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Two Oral
Histories of Captain “Donnull Gorm” Macdonell, 78th Foot
(Fraser’s Highlanders)”
By Ian
McCulloch
“Donull Gorm” Macdonell, of Benbecula (c.1728-1760)
was the second and natural son of Ranald Macdonell, 17th “Old”
Clanranald, and a half-brother to the 18th “Young”
Clanranald. His younger half-brother, William, also served in the 78th
Foot. “Donull Gorm” had joined the French Army before the Jacobite
rebellion in 1745 and had fought at Stirling where he was wounded and
subsequently went into hiding on Uist.
When he heard of the
surrender of his regiment after Culloden, he acted swiftly to ensure he
was treated as a French officer vice a rebel as Britain had a cartel with
France and Spain for the exchange of prisoners of war. After giving
himself up, he wrote from his cell in Edinburgh Castle, 15 December 1746:
“I went to France in year 1742 and served as Cadet in Booth’s Regmt.
till I got a Company in Drummond’s Regmt. [Royal Ecossais]
the year 44 and came along with it to Scotland in Novr. 45, and
being wounded before Sterling, I returned to my father’s country, where I
remained till hearing that all my Regmt. surrender’d themselves
prisoners of War at Inverness, after the Battle of Culloden, I was
desirous of doing the same, and I surrendered myself to Capt. John
Mackdonald [yr of Glenlyon, 43rd Foot, and brother of “Archie
Ruadh (Roy)” MacDonald, who also served in the 78th Foot]
as soon as he came to the Country I was in, in July last….”
In 1756, the Duke of
Argyll said of him: “brother to Clanranald was sent into the French
Service when a boy, & had a Company several years, which he quitted some
months ago upon the late Act of Parliament & took the Oaths to the
Government; for these facts, as well as for his Character, he appeals to
My Lord Holderness & undertakes on this occasion to raise 100 men.”
Captain Macdonell was
accepted as one of the original company commanders of the newly-raised 78th
Foot and raised his company quickly by draconian methods on the outer
isles of Skye (Macdonells, MacLeods), Uist (Clanranald Macdonells) and
Barra (MacNeils).
Heart-breaking is the
lament that has been passed down from generation to generation of the
long-suffering Clanranald Macdonells of the sea-girt Isles of Uist to the
west of Skye. Donull Gorm is remembered on both sides of the
oceans as a taker of widow’s sons, and thus cursed forever, “swarthy
and diabolical… man of violence and not to be crossed”. Attributed to
a South Uist widow who lost, not one, but four sons, to the Donald with “the
blue-green sheen of a crow against the Sun”, it was still being sung
along the eastern lochs of Bras Dor in Cape Breton Island, Canada, in the
late 1950’s where it was recorded in the original Gaelic by noted song
collector, Dr. Helen Creighton.
I huiraibh O-o, I am not well;
Hug ora inn o, I cannot
stay at rest,
I huiraibh O-o, I am
not well;
Chorus*
I am sad cutting the flax,
The tears from my head are streaming to the ground.*
If you dealt with me unjustly, Dhomhnaill Ghuirm
I treated you like other women.*
I did not beseech God to destroy you although
You brought ruin to my household.*
Although you gave me a holding enough for one cow,
I gave you a more valuable gift.*
Although you took the three men from me,
Their father decaying in the sod.*
Although you took John and Donald, and
Alistair of the fair ringlets, from me.*
If you had left Hector, I would not have complained
So much about the others.*
It would have been better for you to have taken
The cattle from the glen than have to face
The piercing cries of widows about their families.*
It is a pity that I cannot assume the shape of a seagull,
Then lightly swim away.*
I would swim over the channel in order to ascertain whether the boys were
treated well.*
Parting from John and Donald has shed my tears with good reason*
May the blessing of God follow you Hector,
You were my choice over all others.*34
Donull Gorm
replaced Charles Baillie as Captain of Grenadiers, the latter killed at
the Louisbourg landings, 8 June 1758 and, was wounded himself six weeks
later on the night of 21 July 1760 in the approach trenches. He was
killed at the Battle of Sillery outside the walls of Quebec on April 28,
1760.
Donald “Gorm” was
not well-liked by the Highlander rank-and-file, according to Grenadier
Sergeant James Thompson who unabashedly styled him “a surly cross dog”,
and in his Memoirs hints that Macdonell was intentionally wounded
or “fragged” by his own men at the siege of Louisbourg on 21 July 1758: “Our
Captain had a ball passed through his left wrist and nobody could tell how
it came and afaith he immediately shifted his position to the other end of
the ground.”
Thompson was rebuked on
several occasions by “Donull Gorm” for being too familiar with the
men and finally during the winter of 1760-61 they had a face to face
meeting.
After we had taken Quebec,
he one day sent for me to his Quarters in the lane leading to the
Esplanade, I accordingly went and found him sitting at a table with
another officer. “Jim, you have all along thought that I was hard upon
you.”
“Aye Sir,” I replied,
“I did indeed think that you were harsh to me when there was not a great
necessity for it.”
“I treated you,” says
the Captain, “in that manner because you were too familiar with the
private men.”
“Sir,” I replied again,
“how came you to think that to be wrong in me, when you yourself know that
it is impossible to act otherwise? Our men, you know, are not like those
of other Regiments – they were all acquaintances before they became
soldiers, and many of the private men are from as good families as the
officers themselves.”
Captain Macdonell offered
Thompson a drink, which he accepted and the grenadier sergeant soon
learned that he had been summoned because his company commander had “found
that I had a friend somewhere, who had got wind of his harsh treatment of
me, and he wished by all means to wipe off the scores” with Thompson.
The captain offered him a second drink which Thompson also took but he
departed with “no better opinion of his friendship after all”.
Thompson was a highly respected Freemason in the garrison, as was his
Colonel, Simon Fraser, who was elected a grandmaster of the first Grand
Lodge of Quebec. No doubt, Thompson’s “friend” was the Mc Shimi
himself, Colonel Simon Fraser.
Markedly, at the battle of
Sillery, 28 April 1760, none of Macdonell’s volunteers were drawn from the
78th Foot. Oral tradition in the Highlands of Cape Breton,
where several Fraser soldiers returned to settle on the eastern Bras Dor
Lakes of Cape Breton (Barra MacNeils, MacEacherns, and Clanrald Macdonells)
maintains that it was at this 1760 battle that “the de’il finally got
him”, and that the cursed Captain finally got his due reward by
succumbing to one of the oldest Gaelic curses, “May you die
amongst strangers.”
Harper, in his book The
Fraser Highlanders, did not include Thompson’s somewhat satisfied
description of his nemesis’ gory end - “a stronger body of French
overpowered and completely butchered his whole party, and he himself was
found cut and hack’d to pieces in a most shocking manner. There was an
end of him!”
According to Thompson, “Donull
Gorm” was a marked man by the Indians and Canadien militia who
had been harried ruthlessly all winter long. Many French-Canadians had
watched helplessly as he indiscriminately burnt several of their farms
during winter raids and sorties against the outlying countryside of
Quebec, leaving the occupants to freeze and starve. Retribution was final
and ghastly, and to the Gaelic mind, necessary for the restoration of the
balance of nature.
Here then are two versions
that evolved in the Gaelic oral tradition: one in the Highlands of Cape
Breton along the shores of the finger lochs of Bras D’or, a vast inland
sea abounding with shellfish, waterfowl and forest; the other, by the
hearths of cottars in the sea-girt isle of South Uist, who watched their
young men pressed into “Donull Gorm’s” company.
Note the more fanciful and
superstitious rendition that lingered in the Outer Isles of Scotland, his
legacy not one of honour, but of infamy. He became the bogeyman, the evil
one of Gaelic story telling tradition, the embodiment of everything that
was not proper, right or just. In essence, he was the antithesis of what
a Highland war chieftain should be.
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Sources CBs;
SBs; BALs; Stewart,
Sketches,
II, 20-1; “Donald McDonald” PRO, WO64-12; CU 49/5; William
Amherst’s Journal, 29; GD 201/4/81; Muster Roll of Prince
Charles Edward Stuart’s Army 1745-46; Harper, Fighting Frasers,
101-2, Thompson’s Memoirs.
Cape Breton Version (as
told by J.J.MacEachern)
“In
Gaelic I am called Iain Macdhomhnuill ‘ic seon aidh Dhomhnuill Oig,”
states J.J. MacEachern, a noted local historian & genealogist, sitting in
the An Drochaid (The Bridge” Museum of Mabou, Nova Scotia, also
home to the Mabhu Gaelic & Historical Society. “In English that would
be: John MacEachern, son of Donald, son of John, son of younger Donald and
this is my sloinneadh (family tree)”:
My traditions
came to me from my grandmother, Mary Ann MacVarish, her male line coming
from the Morar-Arisaig district of western Inverness in Scotland. Her
mother was a Campbell from South Uist and her mother a Macdonell from the
same island. Mary Ann MacVarich married John MacEachern whose male line
also came from Arisaig and before that South Uist. His mother’s people
also came from the island, thus most of my paternal forbears were of Uist
stock.
Our family
tradition is that MacEacherns and others fought at Louisbourg with Captain
Donull Gorm Macdonell in Colonel Fraser’s regiment. On a patrol between
the East Bay arm of the Bras d’or Lake and Louisbourg my ancestors saw the
land they hoped to get after war’s end. Donull Gorm, for so he is usually
called, is remembered in my grandfather’s time (1890’s to 1980’s) as a
cruel man, caring little for his men. Nevertheless, he did bring his men
to this land, my grandmother would say.
The Gaelic
word “ghuirm” or “ghorm” as applied to Donull Gorm Macdonell is a strange
one. Literally it means blue-green, but it may also mean the apparent
green sheen on a crow flying against the sun. Others say it is the colour
of the sea in twilight. Whatever the word may mean, the connotation is
not good. For Donull Gorm, it meant swarthy and diabolical, a man of
violence and one not to be crossed.
Donull Gorm’s
recruiting was done in the area of Uist, Benbecula and Barra and his
pressing of men by force or enticement was the core of many a fireside
tale. In Gaelic tradition a curse is put upon one when he takes a widow’s
son, and the fulfilment of the curse restores the balance of nature.
Now it was
some years before Cape Breton was open to settlement. The men of
Louisbourg did not see their new lands in their own times* but their
descendants did. It is not clearly known if the descendants who came were
children, grandchildren or nephews. According to tradition the lands
granted in the 1790’s were on the basis of military service. Whatever the
story, Donald MacEachern’s sons, Angus, Allan and John took land along
East Bay in the very area travelled by Donull Gorm’s soldiers
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* Author’s
Note: Four MacEachern’s appear on the disbandment rolls of the 78th
Fraser Highlanders dated December 1763 in Quebec; all four soldiers shown
as returning home to Scotland to be mustered out. Their names,
interestingly enough, were Angus, Angus, Allan and John. It is therefore
not impossible that these discharged Fraser soldiers did return in the
1790’s when the Highland Clearances were in full swing, for they would
have only been in their fifties (given that the average age of most young
recruits of joining the 78th Foot in 1757 was eighteen). They
may have come via Prince Edward Island for Allan Macdonnell, Laird of
Glenaladale, sold his estate on Uist in 1772 and brought over 250 Catholic
Highlanders to settle on Prince Edward Island. Many of these men then
joined the Royal Highland Emigrants for the duration of the American
Revolution, some of their officers former Frasers, Montgomerys and Royal
Highland officers who had remained in North America. Many were given land
grants in Nova Scotia in recognition of their services, in addition to the
land they already had farmed in PEI. The Barra MacNeils of Iona, Cape
Breton, claim that four MacNeil soldiers of Donull Gorm’s initial company
went home to Scotland on disbandment of the regiment, gathered their
families and kinsmen and returned to the Bras d’Or lakes after the French
and Indian War and settled at Iona.
South Uist
version (as told by Major R. Gillis)
Among Simon
Fraser’s officers was one Donald McDonald, generally referred to as
“Donull Gorm” having a peculiarly swarthy countenance with a bluish cast.
He was cruel and heartless, but brave and clever as a soldier. In his
younger days, he was head of a press gang whose duties were to go through
the Highland districts impressing all eligible young men for service in
the army, paying no heed to the conditions of the families of those men,
whether they were the sole support of aged and infirm parents or not.
Great hardships and cruelties were inflicted on poor people in this way,
but Donald seemed to have no heart for their afflictions nor paid any heed
to their wailings.
On one
occasion he visited the shealing of a poor widow with an only son as her
sole support. The son was at once seized and despite the pleadings and
wailings of the woman the young man was taken away. The mother at first
pleaded, but when she found that was of no avail she poured the most
terrible curses on Donald, ending with the prophecy that he would never
die a natural death, but would be taken away body and soul into the
infernal regions.
Many years
passed and Donald went through all the hardships and dangers of battles
and engagements of all kinds, but escaped without a wound.
After the
wars were over and peace restored, Fraser’s men were at Quebec waiting for
a transport to carry them back to their homes. One evening just about
dusk a group of officers were resting in front of their quarters enjoying
the beautiful spring weather, when a man was seen coming up the steep hill
on which they were lounging. Just as the man came near enough for them to
see all above his waist over the skyline he halted and hailed the group of
officers, asking if Donald Gorm was present. Donald replied in the
affirmative, asking him what did he want of him. The stranger said he
wanted a private interview which would have to be at the foot of the
hill. The other officers advised Donald to have nothing to do with the
stranger but his reply was that he never feared man or devil and would
meet the stranger as requested, and he immediately got up and went
towards him, when both of them walked down the hill apparently in deep
controversy of some kind. Hours passed and Donald did not return, when
searching parties were sent in all directions, but no trace could be
found, dead or alive, and to this day the Highlanders firmly believe that
the prophecy of the widow was literally fulfilled and Donald Gorm was
carried off by the evil one into the infernal regions.
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Source:
Major R. Gillis, Stray Leaves from Highland History, (Sydney, NS,
1918), 22-3. |
