Clanlands

by Sam Heughan

  Just imagine what that night was like for those who knew – wrestling with what they had to do in the morning, because if they didn’t comply they would be hanged. It would have been torture, so it is small wonder that Glencoe is known as the ‘glen of weeping’, given what was about to happen.

  Derek tells us, ‘There are various tales of soldiers giving hints to the people they were staying with. Achtriochtan is one of the sites mentioned where a soldier, sitting by the fire petting the dog was heard saying, ‘If I were you, grey dog, I wouldn’t sleep here tonight. I would go and sleep in the heather.’

  [Sam: Did he really just say ‘grey dog’! I try not to smirk and look at my grey-bearded companion.]

  The rank and file knew nothing till just before 5am. Were there warnings? Perhaps, but maybe only one warning that has since been multiplied into many. It was even said that Glenlyon’s piper, Hugh MacKenzie (yes, he was a MacKenzie), played the lament called ‘Women of the Glen’ knowing any MacDonald hearing it would understand it as a warning.

  There was also a rather unsubtle warning – a great fire was lit on Signal Rock signalling the slaughter to begin.

  ‘Eh, what’s that bloody great fire for?’

  ‘Oh, that’s to let us know when to start butchering our hosts.’

  BANG!

  Derek says, ‘Where the superior officers were staying the orders are carried out on time at the far end of the glen but some are slow to carry out orders and, as smoke and the noise of gunfire travels up the valley, it perhaps warns clan members further away. Many people at the Achtriochtan end would have escaped into snow up and across to Appin where they had relatives.’ Several soldiers, Campbells included, refused to carry out the order to execute on that fateful February night, quite literally looking the other way as MacDonalds escaped into the hills.

  MacDonald of Kerrigan (the house in which Robert Campbell was staying) and his household had already been bound and gagged to prevent any warning. Duncan Rankin died first running towards the river. Next came MacIain, woken by a banging on his door. He rose, ordering his wife to bring a dram for the officer outside. He was standing with his back to the door in his shirt, his trews untied, when the officer entered. MacIain was found with a bullet hole through his body and one to the back of his head. His wife was stripped naked, the rings gnawed from her fingers, but she was spared.

  Elsewhere the slaughter began in earnest. Some were herded onto dunghills and shot. A certain Captain Drummond executed more, even when Glenlyon tried to call a halt. Some homes fared worse than others. John MacDonald of Achtriochtan was thrown on a midden with the bodies of others. Here, the soldiers stabbed, hacked and shot as frightened MacDonalds fled from their homes. It was said that when they were too tired to raise their muskets they burnt fourteen alive in one cottage. They even killed an eighty-year-old, and nothing was found of the man except a bloody hand in the snow.

  Three of the Argyll men found themselves on the receiving end, however. In their haste to follow the fleeing MacDonalds, three turned on them with their dirks and put an end to them. Sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than hearing about the moment that the predator becomes prey.

  In all, thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan were murdered.

  ‘The reason government forces chose Glencoe to set an example was because it was so confined. It’s difficult to escape,’ explains Derek. ‘The plan was to send another 400 soldiers over from Fort William (led by Duncanson) who would come down the Devil’s Staircase and block the top end of the glen.’

  SAM

  If you haven’t climbed the Devil’s Staircase, I’d recommend it. There is an ultra marathon (forty miles) held each year, that runs along the Great Western Way, and this particular part is extremely tough. However, once you get to the top, it’s a great place (for Graham to catch his breath) and to admire the spectacular views.

  GRAHAM

  It was also the plan for another 200 troops from Ballachulish to catch the escaping MacDonalds at the other end. But none arrived before 11am because of a snowstorm. Can you imagine a line of 400 men coming down the glen? There would be no escape in winter, the desolate ridges impassable on either side. If they’d got here at five in the morning everyone would have been wiped out. And, as we have seen, those were the orders.

  ‘People tend to think it was a Campbell–MacDonald thing but it was more about the government trying to make an example of a small clan so they could stop posting troops to a costly garrison in the Highlands and relocate their soldiers to conflicts in Europe,’ says Derek.

  The idea was to get the clans to sign an oath of allegiance and those who didn’t (who refused or were too slow) were to be made an example of with the ‘utmost extremity of the law’. Another arch-villain of the massacre was John Dalrymple (made 1st Earl of Stair in 1703 by Queen Anne), Scottish Secretary of State and a Protestant Lowlander with a particular dislike of Highlanders. He used the situation to fit his agenda.

  After the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, Lord Stair met with Jacobite clans offering them a pardon for their part in the first Jacobite uprisings in return for swearing an oath of allegiance to King William of Orange. The deadline was 1st January 1692, however, paperwork was delayed and distrust grew, with Stair believing the Jacobite signatories would not keep their word. The brutal weather of Glencoe also delayed the Head of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe, MacIain. Sir Colin Campbell confirmed his arrival (at the wrong place) before the deadline and his attempt at signing was known by the government, but with the deadline missed Stair seized the opportunity to send a murderous message to the other Highlanders he so despised.

  John Prebble writes in his seminal work, Glencoe, ‘The MacDonalds of Glencoe were victims of what Highlanders called Mi-run mor nan Gall, the Lowlanders’ great hatred . . . Highlanders were regarded by Lowlanders as an obstacle in the way of the complete political union between England and Scotland. Many believed that their independence of spirit had to be broken.’

  And in the end it was.

  As I stand at Achtriochtan looking down at the remains of that house, knowing that it was here, in this glen, where so many stained the snow scarlet, just for a moment I can feel the chill of that February night and the haunting notes of MacKenzie’s pipes floating across that scarred valley.

  SAM

  Chastened, we drive in silence for the first mile to the Glencoe Folk Museum in Glencoe village, situated on the southern shores of Loch Leven. I park up and enter a long white thatched building, a genuine eighteenth-century croft cottage built five years after the massacre. Graham and I duck on our way in (for actors we are very tall – Graham’s six foot two inches and I’m six foot three inches, an inch shorter than Jamie Fraser, which, as I’ve said, is still a bone of contention for some diehard Outlander fans!).

  The croft cottage would have had roughly the same layout as the Achtriochtan turf house but one level up with thick stone walls and a roof thatched with moorland heather. We meet Catriona Davidson, the museum’s curator, and Jimmy ‘The Bush’ Cormack, a volunteer who shows us several Jacobite artefacts, including a Jacobite flintlock pistol found on Culloden Moor battlefield and two Highland broadswords found hidden in the thatch of local cottages, possibly concealed after weapons and plaid were banned by the British government following the Battle of Culloden (1746).

  To close your hand around the butt of a pistol used at Culloden is a very moving moment. The chances are it belonged to a Highlander. During the ill-fated charge against the government troops, they would have had one shot (those who were fortunate enough to own such a weapon). In their fury and urgency many fired their weapons well out of range of the British lines, and then threw the weapon away, at the same time drawing their basket-hilted broadswords for the close combat ahead. In my hand, therefore, sat a man’s only chance to fire at the enemy. He had probably fired it, chucked it away, and run on, in all likelihood to meet his death.

  The carnage at Culloden was truly awful.


  In twenty minutes the Highland troops were destroyed.

  Graham: Connecting to an object like this really brings it home. I can almost feel the sweat around the pistol butt.

  Sam: That may have been mine. Or Jimmy’s. Sorry.The weapons are very similar to the ones we used in Outlander, the basket-hilted sword and the pistols. My personal favourite was a set of solid steel pistols I used in Season One. One would always be attached to the front of my belt and the other hidden at the back beneath my jacket. Jamie was always armed and prepared, including a bone-handled Sgian Dubh (small dagger) in my right boot. Later, when Claire and Jennie (Jamie’s sister) go to find Jamie, you see Claire carrying the pistols. It’s special to hold the real thing and I wonder whose hand was clasped around this grip and what they did with it. I look at the notches on the blade of the broadsword acquired from fighting.

  I pass it to Graham who holds it aloft. ‘It’s still reasonably sharp, not at all blunt.’

  I don’t like the way he’s wielding it with a glint in his eye. ‘I have memories of our previous encounter,’ he says with a pinch of menace, still banging on about the time I killed him in Season Two. As if I somehow planned it with the writers. I didn’t, but I did enjoy killing him. And that’s the rub because he’s a competitive old bastard who wanted (and wants) to vanquish me, just like his maniacal character, Dougal MacKenzie.

  GRAHAM

  ‘It’s surprisingly light to hold. Even now you can feel the superb balance.’

  Its weight meant that it could deliver horrific blows to the head and body. At the battle of Prestonpans, the majority of the dead British soldiers were found with the tops of their heads taken off, like an egg, or simply cleaved in two. [Sam: There’s a real macabre side to McTavish, isn’t there?] I saw a broadsword demonstrated on a side of meat once. It carved a diagonal line straight through it. [Sam: Just a usual Sunday for Big G.]

  SAM

  He’s holding a Jacobite glass now and looks as if he’s about to have a Meg Ryan moment. ‘Wooaaahhh!’ Cue more heavy breathing noises and gasps. I love his enthusiasm – it’s infectious. Enough for me to politely socially distance myself.

  ‘Ohhhh, the spirals down the stem. It’s beautiful and the weight of it . . . it looks like it could have been made last week.’

  Jimmy ‘The Bush’ points out the white rose, which he says was a secret symbol of Bonnie Prince Charlie. ‘He raised his standard in Glenfinnan, his army marching to Fort William, when on the way they came across a field of white roses at Fassfern. The Prince made his soldiers wear a white rose in their hat so when they went into battle you could see who was your friend and not attack them.’

  Just like the emblem (or clan badge) – usually a plant – that Charlie ‘Chick’ Allen was telling us about at the Battle of Shirts. No one looked at another man’s kilt, they all knew who to protect from the flower or spray in their hat.

  The significance of the white rose is conjured by Neo-Jacobite poet, Andrew Lang (1844–1912) who wrote ‘The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond’.

  White Rose Day – 10 June 1688

  ’Twas a day of faith and flowers,

  Of honour that could not die,

  Of Hope that counted the hours,

  Of sorrowing Loyalty:

  And the Blackbird sang in the closes,

  The Blackbird piped in the spring,

  For the day of the dawn of the Roses,

  The dawn of the day of the King!

  White roses over the heather,

  And down by the Lowland lea,

  And far in the faint blue weather,

  A white sail guessed on the sea!

  But the deep night gathers and closes,

  Shall ever a morning bring

  The lord of the leal white roses,

  The face of the rightful King?

  There were many other secret symbols the Jacobites used to communicate, from painting their houses pink, to the famous secret toast to the ‘King Over the Water’, in which those loyal to Charles Edward Stuart subtly passed their wine glass over a vessel of water, like a finger bowl – the reason why water was often removed prior to the Loyal Toast at military dinners. You see Jamie Fraser witness this in Season Two of Outlander, the fine Jacobite glasses holding the secret rose emblem. Wearing the now infamous French knee-high buckle boots that took a good ten minutes to put on each morning – each boot had around fourteen buckles, which made ‘intimate scenes’ rather difficult to direct. (How does Jamie get his boots off so quickly?) They lasted two whole seasons, including boat journeys to the Caribbean and America.

  Myself and Duncan Lacroix enter the French brothel dressed in our newly acquired French fashion finery, on a secret meeting with his Royal Highness, one Charles Stuart. I remember shooting for days on the boiling hot set, in Cumbernauld, outside of Glasgow, that doubled for Madam Elise’s high-class brothel, where we would be entertained by a variety of buxom girls and a large assortment of variously sized dildos. According to Duncan, or was it Murtagh, he believed the French were ‘a sorry bunch who can’t please their women’. Can’t take him anywhere. Despite his strong words, Jamie gains the confidence of Charles Stuart, played wonderfully by Andrew Gower, imp-like with a slight speech impediment and catchphrase ‘Mark me!’ Fans now play a drinking game whilst watching Season Two: every time he uses those words, they take a shot. It gets messy, surprisingly quickly. Words used that carry more weight though are: ‘The King over the water’: the secret Jacobite oath, pledging allegiance to Charles Stuart. Jamie is in France to try to stop the rebellion, as he knows that history reveals the defeat of the Jacobites and the loss of many lives. During one of the scenes – I believe it was in the brothel, though I can’t find the scene, maybe it was never used in the final edit? – the characters swear the oath, whilst passing their hand over a Jacobite glass, complete with the Jacobite rose inscription on the glass.

  And now we too are off ‘over the water’ to the Glencoe island of Eilean Munde, where 300 MacDonald graves lie and where clan chieftain MacIain is thought to be buried. ‘They were buried on an island to stop the wolves digging them up,’ explains Jimmy as we are leaving. ‘There were wolves in Scotland in those days. And bears, lynxes and wildcats too.’

  With all the conflict, feuds, marginal farming, famine, disease and general hardships in those days, there were wolves as well! Life truly was a perilous path. The last wolf of Scotland was supposedly shot by Sir Ewan Cameron in Killiecrankie, Perthshire in 1680 but many thought small numbers survived into the eighteenth century, with tales of sightings into the late nineteenth century. I imagine the howl of a solitary wolf echoing around the glen.

  We drive the camper van the short distance to the shores of Loch Leven to catch a boat to the Isles of Glencoe. I clap my hands. It’s time for some action and a little levity of mood! I had managed to wangle a brand-new two-man kayak that we’d been towing around, along with bikes and other random paraphernalia in the camper. I’ve done a lot of kayaking in the past and am very confident in the water, but I didn’t want to let Graham know that. The more he panics, the better for TV, I thought. But maybe I was going too far.

  I pull on my wetsuit and life jacket and get ready to jump in the sea loch. It’s our last location of the day and by now my companion has sobered up and is hungry, bordering on hangry (hungry and angry). In fact, he is metamorphosing into Grumpy Graham before my very eyes. The light is dropping as is his blood sugar, so we have to move fast. Despite all my pleas and mild manipulation, Grumpy Graham will not be kayaking with me today. He boards a small boat and refuses to budge, wedging himself firmly in the middle of the boat, so I am forced to bend to his wishes. This time.

  Perhaps Graham and I need to head to the Island of Discussion (Eilean a’ Chomhraidh). It was used a lot in those times when clan feuds were a regular occurrence. I love the rather simplistic, very Scottish way of resolving things. Two men or clans have an issue or argument so they’re taken out to a small island in Loch Leven and left to
‘work out their differences’. When their disputes had been settled satisfactorily the disputants sailed up the loch to Eilean na Bainne (about one and a quarter miles west of Kinlochleven). This is the Isle of Covenant or Ratification; here the agreements were drawn up and sealed. However, they wouldn’t return until the matter was settled. Or one of them was dead.

  I wonder if we would ever return?

  GRAHAM

  It seemed appropriate that our first day should be ending with a trip to the place where they buried the dead. After surviving Sam’s driving, and the risk of alcohol poisoning at 9am, it seemed the logical conclusion. I couldn’t help wondering if this was all part of Sam’s larger diabolical plan – lure me to an island and leave me there? Probably with a coconut and a GoPro. [Sam: And it’s only day one!]

  Sam does a complete costume change (and make-up touch-up) and somehow transforms into something resembling James Bond in the underwater sequence of Thunderball. His initial idea is that we kayak to the island. And sure enough there is a two-man kayak.

  How can one man hate me so much?

  It’s been a very long day, the air is cool, the sun is setting and I’m not getting in a kayak with a ginger hulk who can barely handle a manual motor vehicle on dry land, let alone a canoe on a sea loch. Did I mention he’s set off with the handbrake on five times today? That’s how long it’s taken for him to work out what is causing the beeping noise! Every time he gets behind the wheel he doesn’t recall the other four times he’s set off with the handbrake on because his default mode is more speed, less haste. I decline his kind invitation to go sea kayaking citing the rapidly fading light as an excuse. But I know this will not be the last I see of the coffin made for two.

  Our guide, a classically dour Scot called Robert, issues us with our life jackets and we clamber aboard the boat and head for Eilean Munde, the largest of the Glencoe Isles, known as the burial isle. I am dressed in what I woke up in, Sam is auditioning for Thunderball.