Glencoe Read online

  In Gleann Leac, on a lower brae and by a falling burn, are the ruins of his summer house, the foundations of its walls, its worn hearths, the straggling stones of outer byres. Ruder than Carnoch, it probably resembled the houses in which his sons and tacksmen lived; thirty feet long and twelve wide, three rooms below, and above them a loft formed by beams of cleft oak. A single window with four panes of glass, and others that were boarded holes. A roof of sods thatched with bracken every year, chimneys of twigs daubed with clay. A Highland gentleman asked for little comfort in his house, but much respect for his pride in it.

  The land was good. ‘Glencoe is a garden enclosed,’ said one visitor. ‘This country,’ wrote another, ‘is very profitable, fertile, plenteous of corn, milk, butter, cheese, and an abundance of fish.’ Both of them, perhaps, passed that way in summer. In winter Glencoe was as like to starve as most Highland glens, and the life of the people swung between gluttonous excess and bitter privation. Some seasons they existed on little more than the herrings which hung in golden rows beneath their roof-trees, cured by the smoke of their fires. Every spring, and again in July and August, shoals of herring shimmered in Loch Leven. Glencoe fishers were quick to recognize the King of the Shoal, the great fish of greater wisdom that always led the school. If it were caught in a net it was returned to the water, and a blessing was asked from it. All fish, said the men of Glencoe, needed a leader, as did all men. The days of fishing were a time of cautious amity and carefully chosen words, for if there were a quarrel in which blood was drawn, the herring would turn away in disgust and return to the open sea.

  Each township farmed its land in strips, growing oats, barley and kail. The valley's sheep were small, dog-like animals, giving milk and scanty fleece. There were ill-tempered, ranging goats on the braes, and chickens roosting on the roof-timbers at night. There were horses, short, close-coupled garrons, dun-coloured and sure of foot, with heads of gentle beauty. And there were grey deer-hounds of which Clan Iain Abrach was extravagantly proud, tracing their ancestry back to the hunting-dogs of Fingal.

  But the real economy of Glencoe was cattle, short, black animals with shaggy hair, melancholy eyes and fearsome horns. There were nearly a thousand of these docile beasts in the valley, from Invercoe to Rannoch, and not all of them had been calved there. A cattle economy determined the people's lives and enriched their oral culture. The herding of cattle or the stealing of cattle kept the young men alert and healthy, training them for war and nurturing endurance and guile. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Privy Council of Scotland, seeking some way of breaking the iron independence of the Gael, recognized that cattle were an indication of a Highlander's power and influence. It ordered that all men in the Highlands who owned sixty cows or more should send their children south, there to be taught the reading and writing of English. The clans paid no more attention to this than they did to other orders from the Privy Council.

  In winter the cattle were close-herded near the townships, on the meadows by Loch Achtriachtan, at the mouth of Gleann Leac, and at Carnoch. By spring those that had not been slaughtered were little more than skeletons and often unable to rise from the ground. But they recovered quickly and their beef became sweet and tender, the flesh larded rather than separated into lean and fat. In summer, when the cattle were driven eastward for grazing, all the townships of Glencoe were emptied. Summer began with the Feast of Beltane, bealtuinn, the first day of May. Fires were lit in the open before every township, and from these every cottager took a brand to rekindle the fire on his own hearth. There the women made the Beltane Bannock which was broken into pieces and offered to the wild beasts of the glen. ‘This we give to thee, o Fox,’ cried the people, ‘spare thou our lambs!’ And again, ‘This we give to thee, o Hooded Crow, and this to thee, o Eagle!’ Other bannocks were marked with a cross and rolled down a hill, and if they broke, or came soon to a halt, or rested with the cross uppermost, then misfortune would come to the summer grazing.

  The cattle were then driven between the Beltane Fires and eastward out of the glen to the slopes of the Herdsmen, or beyond to the braes of the Black Mount, to the Loch of the Cows on the west of Rannoch Moor. There men and women lived in the shielings, huts which their ancestors had built and which were repaired each summer. On the Feast of Samhain, the beginning of winter, people and cattle returned to Glencoe.

  Shieling life was the happiest time of the year for the MacDonalds. Women and girls sat before the turf huts making butter and cheese, spinning and singing, while the men watched the cattle or drove them south for sale along the Highland Line. Younger men hunted and fished and went on forays. They ranged far on these robber raids, armed with sword and dirk, round shield and musket, and they sang a braggart song about themselves.

  We'll get cows from the Mearns

  and sheep from Caithness.

  We'll stall the herds

  in the shielings of Rannoch.

  The animals they stole they brought back to the Black Mount or, if pursuit were hot, to Glencoe itself. High on the southern wall of the valley, between the nippled peak of Gearr Aonach and Beinn Fhada is a small saucer called Coire Gabhail, the Hollow of Capture. The climb to it is almost sheer, and the opening to the corrie is narrow enough to be closed by the trunk of a tree. Here the young men hid the cattle they stole, or drove their own when other clans came hungrily to Glencoe. Young boys waited impatiently for such days of manhood to begin, for the time when, at the age of eight or nine or ten, they would be allowed to wear bonnet, shoes and hose. During the summer months they attended simple military schools in the open, learning how to use bow and musket, to carry a bull-hide shield studded with metal, practising cut and parry first with wooden sticks and then with the broad, basket-hilted swords of their fathers.

  During the evenings the people danced and sang and told tales. They listened to the pipers and to the many poets of Clan Iain Abrach, enriching their spirits and refreshing their hearts. Though they commonly drank ale, whisky was the fierce inspiration of good fellowship. They made it from corn, and Martin Martin of Skye (who wrote a dispassionate account of his people at the end of the seventeenth century) warned all simple southerners against it. There was, he said, one kind of whisky that was three times distilled, and this was strong and hot. Another was four times distilled and this was most powerful. ‘At the first taste it affects all the members of the body; two spoonfuls is a sufficient dose, and if any man exceed this it would presently stop his breath and endanger his life.’

  Drinking was not self-indulgence, though it could last from sunset until dawn. Drinking gave no pleasure unless it were accompanied by conversation, by songs and story-telling, and a good companion's ability to hold his liquor was matched by his power to entertain. But there was no love for a temperate man.

  Among persons of distinction [said Martin] it was reckoned an affront to put upon any company to broach a piece of wine, ale or aquavitae and not see it all drunk out at one meeting. If any man chance to go out from the company, though but for a few minutes, he is obliged on his return, and before he takes his seat, to make an apology for his absence in rhyme; which if he cannot perform, he is liable to such a share of the reckoning as the company think fit to impose, which custom… is called beanchy bard, which in their language signifies the poet's congratulating the company.

  Among a people depending upon memory and oral traditions for their history and self-respect, the Orator and the Bard of the clan were men of almost mystical importance. In their heads they preserved the genealogy of the chief, repeating it in rolling cadences or involved rhyme at births, marriages and deaths. Their way of preparing for such occasions amused Martin, for all his Highland blood. ‘They shut their doors and windows for a day's time, and lie on their backs, with a stone upon their belly, and plaids about their heads, and their eyes being covered they pump their brains for rhetorical encomium or panegyric; and indeed they furnish such a style from this dark cell as is understood by few.’

&nb
sp; But Martin, like other Highlanders, believed in the Second Sight, and sensibly made no jokes about it. The more remote and self-contained a community, like Glencoe, the stronger was the belief. It was easy to recognize a man or a woman upon whom the Second Sight had come. The body became rigid, the eyes wide and staring, and this cataleptic state persisted until the vision passed. To see a chair empty when a man was in fact sitting upon it meant his death, as did the sight of a shroud about him, or fish-scales in his hair, a glow-worm above his head. A spark that was no spark, falling upon the arm or breast of a woman, foretold the death of her child. Blood on the face was death by terrible wounding. But there were happier visions, if not so entertainingly frequent, and if a lone man were seen with the vision of a woman at his right hand she would become his bride (if on his left, she would not). When the vision was seen early in the morning then it would happen before noon, if at noon before evening, if in the evening that night, and if after candles were lit it would take place before dawn. ‘Children, horses and cows see the Second Sight,’ said Martin, ‘as well as men and women in advanced years.’

  Superstition was woven intricately into the practical life of the people of Glencoe. They believed in moon-struck men who suddenly acquired lunatic powers, in the great black cats that gathered to plot mischief on All Hallows Eve, in the water-bull of Loch Achtriachtan and the water-horses in the Coe. Sporting in the hills were malevolent goblins, and by the willow and oak at Achnacone were kindly fairies. If disaster was coming An Duine Mor, The Big Man, walked at night by Ballachulish, cows broke from pasture and ran up the brae, bellowing mournfully, and the voices of men who were to die were heard crying in the darkness outside, though their bodies were there by the fire. There were trout in the river that could dry up the milk of a cow, and there were men and women with the Evil Eye who would wither corn and shrivel a woman's womb. There were men who could see through earth and space and say with truth what was happening that moment beyond the mountains. There was the Oracle who could boil mutton from a shoulder-blade and read the future in the markings on the clean bone. Men who wished to know more of that future would wrap the Oracle in cow's hide, covering all but his head, and leave him in the open for the night, during which his friends from the past and from the world beyond the world came to him, and sat about him, answering his questions.

  And the people of Glencoe were also Catholics.

  ‘All of gigantic mould, all mighty in strength’

  ALASDAIR MACDONALD was the twelfth chief of Glencoe. The number may well be inaccurate, for none can say with certainty how many MacIains there were between him and John of the Heather. More is known about him than any of his ancestors, and what is known divides itself into three major scenes that are close to melodrama: He stands in the sun before a hundred and fifty of his clan, ready for war. He weeps before a Campbell sheriff and pleads for his people. He is pistolled in the brain as he struggles to pull on his breeches, calling for wine to be brought to his murderer.

  He was born late in the third decade of the century, with the red hair of his family, and he grew to an extraordinary height, six feet seven inches it was said. In his youth he went to Paris, where the sons of Highland chiefs were frequently sent to lacquer their splendid savagery and pride. A treasured relic of this visit was a drinking cup of French silver which probably disappeared from Carnoch one February night in 1692. The death of his father brought him home in 1650, and perhaps he led his people south with other MacDonalds the next year, when the Scots invaded England under Charles II, and were butchered by Cromwell in the streets of Worcester or in the ditches outside the city. Thirty-eight years later MacIain's hair, beard and great moustache were white, but his back was still straight. He was described as ‘strong, active, and of the biggest size, much loved by his neighbours, blameless in his conduct… a person of great integrity, honour, good nature and courage’. This, however, was the opinion of his friends and allies. There were others, in Argyll and Breadalbane and the Lowlands, who thought he was a thief and a murderer. Among all men he was easily recognized by his height and his white mane of hair, by the fine buff coat and brass blunderbuss which he had looted in Strathspey. A young man* who saw Clan Iain Abrach drawn up for war in 1689 wrote of them

  Next came Glencoe, terrible in unwonted arms, covered as to his breast with raw hide, and towering far above his whole line by head and shoulders. A hundred men, all of gigantic mould, all mighty in strength accompany him as he goes to the war. He himself, turning his shield in his hand, flourishing terribly his sword, fierce in aspect, rolling his wild eyes, the horns of his twisted beard curled backwards, seems to breathe forth wrath wherever he goes.

  He took a wife from among the Keppoch MacDonalds who, living to the north of Loch Leven, were the Glencoe men's constant companions in raiding and war. By her he had two sons, John who would succeed him, and Alasdair Og, Alexander the Younger, a man of eager spirits and a hot temper. There was also at least one daughter, of whom little is known but her existence. John's wife was the daughter of the tacksman of Achtriachtan, but Alasdair Og's came from outside the glen. She was Sarah Campbell, daughter of Campbell of Lochnell, great-granddaughter of a Breadalbane Campbell, and niece of the Glenlyon Campbell who would one day come to cut her husband's throat.

  This marriage of his son to a Campbell may have been a love-match, but was more probably the result of MacIain's canny knowledge that his people, of all Clan Donald, were the most exposed to Campbell ambition. Marriage was frequently the best insurance to be taken out by a Highland chief, and sometimes more enduring than a treaty with his enemies. Twice in his lifetime MacIain wrote his name beside a Campbell's, below promises of friendship and mutual protection, and he did so to guard the southern marches of his land. The eastern gate of Glencoe could be reached by way of Loch Etive and Lairig Gartain, and Loch Etiveside belonged to Campbell of Inverawe, to whom MacDonald of Dalness paid tack. In 1669 MacIain and Archibald Campbell of Inverawe swore to their friendship in peace and adversity. Ten years later they met again for the same purpose. MacIain rode on his little garron to Invercharnan in Glen Etive, with his tail of Piper, Bard and Sword-bearer, his gillies and his bodyguard of mettlesome young men. By the blue run of the River Etive he and Inverawe scrawled their spidery signatures to another deed, acknowledging the warm feelings that had existed between their ancestors and promising ‘to live in all good neighbourhood and friendship, and to assist and succour one another in all our lawful affairs in so far as it lies in us both, in protection and defence of one another's persons’. Though there is no record of either coming to succour the other, in 1685 when Inverawe may have needed it, or in 1692 when MacIain certainly did, at least the cattle of one was safe from the forays of the other, and MacIain could feel that there was a lock of sorts on his eastern door, albeit with the key in the hands of a Campbell.

  The tacksmen of Achtriachtan and Achnacone, of Laroch, Inverrigan and Dalness, were all MacIain's cousins, descendants of Black John, the prolific second son of the eighth chief of Clan Iain Abrach. By this ancestry each was a duine-uasal, a gentleman of the blood of Angus Og, called not by his name but by the title of his tack, as his chief was called Glencoe. Their dress distinguished them. They wore tartan trews and plaid, instead of the simple kilted plaid of the common people, and buckled shoes rather than brogues of deer-hide. A gentlewoman, a bean-uasal, wore a linen kerchief on her head, her hair plaited in a single lock, tied with ribbons and hanging down one cheek to her breast. Her sleeves were scarlet, buttoned with gemmed plate, and her arisaid, the white plaid of Highland women, was belted with leather and silver. The arisaid reached from her throat to her feet, said Martin Martin, ‘and was tied before on the breast with a buckle of silver or brass, according to the quality of the person. I have seen some of the former of a hundred marks value. It was broad as any pewter plate, the whole curiously engraven with various animals.’

  The tacksmen were bound to MacIain by tradition, by kinship, and by the terms of their l
eases. They paid him rent or quit-rent, brought him their sons as officers and their people as swordsmen, made his quarrels theirs, shared his grief and love, his joy and hatred. And, as inexorably, they took their rents in kind from their sub-tenants, demanded those swordsmen when needed, and gave in return their protection and loyalty. The word clann means children, and MacIain was the father. A bard spoke the thoughts of all the people of Glencoe when he said that MacIain was like a peacock's tail in his splendour, like a serpent's sting in his power to destroy. His rights and privileges were almost absolute, and were described by Lowlanders as the power of ‘pit and gallows’. He was among the last of the Highland chiefs who stubbornly maintained that they, and none other, had the right to judge and condemn their own people, even to the thrust of a dirk or the singing of a hangman's rope. Upon the death of any of his dependants he could take the best beast from the dead man's byre. If a clansman's cow calved twice, his ewe produced two lambs, then one was given to MacIain. If a woman bore twins, one child could be taken into the family of the chief or tacksman and there nurtured as their own. These rights were willingly offered rather than despotically demanded, and the custom of promising the best animal from the byre after death was known as giving calp. A broken man, a Highlander outlawed by his clan or by the Crown, would quickly offer his calp to another chief, and consider himself fortunate if it were accepted. The safety and happiness of MacIain came before all things, for he was Clan Iain Abrach and while he prospered none would want. His clansmen concluded each meal with a grace in which the Almighty was asked to give particular attention to his welfare. His honour was the pride of his people, his disgrace would be their shame. ‘May your chief have the ascendancy!’ said a Highlander, wishing another good fortune.