Part 14
Green was the favourite colour of the fairies, understood to be jealous of its being worn by men. In some parts this colour was held unlucky, while its use in so many tartans may have led the wearers “to mourn fifteen renewed in forty-five.”
Who may dare on wold to wear The fairies’ fatal green?
Among the Grahams, who yet have adopted a chequer of green and blue, the former colour was avoided, since Dundee had on a green coat at Killiecrankie, and thus, as the Highlanders whispered, made himself target for a silver bullet. At the other end of the Highlands, the Sinclairs have not forgotten how in a green uniform they set out for the carnage of Flodden. The suit of Lincoln green worn by the Knight of Snowdon might be supposed to blame for the ill-luck of his chase; but as matter of fact it is on record how King James got a suit of tartan made for his Highland excursions.
An uglier and more perilous brood of spirits were the _Urisks_ who haunted the misty mountains, with Ben Venue for their Brocken. Then every lake had its malignant _kelpie_, that in the Highlands usually takes the form of a water-bull, or horse, to be avoided like any loathly dragon. I have mentioned such a monster on the Tay; and Loch Vennachar has its own legend of the same kind, how on its banks a horse appeared among a band of children, so pretty, and to all seeming so gentle, that one of them ventured to mount it, then another and another, the creature drawing out its back like a telescope till the whole laughing party were astride, when it plunged into the water, carrying down all but the one who, in such stories, is bound to escape for telling the tale.
I fancy that kelpies, banshees, brownies, and the like uncanny creatures are not so well-known in Perthshire to-day as in the Western Highlands; but here, too, old folks, rather than young ones, may go warily by certain spots after dark. In the middle of last century a young lad whom a German tourist took as guide from Callander was able to cheer the way by eerie stories, one of a whisky smuggler accepting the invitation of an unearthly spirit to dance with her for an hour or so, as it seemed, then on reaching home he found his wife turned grey and his young children grown up. Even yet, upon the Highland line, you may find the Scottish character not all one grey shepherd’s plaid of stern theology and hard-headed shrewdness.
Ben Ledi, “the sacred mount,” was an ancient scene of pagan rites such as those which Roderick Dhu’s weird chaplain mingled with the ordinances of Christianity. I shall never forget a day I spent at its foot, that black Twelfth of August, through which a prolonged thunderstorm raged over Scotland, striking down members of more than one shooting party, on moors overcast by so awful darkness that Benjamin Franklin himself might have heard the voice of offended mountain spirits. Has the reader ever come in for a thunderstorm in the Highlands? Here is the late Mr. A. I. Shand’s account of such an experience as often gives a certain zest of danger to a sportsman’s beat.
You hear the muttering growl of distant thunder; you see the storm-clouds gathering ominously over the lowering head of the Boar of Badenoch or the Sow of Athol: the storm bursts, the rain comes down in torrents, and, before you have been well soaked to the skin, each stream and tiny burn is in foaming spate. Many a torrent has to be breasted waist-deep, or maybe shoulder-high, before you get into dry garments at the shooting-lodge. Still more perilous it is if you are belated and without a knowledgeable guide in the mist that envelops you in its fleecy folds, either thickening insensibly into palpable darkness, or coming down in a rush with appalling suddenness. Coming with a rush, I say, and I speak by book. I remember one bright afternoon, below the Tap o’ Noth, on an Aberdeenshire moor, and when walking up to a point, we had little time to look up at the phenomenon of a sudden sun-eclipse. What we did see was a dense wall of vapour descending on the dogs, who were drawing on a point, some twenty yards ahead. It was a race against time. I got forward to score a right and left. One of the birds we did pick up, the other was lost beyond groping for in a darkness that might be felt. Of course experiences like these are comparatively rare and I do not pretend there is real danger on the moors; I only say there is an inspiring suspicion of it. There is undeniable romance, more enjoyable in the recollection than in the reality, when you feel you are abroad as to the points of the compass; when you are “turned round,” like the lost sportsman on the American prairies; when the whistle of the curlew, the crow of the grouse, the bellowing of the amorous harts in the rutting season, sound strangely uncanny out of the watery cloud. You can understand how the fervid imagination of the Celt, nursed on superstitions in a savage solitude, peopled the gloomy wilderness with brownies and spectres, and heard the wings and weird shrieks of witches in the air, when the skein of wild geese was flying inland.
When Ben Ledi’s top be not veiled in clouds, one has hence a noble prospect over “the varied realms of fair Menteith,” another of those domain provinces whose names in Scotland are older than its shires. Dr. Graham defines this as the country between the Forth and the Teith, rising in the lakes of the Trossachs region, to unite a little above Stirling. Its old bounds appear to have been rather wider, taking in Perthshire up to Strathearn, and Stirlingshire down to the basin of the Clyde. It was, in fact, the upper part of Strathmore, enclosed between the Grampians to the north and the southern Campsie Fells or Lennox Hills, which, curving to the west beyond Stirling, continue the line of the Ochils and the Sidlaws. Through this finely broken valley of heights, meadows, and moors flow the streams of the Forth, that seem to have drained away the importance of the old heart of Scotland to Stirling and Edinburgh. In our day these abundant waters have been artificially led off to Glasgow, where Bailie Nicol Jarvie little thought how Loch Katrine would be laid on to make toddy in the Saltmarket. For centuries this half-Lowland strath has been a channel through which the civilisation of the South flowed up into the Highlands, long stemmed at the mountain gates of the Trossachs country.
The farmers who settled here under the shadow of the Grampians had to lay their account with being exposed to attacks from their mountain neighbours. On the west of Perthshire the clans were shut in by bens and glens as rugged as their own, defended by warriors of the same race; what feuds raged on that side have at all events left slighter marks in history. On the east, the walls of Perth and the castles of the Tay and Earn, each with its pit and gallows, would avail to keep raiders in check. On the north, it was a far cry to the rich plains of Moray, which yet suffered sorely from invasion through Badenoch. But, southwards, a day’s march brought Roderick Dhus and Rob Roys down to a tempting prospect of “Lowland field and fold,” opened from their “savage hills.”
Time was when the Lowlanders could better guard their own against frequent foes; but a day came in which they would be more at home in markets than on battlefields, while the mountaineer still kept the use and the habit of arms. That was the flourishing period of a man like Rob Roy, who had a head for business as well as a hand for violence upon occasion. Both he and his son, Robin Oig--probably confused with each other--left a dubious name in Menteith, over which the father is said to have pushed his _creaghs_ so far as to come to encounter with Macgregor of Balhaldie, the Sheriffmuir laird who by some was recognised as chief of the clan. For the like of them, such raids were honourable occupation: a Highland gentleman, who would scorn to be the thief of a single cow, might be proud of playing the robber on a drove of cattle, yet also with a good conscience he could act as policeman, for a consideration.
My sketch of Rob did not dwell on his dealings in the blackmail business, because I cannot clearly make out at what period or periods of his life it was that, when not harrying or spoiling the Grahams and other ill-wishers, he turned to this comparatively honest means of livelihood. The word _blackmail_, which has now taken on a darker shade, then answered to an institution marking a certain advance in peace and order. As Bailie Nicol Jarvie calculated, there were far more men in the Highlands than could find honest work, even had they wanted it. The loose fringe of unemployed, when no more glorious warfare was stirred, sought an outlet for their energies in foraging upon their neighbours’ cattle; and such enterprises naturally found lines of least resistance in richer Lowland straths like Menteith and the Lennox. While civil authority was too weak to guard “herds and harvests reared in vain” within swoop of the Highland line, an urgent demand called forth a supply of redress by means of more calculating adventurers, who undertook for a fixed payment to guarantee their peaceful clients against serious loss. The line between caterans and blackmailers would not be very clearly drawn. As the Jonathan Wilds and Vidocqs of a more organised police played alternately the part of thief and thief-taker; and as
He who _silence_ hoots Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes--
so the professed guardians might also take a turn at robbery, if only by way of impressing the need of insurance on should-be clients. Even the commissioned Watch companies, who were the nucleus of our famous Highland regiments, had the repute of being somewhat discriminating in their protective service. But a “high-toned” blackmailer like Rob Roy made it a point of honour to carry out his contract with subscribers, if sometimes he turned aside to give non-subscribers a plain hint of what they might gain by employing him. They had nothing but his honour to depend upon, a contract of blackmail being strictly illegal--indeed, by an act of the sixteenth century, declared a capital crime in the case of both parties. The necessity of the time, however, let the law wink at the effect of its own shortcomings; and prudent border landlords were fain to insure movable property with men who made it their business and pleasure to take hard knocks and rough excursions.
Later on, the authorities saw well to recognise what had become a regular practice. Rob Roy’s nephew, Glengyle, who appears to have borne a more respectable character than the uncle, entered into formal contracts to recover stolen cattle, or make good the loss, at the rate of five per cent on the rent of a holding; and in the end he was employed and subsidised by Government as Captain of a Watch, the makeshift police of the border line. More distinguished chiefs were not ashamed to carry on the same business. Scott asserts that one of the last to practise it was Macdonald of Barrisdale--a hero rubbed rather threadbare by Mr. A. Lang--who adorned his claymore with a Virgilian inscription--
Hae tibi erunt artes--pacisque imponere morem, Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.
Rob Roy’s blackmailing had to be carried on more or less _sub rosa_, but may have been quite as efficient for the protection of those who made terms with him. Such a Highland Robin Hood would have no difficulty in keeping about him a gang of followers like the Dougal cratur and his own sturdy brood. His proceedings in a case of robbery within his jurisdiction are described by Scott from the mouth of an old man in the Lennox, who, scores of years afterwards, told him the tale of this exciting experience. As a herd-lad of fifteen, he had been working with his father on an estate from which some dozen head of cattle were carried off one autumn
night. Rob Roy was called in, and came with seven or eight men armed as instruments of his function. Having gravely inquired into the symptoms, he soon diagnosed the cause, and set about the remedy with professional promptness, only requiring that two herds should accompany him to identify the cattle and to drive them back when recovered, a duty not to be expected of gentlemen like those who figured in his tail. If Scott’s stories be skimmed nowadays, his notes and introductions are apt to be skipped; so I make bold to borrow freely from one who has so much to lend.
My informant and his father were dispatched on the expedition. They had no goodwill to the journey; nevertheless, provided with a little food, and with a dog to help them to manage the cattle, they set off with Macgregor. They travelled a long day’s journey in the direction of the mountain Benvoirlich, and slept for the night in a ruinous hut or bothy. The next morning they resumed their journey among the hills, Rob Roy directing their course by signs and marks on the heath, which my informant did not understand. About noon Rob commanded the armed party to halt and to lie crouched in the heather where it was thickest. “Do you and your son,” he said to the oldest Lowlander, “go boldly over the hill;--you will see beneath you, in a glen on the other side, your master’s cattle feeding, it may be, with others; gather your own together, taking care to disturb no one else, and drive them to this place. If anyone speak to, or threaten you, tell them that I am here, at the head of twenty men.” “But what if they abuse us, or kill us?” said the Lowland peasant, by no means delighted at finding the embassy imposed on him and his son. “If they do you any wrong,” said Rob, “I will never forgive them as long as I live.” The Lowlander was by no means content with this security, but did not think it safe to dispute Rob’s injunctions. He and his son climbed the hill, therefore, found a deep valley, where there grazed, as Rob had predicted, a large herd of cattle. They cautiously selected those which their master had lost, and took measures to drive them over the hill. As soon as they began to remove them, they were surprised by hearing cries and screams, and looking around in fear and trembling, they saw a woman, seeming to have started out of the earth, who _flyted_ at them, that is, scolded them, in Gaelic. When they contrived, however, in the best Gaelic they could muster, to deliver the message Rob Roy told them, she became silent, and disappeared without offering them any further annoyance. The chief heard their story on their return, and spoke with great complacency of the art which he possessed of putting such things to rights without any unpleasant bustle.
On the way back the herd-boy gained a recollection to last him for life, and to suggest an incident in _Waverley_. At nightfall they bivouacked on one of those bare moors that so much appalled Andrew Fairservice, swept by a frosty wind which did not much trouble the hardy escort.
The Highlanders, sheltered by their plaids, lay down in the heath comfortably enough, but the Lowlanders had no protection whatever. Rob Roy, observing this, directed one of his followers to afford the old man a portion of his plaid; “for the callant (boy), he may,” said the freebooter, “keep himself warm by walking about and watching the cattle.” My informant heard this sentence with no small distress; and as the frost wind grew more and more cutting, it seemed to freeze the very blood in his young veins. He had been exposed to weather all his life, he said, but never could forget the cold of that night; in so much that, in the bitterness of his heart, he cursed the bright moon for giving no heat with so much light. At length the sense of cold and weariness became so intolerable that he resolved to desert his watch to seek some repose and shelter. With that purpose he couched himself down behind one of the most bulky of the Highlanders, who acted as Lieutenant to the party. Not satisfied with having secured the shelter of the man’s large person, he coveted a share of his plaid, and by imperceptible degrees drew a corner of it round him. He was now comparatively in paradise, and slept sound till daybreak, when he awoke and was terribly afraid on observing that his nocturnal operations had altogether uncovered the dhuiniewassell’s neck and shoulders, which, lacking the plaid which should have protected them, were covered with _cranreuch_ (_i.e._ hoar frost). The lad rose in great dread of a beating, at least, when it should be found how luxuriously he had been accommodated at the expense of a principal person of the party. Good Mr. Lieutenant, however, got up and shook himself, rubbing off the hoar frost with his plaid, and muttering something of a _cauld neight_.
After Culloden, for a time, Menteith farmers might sit in a worse plight than before. While the blackmail insurance was no longer to be depended on, a banditti of broken rebels ensconced themselves above the lakeland passes in fastnesses like the crags of Ben Venue, from which they sallied forth on depredations now unchecked by any spirit of clan loyalty, or neighbourly alliances. Their reign of robbery was overthrown mainly through the exertions of Mr. Nicol Graham of Gartmore, whose descendant in our time has not always been hot on the side of law and order, while a forbear of theirs had shown the family spirit in refusing to pay tribute to Rob Roy. This gentleman stirred up the Government to military battues, which, guided by his experience and knowledge of the country, had more success than Captain Thornton’s expedition, till the robbers were rooted out of their lairs, scattered, banished, or executed. Mr. Graham accumulated in his library a curious collection of documents which he called “thief-papers,” illustrating the condition of the border country in this troubled time. These papers are understood to have been put into the hands of the romancer who turned them to such famous use, hence, for instance, being taken Mr. Nicol Jarvie’s account of the population and resources of the clans behind the Highland line; and the “change-houses,” like that of Lucky Macalpine at Aberfoyle, are here pointed out as stills of demoralisation.
Even after peace had been won for the villages and farms of the strath, the law was long a little shy of trusting itself among the mountains. Lockhart tells us that Scott’s first acquaintance with the braes of Balquhidder was as a writer’s apprentice, when he accompanied a process server who had to be escorted to the scene of his duty by a party of soldiers, where now a policeman is a rare sight, and few crimes are known to justice but drunkenness with its _sequelae_. Till a good deal later there were parts on the Welsh borders in much the same state of home rule. An old gentleman not long deceased told me how in the Llanthony Valley, where the late Father Ignatius secluded himself, disputes were settled by a sort of rough lynch law; and in the next valley, within living memory, the only murder known had been that of a bailiff who attempted to serve a writ. In some parts of the United States, if all tales be true, life and property are less safe to-day than they were a century ago in the Highlands--where officers of the law were the last travellers to feel how they carried their lives in their hands.
Scott compares the mountain clans to Afghan tribes, of whom he seems to have been reading some account. A more familiar resemblance is with the Red Indians of the backwoods, so well known to us through Catholic and Puritan adventurers on their borders. There was the same fierce pride, tempered by traits of generosity and scruples of honour; the same hardihood, along with impatience of regular work; in some cases the same veneer of Christian ritual; always the same restless turbulence of young warriors eager to prove their manhood, held more or less in check by the cooler heads of chiefs and counsellors. The moving narratives of the frontier settlers of New York and Pennsylvania give us some idea of what perils Menteith farmers had long to be familiar with, though indeed the wild Highlandmen seldom showed such cruel temper as was religiously cultivated in the Red Indian.
There appears this other difference in the Highlands and the backwoods border feuds, that in the former, the jarring elements were brought into much closer relations, so that love played its part as well as hatred. The inveterate enemies of the wide New World would be separated from each other by great stretches of forest and prairie, through which war parties travelled for days and weeks, by stealthy paths and silent waterways, to fall at advantage upon their unguarded foe. The pale-face settlers could not feel themselves safe from vengeful redskins whose camp-fires were a hundred miles away. It is said that the Indian summer, that serene truce of nature, got its name through the red warriors taking then a last chance of a raid in force upon the frontier, before the snows held them back; yet even in the depth of winter bands of human wolves might come prowling about the lonely blockhouses, to drag away unwary or unlucky victims to a carnival of torture among their distant wigwams. No band of cultivators would care to fix themselves within a dozen miles of a tribe that was being slowly pushed out of its hunting-grounds. But in Menteith and behind its mountain walls, hereditary enemies were so closely packed together that it is hard to understand how they got on without mutual extermination.
We hear, indeed, of occasional raids into this district from so far off as Appin and Lochaber. But also the tale quoted above from Scott shows how near to their prey were caterans, who, in the _Lady of the Lake’s_ time, could push their devastations as far as the Devon valley of the Ochils. We have seen how the Macgregors and the Maclarens ill-neighboured each other in Balquhidder, the latter clan gradually ousted and taking refuge among the Stewarts, who filled the adjacent wilds of Glenfinlas. To the south lay the Buchanans, the Colquhouns, and the “wild Macfarlanes.” To the north were the Macnabs and advanced parties of Murrays. The name of the Dreadnought Hotel at Callander tells us how it was first built by the Laird of Macnab, whose concerns straggled so far from their root on Loch Tay. And all those smaller bodies were pushed upon from opposite sides by the Grahams and the Campbells, powerful enemies whom the older inhabitants would sometimes be able to play off against each other, while sometimes the medley of quarrel seems to have tended to such an awkward shape as that triangular duel in _Midshipman Easy_.