by John Prebble
Duncanson was an obedient and brave soldier, but he was also shrewd enough to realize that much might be made of this affair later, and little to the good of those concerned in it. Though the order had originated in London, great men are inclined to sacrifice their servants when their plans go amiss, and he was determined to minimize the risk to himself. Beyond his concern for his career, there was also the thought of his lands and property in Stirlingshire, close to the Highland Line and open to the vengeance of MacIain's outraged friends. He did not refuse the order, he translated it in such a way that the worst excesses of it would become the responsibility of Robert Campbell of Glenlyon.
‘All blame be on such as gave the orders, we are free’
WHEN it was over, men remembered the strange and terrible warnings that had been given. It was said that An Duine Mor, the Great Man who appeared only when gentlefolk were in danger, was seen by the loch at Ballachulish on Friday. That afternoon some of the cows at Carnoch broke from the byre and ran up the brae, crying pitifully, though there had been nothing to startle them. For some days the Bean Nighe had been seen by the waterfalls of the Coe, a supernatural washing-woman who cleansed a shroud again and again, and none who saw her had the courage to ask whose it might be. For several nights the Caoineag had been heard, the keening woman who could be neither approached nor addressed, but who always foretold death. In a cottage by Achnacone some of the people consulted the shoulder-blade of a sheep they had killed for their Campbell guests, and one of them looked at it and cried, ‘There is a shedding of blood in the glen!’ Another said, ‘There is only the stream at the end of this house between us and the blood’. And they fled over the hills to Appin with their wives and children.
Truth and legend were now to be inextricably mixed.
It was said afterwards that MacIain had grown more and more uneasy about his guests, and that he left his house at Carnoch for Gleann Leac na Muidhe, although this offered little comfort in winter. It was said again that he took some of the women of his house to the comparative safety of Gleann Leac because they had been molested by the soldiers, and that he and his wife returned to Carnoch on Friday. In the evidence later given by his sons and others there is nothing to support these stories, and they could have been told by men who did not wish their chief to be remembered as a credulous and trusting fool. There is no proof that the old man was ever uneasy. On Friday morning he met Glenlyon in a change-house kept by one of his clan at Invercoe. They drank together in good spirits, and MacIain invited Robert Campbell to dine with him the next day, with Lieutenant Lindsay and Ensign Lundie. He was proud of the reputation his people had for hospitality, and glad to demonstrate it to the Campbells. ‘Well could you drain flagons and empty ankers of wine,’ sang Murdoch Matheson, remembering those days among the MacDonalds. ‘Well did you carry yourselves when you met over the cup, playing backgammon and other games. At the board your actions were never contemptible…’
Toward evening, the wind blew more bitterly from the northeast, and the ominous ceiling of snow-clouds stretched from Ardgour to Rannoch. What remained of daylight was flat and colourless, the unnerving pallor that precedes a storm. It was a time to be by the fire, and few men were abroad after noon. MacIain's sons, however, came to Inverrigan's house to play cards with Glenlyon, as they had done many times these past two weeks. Robert Campbell was in his usual good humour, his face flushed by wine, his voice husky and his eyes bright. He welcomed them noisily, and told them that he was to dine with their father the next evening. By supper time, or soon after, their gambling was interrupted by the arrival of Thomas Drummond, shaking snow from his cloak and pulling Duncanson's order from the cuff of his gauntlet. His eyes passed briefly over the MacDonalds and back to Glenlyon in warning. The brothers saw nothing in the Campbell's face to alarm them as he read the order, but the gaming ended then. His orders had come, said Glenlyon, and there was much he had to do, but their burden was now to be lifted. He pressed his thanks upon them for their kindness and hospitality, and if his gratitude seemed extravagant, his voice too loud, they were not suspicious. They went home, leaving him with the order for their murder.
Robert Campbell of Glenlyon knew what was being asked of his honour. He was Highland, and he knew the solemn and binding obligations of hospitality given and taken. He had broken bread with the MacDonalds for two weeks, as their guest and under trust. Now, with the advantage of that trust, he was ordered to kill them. Nothing in his known past foreshadows the eventual assassin, except a weak self-indulgence, an obstinate despair that can compel a man to sin against others for his own preservation. His moral problem at this moment was the same as Hill's, and he resolved it more quickly. He folded Duncanson's order and put it in his coat, pinched out the candle and walked from Inverrigan's house to find his officer of the watch.
It was colder still, the wind stronger and the snow thickening. Orders had to be sent to all the commanders of his scattered detachments, westward a mile to Carnoch and Invercoe, and eastward for five to Achtriachtan. They could not be given inside a cottage, or close by its listening walls. They were given in the darkness in the wind, the whispering lips of a lieutenant put close to the ear of a sergeant, and the darkness was a merciful mask on the horror or indifference with which the news was received.
The private soldiers were told nothing until the hour they were needed. James Campbell, who served in Glenlyon's company, later swore on oath ‘I knew nothing of the design of killing the Glencoe men till the morning that the slaughter was committed, at which time the companies were drawn out and got orders from Glenlyon and our other officers to shoot and kill all the countrymen we met with.’ The stories which the Glencoe people told, generation by generation, suggest that the soldiers knew much earlier, even twenty-four hours before, which is absurd. On Friday afternoon, it was said, when the Argyll men and the MacDonalds were playing shinty, a Campbell and a child watched the game together, their backs against a boulder that was known as MacHenry's Stone. The soldier looked hard at the child to hold its attention, and then struck the rock with his hand. ‘Great stone of the glen!’ he said, ‘Great is your right to be here. But if you knew what will happen this night you would be up and away.’ In a cottage at Achtriachtan, it was said, a soldier sat by the fire with a family who had treated him kindly and as a son. He was from Glen Lyon, from his captain's country, and that evening he said nothing, nor could he be persuaded to speak. Then he looked at a dog, curled by the fire. ‘Grey dog,’ he said, and looked up from it to his hosts. ‘If I were you, grey dog, my bed tonight would be the heather.’ When he slept, or pretended to sleep, the MacDonalds went quietly from the cottage and escaped into the hills.
At Brecklet, in Gleann an Fiodh, three soldiers were quartered on a family called Robertson. That Friday at supper one of the Campbells plucked at the corner of his host's plaid. ‘This is a good plaid,’ he said. ‘Were this good plaid mine, I would put it on and go out into the night to look after my cattle.’ He lifted his eyes and stared boldly at the Robertsons. ‘Were this good plaid mine, I would put it on my shoulders and I would take my family out to drive my cattle to a safe place.’ And this is what the Robertsons did, while the soldiers were sleeping.
And it was said that Glenlyon's piper, Hugh Mackenzie, went that evening to MacHenry's Stone and stood upon it. He played the lament called Women of the Glen, knowing that any MacDonald who heard it would recognize it as a warning.
Great stone… grey dog… good plaid… women of the glen…. All the stories could be one story only, out of which the inventiveness of the tellers created several. But in that one story there could also be a truth, a soldier keener in intelligence than the rest, or hearing that whispered order to his sergeant in the darkness, and having long enough to decide that because he could not kill his hosts he must warn them.
It was reported in a London pamphlet,* within weeks of the massacre, that MacIain's younger son, Alasdair Og, could not sleep that night, nor keep to his house while his th
oughts were uneasy. He hid by the bothy which the soldiers used as their Main Guard, and did not like what he saw. He went to his brother John's house, and told him that there were too many soldiers abroad this night, far more than there had been during the past twelve days. John MacDonald was not alarmed. It was a wild night, he said, and cruel. Glenlyon was showing good sense, and a correct concern for his men's comfort, by doubling the watch and relieving the sentinels often. But Alasdair insisted that they should tell their father what was happening, and at last John agreed. MacIain, no doubt annoyed at being called from bed, told Alasdair that his suspicions were foolish and unjust, but if the brothers wished to satisfy themselves they had his permission to look further into the matter. And he went back to bed.
They, well knowing all the skulking places, went and hid themselves near to a sentinel's post, where instead of one they discovered eight or ten men. This made them more inquisitive, so they crept as near as they could without being discovered, so near that they could hear one say to his fellows that ‘he liked not this work, and that had he known of it he would have been very unwilling to have come there, but that none, except their commanders knew of it till within a quarter of an hour’. The soldier added that ‘he was willing to fight against the men of Glencoe, but it was base to murder them’. But to all this was answered ‘All the blame be on such as gave the orders, we are free, being bound to obey our officers’.
Before the brothers could warn their father, said the pamphlet, the massacre had begun.
In the depositions made by John and Alasdair Og, three years later, neither said that they had hidden and watched the sentinels. After their game of cards with Glenlyon they went home and to bed. Before dawn, John MacDonald was awoken by voices outside his house, a shouting from the night. He went to the window and saw the flames of pine-knots, red coats and dark bonnets, the barrels of muskets shining. The soldiers called to him again when they saw his face, but before he could understand what they cried, a taunt or a warning, they were gone. He was alarmed, but he softly reassured his wife, and when she slept again he wrapped a plaid about him and went out, stumbling against the wind and the drifts to Inverrigan. Here there were more lights, torches staining the snow by the little burn, and lamps lit at the windows. Soldiers stood at rest, their empty faces staring at him above their bayonets as he went by them and in at the house. The room was full. He did not see Inverrigan, but Glenlyon was there with some of his officers and sergeants, and they were priming muskets and pistols. Robert Campbell turned to John MacDonald, quickly covering his surprise with a smile. Before he could speak the MacDonald asked him for an explanation. Why were the soldiers abroad so early, why were they preparing their arms?
Glenlyon interrupted him briskly, a soldier expressing cheerful disgust with the sudden demands of a soldier's life. Orders had come, John MacDonald knew that, orders to be up and away before dawn against some of Glengarry's men. And then, as if he had suddenly understood MacDonald's suspicions, and was hurt by them, ‘You think we intend Glencoe some ill? Is that it? Man, if that were my orders do you think I'd have given no warning to my niece and your brother Sandy?’
He could have said many things. He could have angrily resented the suggestion that he was ready to abuse MacIain's hospitality, to kill those who trusted him. He could have spoken of his honour, and the offence given it. Already alarmed by the naked bayonets outside, by the acrid smell of priming-powder in this room, by the hard eyes of Drummond and the smirking stares of the Lowland sergeants, John MacDonald would not have believed him. Consciously or not, Glenlyon said the one thing MacIain's son would believe. No Highlandman could murder a woman of his family. The MacDonald was content. He took Glenlyon's hand again, wished him well on his march at dawn, and went home to sleep.
Robert Campbell could also have shot him as he stood there unarmed, but it was not yet five, and five was the hour. In the byre beyond the smoky room, hidden by a cow-hide curtain, MacDonald of Inverrigan and eight members of his household lay bound and gagged, awaiting slaughter.*
When the hour came there was movement in the valley, scarlet men forming line outside the cottages, and perhaps the same soft reassurances were given to the sleepy voices of their hosts. It was said that a great fire was lit upon Signal Rock, so that the soldiers might know when to begin the killing. Such a fire may have been lit on Glenlyon's orders, but few would have seen it. By five o'clock the snowstorm was now a blizzard, a swirling white darkness.
‘Why is he still alive? What of our orders? Kill him!’
THE first of the clan to be killed was Duncan Rankin who lived by the chief's house. He ran from the soldiers to the river, and was shot down as he floundered across it three hundred yards from the mouth. The current carried his body into Loch Leven.
When they had killed Duncan Rankin, and wounded another man who escaped them by a miraculous leap across the river, Lieutenant John Lindsay marched his men to MacIain's door. He struck it several times with the butt of his half-pike, calling out in a friendly voice. A servant awoke Alasdair MacDonald, saying that the Campbell soldiers were leaving for Glengarry's country and wished to thank him for his kindness. MacIain slipped his legs from the blanket and shouted for a dram to be taken to the young officer. He told his wife to dress, the hour was early but their guests should be seen on their way with proper courtesy. He was standing by his bed with his back to the door, pulling on his trews, when Lindsay came in with a pistol in one hand and his half-pike in the other. He yelled, and the room was full of soldiers, melted snow black on their red coats, their bayonets cold in the flame of the night-light.
The servants of the house heard two shots, their lady's scream, Lindsay's maddened voice, and the vengeful cry of Clan Campbell's slogan. They ran from a darkness suddenly stabbed by musket-fire. They ran into the snow and more soldiers, more guns and two of them were killed at the door of the house. A third man called Duncan Don, who was not a Glencoe man but who came occasionally from the Brae of Mar with letters for MacIain, was wounded as he stumbled half-naked in the night. He fell, and the soldiers believed him dead.
Old Glencoe was dead, comically and ignobly, with his trews untied and his nightshirt on his back. There was one bullet in his body and another, from Lindsay's pistol perhaps, through the back of his head. He lay across his bed, his proud face blown open by the breaking exit of the ball. His lady had thrown herself upon him, but the soldiers pulled her aside. Some of them took the old man's body by the heels and dragged it out of the house. Others tore the clothes from his wife until she was naked, and they drew the rings from her fingers with their teeth. But they did not kill her, and this may have been their mercy.
A servant shook John MacDonald from his sleep. MacIain's son did not have to ask the reason, he saw it in the man's face and he heard it in the sounds outside. He went to the door. A hundred yards away, plunging in the drifts, twenty soldiers were slowly approaching the house, and long after he could still remember the bayonets on their muskets. Before they arrived, he got his wife * and his household away up the brae to the cover of the trees on Meall Mor. There he found Archibald MacDonald, one of his father's servants, and also Murdoch Matheson the bard, and both of them told him what had happened in the chief's house.
A servant also awoke Alasdair Og, shouting in his ear, ‘It's no time for you to be sleeping when they're killing your brother at his door!’ Alasdair gathered his family and his people quickly, and they too went up Meall Mor and came by accident upon his brother's little party. Bitterly cold and numb from shock and fear, the MacDonalds crouched in a corrie, listening for sounds from below. Sometimes they heard shots, and cries, and for long moments there was nothing to be heard but the keening wind. Now and then, when the snow swirled and parted, they saw a flower of flame at Carnoch or Invercoe, and smelt the sweet scent of their burning homes. At last the brothers sent the women and young children higher into the hills, over the western shoulder of Meall Mor, and southward to the upper braes of Gleann an Fiodh
or Gleann Leac na Muidhe. There would be little shelter there from the snow, and less mercy from the wind, but dawn was now an hour away, and when it came there would be no safety where they were. When they were gone, quickly lost in the blizzard, the brothers went up the glen with Matheson and Archibald MacDonald. They passed over the frozen burn and narrow valley that led to Inverrigan below, and they climbed to the high ground above Achnacone. Here they found more frightened women and children, and they urged them on up Gleann Leac.
Night had gone and the light was grey, but the floor of the glen was still hidden by driving snow. The MacDonalds listened to the heavy thud of shots, the muffled shouts of Campbell soldiers. To keep his thoughts from the bitter cold, his heart from breaking, Murdoch Matheson began to compose the great lament he was to finish later that day. Dear to me are the white bodies of those who were generous, manly, delightful men…. Had we been under arms, before the hunt gathered against this land, there are Red-coats who would never have returned!
At Inverrigan, said James Campbell of Glenlyon's company, ‘I saw eight persons killed and several houses burnt, and women flying to the hills to save their lives.’ At five o'clock, Glenlyon had closed his watch and put it in his pocket. MacDonald of Inverrigan, and the eight men of his household, were carried beyond the door, still bound hand and foot. They were thrown upon the dung-hill, and there Glenlyon shot Inverrigan. One by one the others were also killed, a slow, methodical slaughter with musket and bayonet. A soldier who rifled Inverrigan's coat brought his captain a paper he had found, and Glenlyon called for a torch to be held closer so that he might read it. It was a letter from John Hill, giving the MacDonald protection, and assuring him that he and his family, his land and his stock, were free from molestation. It may have been the bloody irony of this letter, or it may have been a sudden and sick revulsion that made Glenlyon stand between his soldiers and a young man of twenty, the last of the nine victims still living. He cried ‘Hold!’, and the soldiers stared at him from faces of clay. Then Thomas Drummond came, his eyes going from the bound and frightened man to the waiting soldiers, and on to Glenlyon's white face. He said ‘Why is he still alive? What of our orders? Kill him!’ When no one moved, Drummond raised his pistol and shot the young man through the head.