by Neil Munro
CHAPTER II.--GILLESBEG GRUAMACH.
Every land, every glen or town, I make no doubt, has its own peculiarair or atmosphere that one familiar with the same may never puzzle aboutin his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at odd moments like thescent of bog-myrtle and tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air inGlen Shira had ever been very genial and encouraging to me. Even whena young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school,the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the riper airs of the lateafternoon went to my head like a mild white wine; very heartsome too,rousing the laggard spirit that perhaps made me, before, over-apt to sitand dream of the doing of grand things instead of putting out a hand todo them. In Glascow the one thing that I had to grumble most about nextto the dreary hours of schooling was the clammy air of street and close;in Germanie it was worse, a moist weakening windiness full of foreignsmells, and I've seen me that I could gaily march a handful of leaguesto get a sniff of the salt sea. Not that I was one who craved for wrackand bilge at my nose all the time. What I think best is a stance inlandfrom the salt water, where the mountain air, brushing over gall andheather, takes the sting from the sea air, and the two blended givea notion of the fine variousness of life. We had a herdsman once inElrigmore, who could tell five miles up the glen when the tide was outon Loch Firme. I was never so keen-scented as that, but when I awakenednext day in a camceiled room in Elrigmore, and put my head out at thewindow to look around, I smelt the heather for a second like an escapadein a dream.
Down to Ealan Eagal I went for a plunge in the linn in the old style,and the airs of Shira Glen hung about me like friends and lovers, sowell acquaint and jovial.
Shira Glen, Shira Glen! if I was bard I'd have songs to sing to it, andall I know is one sculduddry verse on a widow that dwelt in Maam! There,at the foot of my father's house, were the winding river, and north andsouth the brown hills, split asunder by God's goodness, to give asample of His bounty. Maam, Elrigmore and Elrigbeg, Kilblaan and BenBhuidhe--their steep sides hung with cattle, and below crowded thereeking homes of tacksman and cottar; the bums poured hurriedly to theflat beneath their borders of hazel and ash; to the south, the freshwater we call Dubh Loch, flapping with ducks and fringed with shelistersor water-flags and bulrush, and farther off the Cowal hills; tothe north, the wood of Drimlee and the wild pass the red Macgregorssometimes took for a back-road to our cattle-folds in cloud of nightand darkness. Down on it all shone the polished and hearty sun, birdschinned on every tree, though it was late in the year; blackcock whirredacross the alders, and sturdy heifers bellowed tunefully, knee-deep atthe ford.
"Far have I wandered," thought I to myself, "warring other folk's warsfor the humour of it and small wages, but here's the one place I've seenyet that was worth hacking good steel for in earnest!"
But still my heart was sore for mother, and sore, too, for the tale ofchanged times in Campbell country my father told me over a breakfast ofbraddan, fresh caught in a creel from the Gearron river, oaten bannock,and cream.
After breakfast I got me into my kilt for town. There are many costumesgoing about the world, but, with allowance for every one, I make boldto think our own tartan duds the gallantest of them all. The kilt was mywear when first I went to Glascow College, and many a St Mungo keelie,no better than myself at classes or at English language, made fun ofmy brown knees, sometimes not to the advantage of his headpiece whenit came to argument and neifs on the Fleshers' Haugh. Pulling on my old_breacan_ this morning in Elrigmore was like donning a fairy garb, andgetting back ten years of youth. We have a way of belting on the kiltin real Argile I have seen nowhere else. Ordinarily, our lads take thewhole web of tartan cloth, of twenty ells or more, and coil it onceround their middle, there belting it, and bring the free end up on theshoulder to pin with a brooch--not a bad fashion for display andlong marches and for sleeping out on the hill with, but somewhatdiscommodious for warm weather. It was our plan sometimes to make whatwe called a philabeg, or little kilt, maybe eight yards long, gatheredin at the haunch and hung in many pleats behind, the plain brat part infront decked off with a leather sporran, tagged with thong points tiedin knots, and with no plaid on the shoulder. I've never seen a morejaunty and suitable garb for campaigning, better by far for short sharptulzies with an enemy than the philamore or the big kilt our peoplesometimes throw off them in a skirmish, and fight (the coarsest of them)in their gartered hose and scrugged bonnets.
With my kilt and the memory of old times about me, I went walking downto Inneraora in the middle of the day. I was prepared for change fromthe complaints of my father, but never for half the change I found inthe burgh town of MacCailein Mor. In my twelve foreign years the placewas swamped by incomers, black unwelcome Covenanters from the shires ofAir and Lanrick--Brices, Yuilles, Rodgers, and Richies--all brought uphere by Gillesbeg Gruamach, Marquis of Argile, to teach his clans thearts of peace and merchandise. Half the folk I met between the archesand the Big Barns were strangers that seemingly never had tartan ontheir hurdies, but settled down with a firm foot in the place, I couldsee by the bold look of them as I passed on the plain-stanes of thestreet A queer town this on the edge of Loch Finne, and far in theHighlands! There were shops with Lowland stuffs in them, and over thedoors signboards telling of the most curious trades for a Campbellburgh--horologers, cordiners, baxters, and such like mechanicks that Ifelt sure poor Donald had small call for. They might be incomers, butthey were thirled to Gillesbeg all the same, as I found later on.
It was the court day, and his lordship was sitting in judgment on twoStrathlachlan fellows, who had been brawling at the Cross the weekbefore and came to knives, more in a frolic than in hot blood, with someof the town lads. With two or three old friends I went into the Tolboothto see the play--for play it was, I must confess, in town Inneraora,when justice was due to a man whose name by ill-luck was not Campbell,or whose bonnet-badge was not the myrtle stem.
The Tolbooth hall was, and is to this day, a spacious high-ceiled room,well lighted from the bay-side. It was crowded soon after we gotin, with Cowalside fishermen and townpeople all the one way or theother--for or against the poor lads in bilboes, who sat, simple-lookingenough, between the town officers, a pair of old _bodachs_ in longscarlet coats and carrying _tuaghs_, Lochaber axes, or halberds thatnever smelt blood since they came from the smith.
It was the first time ever I saw Gillesbeg Gruamach sitting on thebench, and I was startled at the look of the man. I've seen some sourdogs in my day--few worse than Ruthven's rittmasters whom we met inSwabia--but I never saw a man who, at the first vizzy, had the doursour countenance of Archibald, Marquis of Argile and Lord of Lochow.Gruamach, or grim-faced, our good Gaels called him in a bye-name, andwell he owned it, for over necklace or gorget I've seldom seen a sternerjowl or a more sinister eye. And yet, to be fair and honest, this wasbut the notion one got at a first glint; in a while I thought littlewas amiss with his looks as he leaned on the table and cracked in ahumoursome laughing way with the paneled jury.
He might have been a plain cottar on Glen Aora side rather than King ofthe Highlands for all the airs he assumed, and when he saw me, betterput-on in costume than my neighbours in court, he seemingly asked myname in a whisper from the clerk beside him, and finding who I was,cried out in St Andrew's English--
"What! Young Elrigmore back to the Glens! I give you welcome, sir, toBaile Inneraora!"
I but bowed, and in a fashion saluted, saying nothing in answer, forthe whole company glowered at me, all except the home-bred ones who hadbetter manners.
The two MacLachlans denied in the Gaelic the charge the sheriff clerkread to them in a long farrago of English with more foreign words to itthan ever I learned the sense of in College.
His lordship paid small heed to the witnesses who came forward toswear to the unruliness of the Strathlachlan men, and the jury talkedheedlessly with one another in a fashion scandalous to see. The man whohad been stabbed--it was but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk hadgone through from fron
t to back with only some lose of blood--was aversefrom being hard on the panels. He was a jocular fellow with the rightheart for a duello, and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made light of thedisturbance and his injury.
"Nothing but a bit play, my jurymen--MacCailein--my lordship--a bitplay. If the poor lad didn't happen to have his dirk out and I to run onit, nobody was a bodle the worse."
"But the law"--started the clerk to say.
"No case for law at all," said the man. "It's an honest brawlamong friends, and I could settle the account with them at the nextmarket-day, when my shoulder's mended."
"Better if you would settle my account for your last pair of brogues,Alasdair M'Iver," said a black-avised juryman.
"What's your trade?" asked the Marquis of the witness.
"I'm at the Coillebhraid silver-mines," said he. "We had a littletoo much drink, or these MacLachlan gentlemen and I had never come tovariance."
The Marquis gloomed at the speaker and brought down his fist with a bangon the table before him.
"Damn those silver-mines!" said he; "they breed more trouble in thistown of mine than I'm willing to thole. If they put a penny in my purseit might not be so irksome, but they plague me sleeping and waking, andI'm not a plack the richer. If it were not to give my poor cousin, JohnSplendid, a chance of a living and occupation for his wits, I woulddrown them out with the water of Cromalt Burn."
The witness gave a little laugh, and ducking his head oddly like onetaking liberties with a master, said, "We're a drouthy set, my lord,at the mines, and I wouldn't be saying but what we might drink them dryagain of a morning, if we had been into town the night before."
His lordship cut short his sour smile at the man's fancy, and bade theofficers on with the case.
"You have heard the proof," he said to the jury when it came to his turnto charge them. "Are they guilty, or not? If the question was put to meI should say the Laird of MacLachlan, arrant Papist! should keep his menat home to Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loosing themon honest, or middling honest, Campbells, for the strict virtue of theseCoillebhraid miners is what I am not going to guarantee."
Of course the fellows were found guilty--one of stabbing, the other ofart and part--for MacLachlan was no friend of MacCailein Mor, and aslittle friend to the merchant burghers of Inneraora, for he had the poortaste to buy his shop provand from the Lamont towns of Low Cowal.
"A more unfriendly man to the Laird of MacLachlan might be for hangingyou on the gibbet at the town-head," said his lordship to the prisoners,spraying ink-sand idly on the clean page of a statute-book as hespoke; "but our three trees upbye are leased just now to othertenants,--Badenoch hawks a trifle worse than yourselves, and moredeserving."
The men looked stupidly about them, knowing not one word of hislordship's English, and he was always a man who disdained to conversemuch in Erse. He looked a little cruelly at them and went on.
"Perhaps clipping your lugs might be the bonniest way of showing youwhat we think of such on-goings in honest Inneraora; or getting theDoomster to bastinado you up and down the street But we'll try what afortnight in the Tolbooth may do to amend your visiting manners. Takethem away, officers."
"_Abair moran taing_--say 'many thanks' to his lordship," whisperedone of the red-coat halberdiers in the ear of the bigger of the twoprisoners. I could hear the command distinctly where I sat, well back inthe court, and so no doubt could Gillesbeg Gruamach, but he was used tosuch obsequious foolishness and he made no dissent or comment.
"_Taing! taing!_" said one spokesman of the two MacLachlans in hishurried Cowal Gaelic, and his neighbour, echoing him word for word inthe comic fashion they have in these parts; "_Taing! taing!_ I neverlouted to the horseman that rode over me yet, and I would be ill-advisedto start with the Gruamach one!"
The man's face flushed up as he spoke. It's a thing I've noticed aboutour own poor Gaelic men: speaking before them in English or Scots, theirhollow look and aloofness would give one the notion that they lackedsense and sparkle; take the muddiest-looking among them and challengehim in his own tongue, and you'll find his face fill with wit andunderstanding.
I was preparing to leave the court-room, having many people to call onin Inneraora, and had turned with my two friends to the door, when afellow brushed in past us--a Highlander, I could see, but in trews--andhe made to go forward into the body of the court, as if to speak tohis lordship, now leaning forward in a cheerful conversation withthe Provost of the burgh, a sonsy gentleman in a peruke and figuredwaistcoat.
"Who is he, this bold fellow?" I asked one of my friends, pausing witha foot on the door-step, a little surprised at the want of reverence toMacCailein in the man's bearing.
"Iain Aluinn--John Splendid," said my friend. We were talking in theGaelic, and he made a jocular remark there is no English for. Then headded, "A poor cousin of the Marquis, a M'Iver Campbell (_on the wrongside_), with little schooling, but some wit and gentlemanly parts. Hehas gone through two fortunes in black cattle, fought some fightinghere and there, and now he manages the silver-mines so adroitly thatGillesbeg Gruamach is ever on the brink of getting a big fortune, butnever done launching out a little one instead to keep the place going. Adecent soul the Splendid! throughither a bit, and better at promise thanperformance, but at the core as good as gold, and a fellow you wouldnever weary of though you tramped with him in a thousand glens. We callhim Splendid, not for his looks but for his style."
The object of my friend's description was speaking into the ear ofMacCailein Mor by this time, and the Marquis's face showed his tale wasinteresting, to say the least of it.
We waited no more, but went out into the street I was barely two closesoff from the Tolbooth when a messenger came running after me, sent bythe Marquis, who asked if I would oblige greatly by waiting till hemade up on me. I went back, and met his lordship with his kinsman andmine-manager coming out of the court-room together into the lobby thatdivided the place from the street.
"Oh, Elrigmore!" said the Marquis, in an offhand jovial and equalway; "I thought you would like to meet my cousin here--M'Iver of theBarbreck; something of a soldier like yourself, who has seen service inLowland wars."
"In the Scots Brigade, sir?" I asked M'lver, eyeing him with greaterinterest than ever. He was my senior by about a dozen years seemingly, aneat, well-built fellow, clean-shaven, a little over the middle height,carrying a rattan in his hand, though he had a small sword tucked underthe skirt of his coat.
"With Lumsden's regiment," he said. "His lordship here has been tellingme you have just come home from the field."
"But last night. I took the liberty while Inneraora was snoring. Youwere before my day in foreign service, and yet I thought I knew byrepute every Campbell that ever fought for the hard-won dollars ofGustavus even before my day. There were not so many of them from theWest Country."
"I trailed a pike privately," laughed M'lver, "and for the honour ofClan Diarmaid I took the name Munro. My cousin here cares to have noneof his immediate relatives make a living by steel at any rank less thana cornal's, or a major's at the very lowest Frankfort, and Landsberg,and the stark field of Leipzig were the last I saw of foreign battles,and the God's truth is they were my bellyful. I like a bit splore, butgive it to me in our old style, with the tartan instead of buff, and thetarget for breastplate and taslets. I came home sick of wars."
"Our friend does himself injustice, my dear Elrigmore," said Argile,smiling; "he came home against his will, I have no doubt, and I know hebrought back with him a musketoon bullet in the hip, that couped him bythe heels down in Glassary for six months."
"The result," M'Iver hurried to exclaim, but putting out his breast witha touch of vanity, "of a private _rencontre_, an affair of my own witha Reay gentleman, and not to be laid to my credit as part of the war'sscaith at all."
"You conducted your duello in odd style under Lums-den, surely," said I,"if you fought with powder and ball instead of steel, which is more ofa Highlander's weapon to my way of think
ing. All our affairs in the Reaybattalion were with claymore--sometimes with targe, sometimes wanting."
"This was a particular business of our own," laughed John Splendid (as Imay go on to call M'lver, for it was the name he got oftenest behindand before in Argile). "It was less a trial of valour than a wager aboutwhich had the better skill with the musket. If I got the bullet in mygroin, I at least showed the Mackay gentleman in question that an Argileman could handle arquebus as well as _arme blanche_ as we said in theFrance. I felled my man at one hundred and thirty paces, with six tocount from a ritt-master's signal. Blow, present, God sain Mackay'ssoul! But I'm not given to braggadocio."
"Not a bit, cousin," said the Marquis, looking quizzingly at me.
"I could not make such good play with the gun against a fort gable at somany feet," said I.
"You could, sir, you could," said John Splendid in an easy, offhand,flattering way, that gave me at the start of our acquaintance the wholekey to his character. "I've little doubt you could allow me half-a-dozenpaces and come closer on the centre of the target."
By this time we were walking down the street, the Marquis betwixt thepair of us commoners, and I to the left side. Lowlanders and Highlandersquickly got out of the way before us and gave us the crown of thecauseway. The main part of them the Marquis never let his eye light on;he kept his nose cocked in the air in the way I've since found peculiarto his family. It was odd to me that had in wanderings got to look onall honest men as equal (except Camp-Master Generals and Pike Colonels),to see some of his lordship's poor clansmen cringing before him. Hereindeed was the leaven of your low-country scum, for in all the broadHighlands wandering before and since I never saw the like! "Blood of myblood, brother of my name!" says our good Gaelic old-word: it made noinsolents in camp or castle, yet it kept the poorest clansmen's headup before the highest chief. But there was, even in Baile Inneraora,sinking in the servile ways of the incomer, something too of honestworship in the deportment of the people. It was sure enough in themanner of an old woman with a face peat-tanned to crinkled leather whoran out of the Vennel or lane, and, bending to the Marquis his lacewrist-bands, kissed them as I've seen Papists do the holy duds in NotreDame and Bruges Kirk.
This display before me, something of a stranger, a little displeasedGillesbeg Gruamach. "Tut, tut!" he cried in Gaelic to the _cailltach_,"thou art a foolish old woman!"
"God keep thee, MacCailein!" said she; "thy daddy put his hand on myhead like a son when he came back from his banishment in Spain, and Ikeened over thy mother dear when she died. The hair of Peggy Bheg's headis thy door-mat, and her son's blood is thy will for a foot-bath."
"Savage old harridan!" cried the Marquis, jerking away; but I could seehe was not now unpleased altogether that a man new from the wide worldand its ways should behold how much he was thought of by his people.
He put his hands in a friendly way on the shoulders of us on either handof him, and brought us up a bit round turn, facing him at a stand-stillopposite the door of the English kirk. To this day I mind well therumour of the sea that came round the corner.
"I have a very particular business with both you gentlemen," he said."My friend here, M'Iver, has come hot-foot to tell me of a rumour thata body of Irish banditry under Alasdair MacDonald, the MacColkitto aswe call him, has landed somewhere about Kinlochaline or Knoydart Thisportends damnably, if I, an elder ordained of this kirk, may say so.We have enough to do with the Athole gentry and others nearer home. Itmeans that I must on with plate and falchion again, and out on the wearyroad for war I have little stomach for, to tell the truth."
"You're able for the best of them, MacCailein," cried John Splendid, ina hot admiration. "For a scholar you have as good judgment on the fieldand as gallant a seat on the saddle as any man ever I saw in haberschoneand morion. With your schooling I could go round the world conquering."
"Ah! flatterer, flatterer! Ye have all the guile of the tongue ourenemies give Clan Campbell credit for, and that I wish I had a littlemore of. Still and on, it's no time for fair words. Look! Elrigmore.You'll have heard of our kittle state in this shire for the past tenyears, and not only in this shire but all over the West Highlands. Igive you my word I'm no sooner with the belt off me and my chair pulledin to my desk and papers than its some one beating a point of war or apiper blowing the warning under my window. To look at my history for thepast few years any one might think I was Dol' Gorm himself, fight andplot, plot and fight! How can I help it--thrust into this hornets' nestfrom the age of sixteen, when my father (_beannachd leis!_) took me outwarring against the islesmen, and I only in the humour for playing atshinty or fishing like the boys on the moor-lochs behind the town. Iwould sooner be a cottar in Auchnagoul down there, with porridge for myevery meal, than constable, chastiser, what not, or whatever I am, ofall these vexed Highlands. Give me my book in my closet, or at worst letme do my country's work in a courtier's way with brains, and I would askno more."
"Except Badenoch and Nether Lochaber--fat land, fine land, MacCailein!"said John Splendid, laughing cunningly.
"You're an ass, John," he said; "picking up the countryside's gossip. Ihave no love for the Athole and Great Glen folks as ye ken; but I couldlong syne have got letters of fire and sword that made Badenoch andNether Lochaber mine if I had the notion. Don't interrupt me with yournonsense, cousin; I'm telling Elrigmore here, for he's young and hasskill of civilised war, that there may, in very few weeks, be need ofevery arm in the parish or shire to baulk Colkitto. The MacDonald andother malignants have been robbing high and low from Lochow to LochFinne this while back; I have hanged them a score a month at thetown-head there, but that's dealing with small affairs, and I'm soremistaken if we have not cruel times to come."
"Well, sir," I said, "what can I do?"
The Marquis bit his moustachio and ran a spur on the ground for a littlewithout answering, as one in a quandary, and then he said, "You're novassal of mine, Baron" (as if he were half sorry for it), "but all youGlen Shira folk are well disposed to me and mine, and have good cause,though that Macnachtan fellow's a Papisher. What I had in my mind wasthat I might count on you taking a company of our fencible men, as Johnhere is going to do, and going over-bye to Lorn with me to cut off thoseIrish blackguards of Alasdair MacDonald's from joining Montrose."
For some minutes I stood turning the thing over in my mind, beingby nature slow to take on any scheme of high emprise without somescrupulous balancing of chances. Half-way up the closes, in the dusk,and in their rooms, well back from the windows, or far up the street,all aloof from his Majesty MacCailein Mor, the good curious peopleof Inneraora watched us. They could little guess the pregnancy of ouraffairs. For me, I thought how wearily I had looked for some rest fromwars, at home in Glen Shira after my years of foreign service. Now thatI was here, and my mother no more, my old father needed me on hill andfield, and Argile's quarrel was not my quarrel until Argile's enemieswere at the foot of Ben Bhuidhe or coming all boden in fier of warup the pass of Shira Glen. I liked adventure, and a captaincy was acaptaincy, but----
"Is it boot and saddle at once, my lord?" I asked.
"It must be that or nothing. When a viper's head is coming out ofa hole, crunch it incontinent, or the tail may be more than you canmanage."
"Then, my lord," said I, "I must cry off. On this jaunt at least. Itwould be my greatest pleasure to go with you and my friend M'lver,not to mention all the good fellows I'm bound to know in rank inyour regiment, but for my duty to my father and one or two otherconsiderations that need not be named. But--if this be any use--I givemy word that should MacDonald or any other force come this side thepasses at Accurach Hill, or anywhere east Lochow, my time and steel areyours."
MacCailein Mor looked a bit annoyed, and led us at a fast pace up tothe gate of the castle that stood, high towered and embrasured for heavypieces, stark and steeve above town Inneraora. A most curious, dour,and moody man, with a mind roving from key to key. Every now and thenhe would stop and think a little without a word, then on
, and run hisfingers through his hair or fumble nervously at his leathern buttons,paying small heed to the Splendid and I, who convoyed him, so we gotinto a crack about the foreign field of war.
"Quite right, Elrigmore, quite right!" at last cried the Marquis,pulling up short, and looked me plump in the eyes. "Bide at hame whilebide ye may. I would never go on this affair myself if by God's grace Iwas not Marquis of Argile and son of a house with many bitter foes. But,hark ye! a black day looms for these our home-lands if ever Montroseand those Irish dogs get through our passes. For twenty thousand poundsSaxon I would not have the bars off the two roads of Accurach! And Ithank you, Elrigmore, that at the worst I can count on your service athome. We may need good men here on Loch Finneside as well as fartherafield, overrun as we are by the blackguardism of the North and thePapist clans around us. Come in, friends, and have your meridian. I havea flagon of French brown brandy you never tasted the equal of in anytown you sacked in all Low Germanie."