|
What richer picture could
the eye desire than this sunlit glory of harvest colour amid the Highland
mountains? The narrow sea-loch itself below gleams blue as melted sapphire
under the radiant and stainless sky; around it, on the rising slopes, the
cornfields, rough with fruitful stooks, spread their yellow ripeness in
the sun; amid them shine patches of fresh soft green where the second
clover has been cut; while above hang the sheltering woods, like dark
brown shadows; and, over all, the surrounding hills, bloom-spread as for a
banquet of the gods, raise their purple stain against the blue. Only far
off, above the dim mountains of amethyst in the north, lies a white argosy
of clouds, like some convoy of home-bound Indiamen becalmed on a summer
sea.
There has been no sound for
an hour but the whisper of the warm autumn wind that the farmer loves for
winnowing his grain, the drone of velvety bee sometimes in the blue depth
of a hare-bell, and the crackle of the black broom-pods bursting in the
heat. The furry brown rabbits that pop prudently out of sight in the mossy
bank are silent as shadows; the red squirrel that runs along the dyke top
and disappears up a tree makes no chatter; and even the shy speckled mavis
that bobs bright-eyed across the path is voiceless, for among the birds
this is the silent month.
Less and less, as the
narrow road rises through the fir woods, grows the bit of blue loch seen
far behind under the branches, and the little clachan in the warm hollow
over the brow of the hill is shut from the world on every side by the deep
and silent forests of fragrant pine. Wayside flowers are seeding on the
time-darkened thatch of these sequestered dwellings. There the wallflower
clings with branches of narrow pods, and the spikes of the field-mustard
ripen beside the golden bullets of the ox-eyed daisy. On a chair at the
door of one of the cottages an ancient granny is sunning herself, counting
with feeble fingers the stitches on her glancing knitting wires. A frail
old body she is, set here, neat and comfortable, by some loving hand to
enjoy, it may be, the sunshine of her last autumn on earth. Withered and
wrinkled are her old cheeks with the cares of many a winter, and it seems
difficult to recall the day when she was a ripe-lipped, merry reaper in
the corn-fields; but under her clean, white mutch the grey old eyes are
undimmed yet as they watch, heedful and lovingly, the movements of the
little maid tottering about her knee. Where are her thoughts as she sits
there alone, hour after hour, in the silent sunshine? Is she back in the
dusk among the sweet-scented hay-ricks, listening with fluttering heart to
the whispers of her rustic lover? Is it a sunny doorway where she sits
crooning for happiness over the baby on her knee? the little one that is
all her own—and his. Or is it a winter night as she kneels in the
flickering light by the bedside, feeling the rough, loving hand relax its
grasp, while she sees the shadow pass across the wistful face, and knows
with breaking heart that she is alone? These are the peaceful scenes of
peasant life; alas that they should ever be darkened by the shadow of the
sword!
Granny can speak no
English, or she might have something to say of the great disaster that
befel the clans on the moor close by in her father’s time. For not far
beyond the little clachan the road emerges on the open heath, and there,
where the paths cross, lies the great, grey boulder on which the terrible
duke stood to survey the field just before the battle. Not even then was
he aware how nearly his birthday carousals of the night before, at Nairn,
had been surprised and turned into another slaughter of Prestonpans. So
perilously sometimes does the sword of Damocles tremble over an
unconscious head. His troops, well rested and provisioned, were fresh as
that April morning itself, while the poor clansmen in the boggy hollow
yonder to the right, divided in their councils, and famishing for
treacherous lack of bread, were exhausted by the fruitless twenty-four
mile surprise march of the night. Yet they came on, these clansmen, half
an hour later, like lions; plunging through the bog, sword in hand, in the
face of the regulars’ terrific blaze of musketry, cutting Cumberland’s
first line to pieces, and rushing on the second line to be blown to atoms
at sword’s length.
The yellow corn is being
shorn to-day where the clans were mowed down then. Here was spilt the best
blood of the Highlands. Close by, the brave Keppoch, crying out as he
charged alone before the eyes of his immovable Macdonalds that the
children of his tribe had forsaken him, threw his sword in the air as a
bullet went through his heart. At the tall tree to the west fell Cameron
of Lochiel; and in the little valley beyond, the defeated Prince Charles,
as he fled, paused a moment to bid his army a bitter farewell. The road
here at the cornfield’s edge dips a little yet, where the fatal bog once
lay, and ten yards to the left still springs the Dead Men’s well, to which
so many poor fellows crawled during the awful succeeding night to allay
the tortures of their thirst before they died. Here the gigantic
MacGillivray, leader that day of the clan M’Intosh, fell dead as, with his
last strength, he bore to the spring a little wounded boy whom he had
heard at his side moaning for water.
A better fate the bravery of these
men deserved, misguided though they might be, for the victors gave no
quarter to wounded or prisoners; and the soul shudders yet at thought of
the horrors that followed the battle. It was not enough that disabled men
should be clubbed and shot, and barns full of them burned to ashes; but to
this day in many a quiet glen lie the remains of hamlets ruined in cold
blood, and tales are told of the dark vengeance taken by the victorious
soldiery upon defenceless women, little children, and old men. Well was
it, perhaps, for those who had fallen that they lay here at rest under the
heather— they could not know the cruel fate of wife or child. To other
lips was left the wail for "Drummossie; oh! Drummossie." At rest they
were, these hot and valiant hearts, plaided and plumed as warriors wish to
lie in their long bivouac under the open heaven. Not the first nor the
last of their race, either, were they to fall, scarred with the wounds of
war; for, less than a mile away, under the lichened cairns of Clava, do
not the ashes rest of the chiefs their ancestors, slain in some
long-forgotten battle of the past, and waiting, like these, for the sound
of the last reveille?
Here, on each side of the
road, can still be made out the trenches where the dead were buried,
according to their tartans it is said; and, while the rest of the moor is
purple with heather, these sunken places alone are green. On the edge of
the cornfield rises a stone, inscribed "Field of the English; they were
buried here"; and at the end of each trench on the moor stands a rude slab
bearing the name of its tribe. A singular pathos attends two of these
stones, on which is written, not M’Intosh or Stewart or Fraser, but "Mixed
Clans."
Round the oval moorland of
the battle rise thick fir-woods now, dark and mournful. Sometimes the
winds of the equinox, as they roar through these, recall the deadly
rolling musketry of long ago. But the air to-day scarcely whispers in the
tree-tops, and sunshine and silence sleep upon the resting-place of the
gallant dead. Only some fair, white-clad girls, who have come up from
Inverness to read the battle inscription on the great boulder-cairn, are
plucking a spray of heather from the Camerons’ grave. |
