person whatever. He went frequently with others on a cattle-lifting raid, and in consequence of being so strong, fearless and expert at the sword, he was highly esteemed by the people of Glencoe, and they did not often go on a raid without Big Archibald being with them. Notwithstanding, Archibald MacPhail was but a foolish, inconsiderate man in many respects.’

  This was a gentle understatement. He once met a Lowlander by Achnacone and greeted him in the Highland way: ‘Beannachd Dhia dhuit, a dhuine!’ God's blessing on you, sir. The Lowlander, having no Gaelic, but seeing that some response was expected, replied that it was indeed a fine day. ‘Foolish man,’ said Big Archibald, ‘do you despise the word of God?’ Before the Lowlander had time to decide what this might mean, he was struck down by MacPhail's sword. Big Archibald took the dead man's shoes, musket, and a guinea from his coat pocket, and walked on to Ballachulish. There he told the Stewart laird what had happened, adding that to his mind it had been a profitable morning. Stewart sent men to bury the Lowlander and they, being less simple than MacPhail and knowing more about southern tailoring, searched the breeches pockets where they found sixty more guineas. No one thought of hanging Big Archibald for this wayside murder, and he was not troubled much by it himself, except at night, when he expected to meet the Lowlander's vengeful spirit.

  At the approach of his own death, some years before the Argyll men came to Glencoe, Big Archibald spoke the heroic feelings of all his people at such a sobering moment. He was lodging with his son in Glen Orchy to the south of Rannoch Moor, and he was roused to a black fury by the suggestion that he would be buried there. ‘When it is death to me,’ he told his son, ‘if it happens here, strike a blow of the dirk in my back, put me across the piebald mare and she will carry me to Glencoe, and the people of Glencoe shall bury me on Eilean Munde. By all that you have ever seen, dare not lay me but beside the MacDonalds. Put a sword in my fist and my face to the Camerons. I have never turned my back on them!’

  In his youth, MacPhail's close friend and partner in cattle-lifting was Iain MacAllein, who was also remembered long enough for recording by John Dewar's pen. He was a nephew of the tacksman of Achtriachtan, and a young man delicately aware of his honour, his descent from John of the Heather, and of the niceties that should be observed between gentlemen even when they were bent on letting each other's blood. One summer's day he and Big Archibald, with three companions, went raiding in Strathspey, where they relieved the Laird of Grant of some of his cattle. On their way home they stopped for the night by a lake, put the cows on a promontory, and went into a shieling to eat, to boast, and to sleep. They were roasting the meat of a calf when sixty men of Clan Grant appeared on the brae above, led by the Laird's son. Big Archibald decided to pray. He informed the Almighty that he had never troubled Heaven with his prayers before, and if he and his friends could have some prompt assistance from that quarter now he would never trouble it again.

  Meanwhi
le Iain MacAllein had gone forward to meet the Grants, holding out his broadsword by the point in a gesture of surrender. As the Laird's son reached for it, MacAllein spun the weapon in the air, caught it by the hilt, and cut down the Grant with one blow. Now Big Archibald and the others came up, seeing in this, perhaps, the proper intervention of God, and although some of the Grants made a stand, most of them ran. Since those who remained were not very expert swordsmen (according to the Glencoe story), they were quickly defeated, and the MacDonalds joyfully drove the cattle toward Rannoch. They had not gone far, however, before Iain MacAllein was worried by a chivalrous concern for the Laird of Grant's son. He turned back to the lochside and brought the boy some water in his brogue, upon which the Grant shot him with a pistol, breaking his thighbone. MacDonald and Grant lay in their blood, watching each other like animals, until MacAllein pushed himself up on one knee, grasped his sword, and suggested that they continue the fight. Grant agreed, but when he saw that he could stand on both feet and MacAllein could only kneel, he proposed friendship instead. And so in friendship they rested until morning, when the Grant clansmen returned and carried them both to the Laird's house in Strathspey. There MacAllein lived pleasantly for a year until he was well enough to return to Glencoe. This, all Highlanders would have agreed, was a very civil way of behaving.

  Beyond the Highland Line, most Lowlanders cared little when the clans fought among themselves and stole each other's cattle, for it was no more than was expected of them, and men sensible of their own virtues see themselves best against the vices of others. But the thought that these armed and ferocious tribesmen could be persuaded to move south in times of stress (if all were got to agree), was never a happy one for the people of the Lowlands. Nor did the Highlanders always need some high political motive for carrying their broadswords down to the Sidlaw Hills, the Ochils or beyond. Small bands of them were always foraying there, robbing byres or demanding blackmail, chattering about their honour and their valour, and most of them, it was said, without a shirt to their backs. Lowlanders called them the herd-widdifous, the Gallows Herd, and were happy to pay them to be on their way without molestation. An old Aberdeen ballad sang the general feeling:

  Gin ye be gentlemen, light and come in,

  There's meat and drink in my hall for every man.

  Gin ye be herd-widdifous, ye may gang by,

  Gang down to the Lowlands and steal horse and kye.

  Action taken against the Gallows Herd was usually ineffective, though the threat of it was fearsome enough on paper. When complaints were made to it, the Privy Council could summon the accused to Edinburgh, there to answer the charges and there to suffer punishment if they were proven. If this order were ignored, and it frequently was, the raiders could be put to the horn, declared broken men and outlaws with every man's hand against them. In more serious and persistent cases, where a whole clan was accused, and where too much blood had been let and too many cattle stolen, the Council could issue Letters of Fire and Sword against them. In the absence of a standing army, the Crown granted the execution of these Letters to a powerful laird whose land lay closest to the offenders, or whose eye for gain was keenest. With his own clansmen at his back (or with others attracted by the chance of pillage), he fell upon the Gallows Herd, burning, killing and driying cattle, harrying men, women and children into the hills, hoping that the land he was now invading with the sword he might later secure for himself with parchment. As a remedy, the issue of Letters of Fire and Sword was understandably often worse than the malady. It led to bitter feuds, to bloody reprisals, and to the involvement of other clans drawn in by common fear or ties of blood. Great men became greater, small men were diminished. Private greed was cloaked in the Crown's authority, young men dreamed of combat and immortality in death, and blood ran into the ink of charter, deed and treaty.

  In the last terrible extent of its power the Crown could place a whole clan under proscription, and this was done to the MacGregors, one of the earliest attempts at genocide in modern history. In 1603 it was first enacted that no man, under pain of death, might call himself MacGregor, nor his children and his children's children unborn. If he did so use that name he could be killed like a beast of the wayside, with all his lands and possessions forfeit to his killer. An outlaw could earn a pardon by coming before the justices with the severed head of an obstinate MacGregor, and MacGregors already under proscription were invited to atone for their past offences by murdering each other. Death was the sentence if more than four of Clan Gregor met together, if they possessed any other weapon than a blunt knife to cut their meat, but only, said the Law in its clemency, if they obstinately persisted in calling themselves MacGregor. Within a year thirty-six men of Clan Gregor were brought to trial and death, and six hostages in the hands of the Government were hanged without trial. Many others died in brutish killings, or of starvation, cold and despair. Later Acts dealt with the branding and transportation of MacGregor women, and the Lords of the Privy Council discussed and finally abandoned (after protest) a proposal to send all their children to Ireland. Clan Gregor was driven from Glen Strae and Glen Lyon to a life of banditry and bitter resistance on Rannoch Moor, and the lands they once held passed to the Campbells of Glen Orchy who had been most active in executing Letters of Fire and Sword upon them. Nearly two centuries later the penal Acts against Clan Gregor were still on the Statute Book, in the adult lifetime of Tom Paine, Edmund Burke, and William Wilberforce.

  The Crown, in its efforts to control the ferocity of the Highlanders and the anarchic disorder of their way of life, usually succeeded in making matters worse. James VI,* who was nauseated by the sight of blood, laudably wished to get rid of family feuds, but like many men who are repelled by violence he attempted to stop it by measures of greater brutality. He approved an Act which, by authorizing reprisals against any members of an offender's clan, helped to perpetuate the blood-feud and indiscriminate murder. Later, the General Band of 1587 was designed to make great men responsible for their dependants, but it largely resulted in the persecution of the weak by the strong. The Band was based on the feudal principle that a landlord was answerable to the Crown for the behaviour of his tenants, was obliged to hand over the accused to the justices, and was in duty bound to make reparation to the injured. The Band also demanded that troublesome chiefs should supply hostages against their good behaviour, or else be ‘esteemed public enemies to God, the King and his true and faithful subjects, and to be persecuted with fire and sword wherever they may be apprehended, without crime, pain or danger to be incurred by the doers thereof’. Since the hostages could be executed if the chief failed to deliver an offender demanded by the justices, few Highlanders obeyed this part of the Band, and even fewer were naïve enough to travel down to the Lowlands without first getting the Privy Council's promise that they would not be thrown into the Tolbooth of Edinburgh as a hostage. All these measures deepened the clans' bitter resentment of government by an alien race to the south, and even when they were enacted their success depended on those who were chosen to bell the cat. The Crown had to rely on the great Highland lairds to enforce them, and such men differed from the offenders only in the degree of their power and nobility. The blood-feud, the foray, and the bloody struggle for land continued.

  Safe within the walls of Aonach Eagach and Bidean nam Bian, Clan Iain Abrach usually thumbed its nose at King and Council. By the end of the sixteenth century it was agreed that the men of Glencoe were the most incorrigible and troublesome of the Gallows Herd, and had their land been as desirable and as accessible as Clan Gregor's they too might have come under the Crown's proscription. They had no enduring friends but men of their own name. They raided where their quixotic fancy took them, and were so successful that more powerful clans, like the Camerons of Lochiel and the Grants of Freuchie, signed treaties of mutual assistance against them. Clan Campbell, Stewart, Ogilvie, Menzies and Colquhoun all lost blood and cattle to the MacDonalds, and all urged the Lords in Council to burn out this nes
t of thieves, from Rannoch to Loch Leven. In 1591 MacIain the Eighth was accused, with his brother and son, of lifting the cows of one John Drummond of Blair. They were ordered to appear before the Justices in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, under pain of rebellion, an order which they lightly ignored, if indeed anybody had the courage to convey it to them. They were called again the next year, and again refusing to answer they were declared rebels and fugitives. The King appointed two Commissioners (Fraser and Mackintosh lairds) to root out MacIain and prosecute him, but Glencoe was a far cry from Edinburgh and it must have been a relief to the Commissioners when the Privy Council persuaded the King to release MacIain and his kin from the horn.

  If the Lords in Council hoped that this conciliatory gesture would make the Glencoe men more tractable, they were of course mistaken. MacIain was soon raiding again, stealing seven great cows and a bull worth £140 Scots from a laird called Craig. In Perthshire he was accused of ‘hership and stouthreif’, of murder and fire-raising. In Argyll another charge was ‘reif, houghing of cattle and purpose of murder’ when, as a reprisal for some real or fancied slight (or perhaps for the simple joy of it), the Glencoe men swarmed down on the glens of MacAulay of Ardincaple. They chased MacAulay into the hills one night, spoiled his house, and moved on with several of his clansmen as prisoners. In the lands of the Duke of Lennox they pillaged and burned more houses belonging to his Grace's tenants, stole thirty-two horses and twenty-four cows and returned well content to the shielings of Rannoch. Less content was the Earl of Argyll who, under the General Band and as feudal superior of Glencoe, was compelled to pay the Duke of Lennox £1,000 in compensation. The thought of this undoubtedly seasoned the MacDonalds' enjoyment of the foray.

  During the first forty years of the seventeenth century, until the civil wars in England and Scotland offered greater fuel for Clan Donald's warring nature and smouldering resentment of the Campbells, the Glencoe men frequently appeared (in name at least) before the Privy Council on charges of robbery, burning and killing. This was the period of their savage squabbling with the Stewarts of Appin. In 1609, Alasdair MacIain Og, brother to the chief, was accused of being ‘a common and notorious thief and sorner and oppressor, for many years a fugitive and outlaw’, guilty of murdering two men of Appin. What was murder in Edinburgh, was probably the settlement of an affair of honour in the Highlands, and Alasdair MacIain Og declined the Council's invitation to come to Edinburgh for a sober discussion of his behaviour. A Campbell laird, however, caught him one day and sent him there just the same. He was released from the Tolbooth on a surety placed by two of his kinsmen, whereupon, having their own ideas of the purpose of bail, all three at once left for the Highlands and never returned.