Neil Munro

“ When our countryside is changed, when the forest of Creag Dubh, where roam the deer, is levelled with the turf, and the foot of the passenger wears round the castle of Argile, I hope, I pray, that grotto on the brae will still lift up its face among the fern and ivy. Nowadays when the mood comes on me, and I must be the old man chafing against the decay of youth’s spirit, and the recollection overpowers of other times and other faces than those so kent and tolerant about me, I put my plaid on my shoulders and walk to Bealloch-an-uarain well. ”

“ Hell’s flame! is there anything smaller than the self-esteem of a man who by some infernal quirk of his nature turns his back on his most manifest duty—leaves the blood of his blood and the skin of his skin to perish for want of his guidance and encouragement, and wakens at morning to find it no black nightmare but the horrible fact? Answer me that, Elrigmore!”
“Tut, tut,” said M’Iver, pouring his cousin a glass; “you’re in the vapours, and need a good night’s sleep. There’s no one in Argile dare question your spirit, whatever they may think of your policy.” ”

“ We saw MacDonald’s charge; we saw the wings of Argile’s army—the rotten Lowland levies—break off and skurry along the shore; we saw the lads of the Diarmaid tartan hewn down on the edge of the tide till its waves ran red; but we were as helpless as the rush that waved at our feet. Between us and our friends lay the enemy and our parole—I daresay our parole was forgotten in that terrible hour.
John M’Iver laid him down on the tulaich and clawed with his nails the stunted grass that in wind-blown patches came through the snow. ”

“ Before us now, free and open, lay the way to Inneraora. We got down before the dusk fell, and were the first of its returning inhabitants to behold what a scandal of charred houses and robbed chests the Athole and Antrim caterans had left us.
In the grey light the place lay tenantless and melancholy, the snow of the silent street and lane trodden to a slush, the evening star peeping between the black roof-timbers, the windows lozenless, the doors burned out or hanging off their hinges. Before the better houses were piles of goods and gear turned out on the causeway. ”

“ CHAPTER II.—GILLESBEG GRUAMACH.
Every land, every glen or town, I make no doubt, has its own peculiar air or atmosphere that one familiar with the same may never puzzle about in his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at odd moments like the scent of bog-myrtle and tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air in Glen Shira had ever been very genial and encouraging to me. Even when a young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school, the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the riper airs of the late afternoon went to my head like a mild white wine ”

“ With a most astonishing steady voice for a man as livid as the snow on the hair of his brogues, and with his hand on the hilt of his dirk, John cried—
“Stop a bit.”
I faced him in a most unrighteous humour, ready to quarrel with my shadow.
“For a man I’m doing a favour to, Elrigmore,” he said, “you seem to have a poor notion of politeness. I’m willing to make some allowance for a lover’s tirravee about a woman who never made tryst with him; but I’ll allow no man to call down the credit of my clan and name.” ”

“ Of course Clan MacNicoll was brought to book for this frolic on Inneraora fair-day, banned by Kirk, and soundly beaten by the Doomster in name of law. To read some books I’ve read, one would think our Gaels in the time I speak of, and even now, were pagan and savage. We are not, I admit it, fashioned on the prim style of London dandies and Italian fops; we are—the poorest of us—coarse a little at the hide, too quick, perhaps, to slash out with knife or hatchet, and over-ready to carry the most innocent argument the dire length of a thrust with the sword. ”

“ Now it was not the first time “Slochd a Chubair!” was cried as slogan in Baile Inneraora in the memory of the youngest lad out that early morning with a cudgel. The burgh settled to its Lowlandishness with something of a grudge. For long the landward clans looked upon the incomers to it as foreign and unfriendly. More than once in fierce or drunken escapades they came into the place in their mogans at night, quiet as ghosts, mischievous as the winds, and set fire to wooden booths, or shot in wantonness at any mischancy unkilted citizen late returning from the change-house. ”

“ I’m your cousin, and I’ll say it to your beard, sir! Your glens and howes are ruined, your cattle are houghed and herried, your clan’s name is a bye-word this wae day in all Albainn, and you sit there like a chemist weighing the wind on your stomach.”
“You see no farther than your nose, John,” said the Marquis, petulantly, the candle-light turning his eyes blood-red.
“Thank God for that same!” said Mlver, “if it gives me the wit to keep an enemy from striking the same. If the nose was Argile’s, it might be twisted off his face while he debated upon his right to guard it.” ”

“ With that proud pretence which is common in our people when in strange unfamiliar occasions—and I would be the last to dispraise it—they went about by no means braggardly but with the aspect of men who had better streets and more shops to show at home; surprised at nothing in their alert moments, but now and again forgetting their dignity and looking into little shop-windows with the wonder of bairns and great gabbling together, till MacLachlan fluted on his whistle, and they came, like good hounds, to heel.
All day the town hummed with Gaelic and the round bellowing of cattle. ”

“ MacCailein Mor looked a bit annoyed, and led us at a fast pace up to the gate of the castle that stood, high towered and embrasured for heavy pieces, stark and steeve above town Inneraora. A most curious, dour, and moody man, with a mind roving from key to key. Every now and then he would stop and think a little without a word, then on, and run his fingers through his hair or fumble nervously at his leathern buttons, paying small heed to the Splendid and I, who convoyed him, so we got into a crack about the foreign field of war. ”

“ But the picture that came to me first and stayed with me last was Argile standing in his chamber in the castle of Inneraora, the pallor of the study on his face, and his little Archie, with his gold hair and the night-gown, running out and clasping him about the knees.
We struggled through the night, weary men, hungry men. Loch Leven-head may be bonny by day, but at night it is far from friendly to the unaccustomed wanderer. Swampy meadows frozen to the hard bone, and uncountable burns, and weary ascents, and alarming dips, lie there at the foot of the great forest of Mamore. ”

“ When I was a boy I was brought up loyally to our savage Highland tradition, that feuds were to carry on, and enemies to confound, and that no logic under heaven should keep the claymore in its sheath while an old grudge was to wipe out in blood or a wrong to right.”
“A most sensible and laudable doctrine!” cried M’Iver. “With that and no more of a principle in life—except paying your way among friends—a good man of his hands could make a very snug and reputable progress through the world.”
“Some men might,” said Argile, calmly; “I do not know whether to envy or pity their kind. ”

“ The essence of all human melancholy is in the sentiment of farewells. There are people roving about the world, to-day here, to-morrow afar, who cheat fate and avoid the most poignant wrench of this common experience by letting no root of their affection strike into a home or a heart Self-contained, aloof, unloved, and unloving, they make their campaign through life in movable tents that they strike as gaily as they pitch, and, beholding them thus evade the one touch of sorrow that is most inevitable and bitter to every sensitive soul, I have sometimes felt an envy of their fortune. ”

“ Loch Finne—less, as the whim of the fancy might have it, a loch than a noble river—runs south in a placid band; the Cowal hills rise high on the left, bare but of heather and gall; in front is the heart of Argile, green with the forest of Creag Dubh, where the stag bays in the gloaming. For miles behind the town and castle lies a plain, flat and rich, growing the most lush crops. The town itself, that one could almost throw a stone down on, looks like a child’s toy. ”

“ In this matter of a woman’s eyes—if I may quit the thread of my history—I am a trifle fastidious, and I make bold to say that the finest eyes in the world are those of the Highland girls of Argile—burgh or landward—the best bred and gentlest of them, I mean: There is in them a full and melting friendliness, a mixture to my sometimes notion of poetry and of calm—a memory, as I’ve thought before, of the deep misty glens and their sights and secrets. ”

“ As for me, I took, in a way of speaking, the woman to my heart She stood to me for all the griefs I had known in life, and was yet the representative, the figure of love—revealing an element of nature, a human passion so different from those tumults and hatreds we had been encountering. I had been thinking as I marched among the wilds of Lochaber and Badenoch that vengeance and victory and dominion by the strong hand were the main spurs to action, and now, on a sudden, I found that affection was stronger than them all. ”

“ If in summer weather the night crawls slowly on the Highlands, the winter brings a fast black rider indeed. His hoofs were drumming on the hills when first we saw sight of Dalness; he was over and beyond us when we reached the plain. The land of Lorn was black dark to the very roots of its trees, and the rivers and burns themselves got lost in the thick of it, and went through the night calling from hollow to hollow to hearten each other till the dawn.
Dalness lies in Glen Etive, at a gusset of hills on either side of which lie paths known to the drover and the adventurer. ”

“ The man with the want fell fast asleep in his chair, with his limbs in gawky disposition. Stewart’s bullet-head, with the line of the oval unbroken by ears, bobbed with affected eagerness to keep up with the fast English utterance and the foreign names of M’Iver, while all the time he was fingering some metal spoons and wondering if money was in them and if they could be safely got to Inneraora. Sonachan and the baron-bailie dipped their beaks in the jugs, and with lifted heads, as fowls slocken their thirst, they let the wine slip slowly down their throats, glucking in a gluttonous ecstasy. ”

“ M’Iver stooped and took the proffered hand. “Master Gordon,” he said, “I would sooner be liked and loved than only admired; that’s, perhaps, the secret of my life.”
It was not the fishing season, but the street thronged with fishers from Kenmore and Cairndhu and Kilcatrine and the bays of lower Cowal. Their tall figures jostled in the causeway, their white teeth gleamed in their friendliness, and they met this companion of numerous days and nights, this gentleman of good-humour and even temper, with cries as in a schoolboy’s playground. ”

“ When the fairy was at my cradle-side and gave my mother choice of my gifts, I wish she had chosen rowth of real friends. I could be doing with more about me of the quality I mention; better than horse and foot would they be, more trusty than the claymores of my clan. It might be the slogan ‘Cruachan’ whenever it wist, and Archibald of Argile would be more puissant than he of Homer’s story. People have envied me when they have heard me called the King of the Highlands—fools that did not know I was the poorest, weakest man of his time, surrounded by flatterers instead of friends. ”

“ You may be robust to-day in a smiling country and to-morrow in a twist of agony, coal-black, writhing on the couch, every fine interest in life blotted out by a yellow film upon the eyes. A vital gash with a claymore confers a bloodier but a more comely and natural end. Thus the Gael abhors the very roads that lead to a plague-struck dwelling. If plagues do not kill, they will mar—yes, even against the three charms of Island! and that, too, makes heavier their terror, for a man mutilated even by so little as the loss of a hand is an object of pity to every hale member of his clan. ”

“ The country is one threaded on every hand by eas and brook that drop down the mountain sides at almost every yard of the way. Nothing was to hear but the sound of running and falling waters, every brook with its own note, a tinkle of gold on a marble stair as I came to it, declining to a murmur of sweethearts in a bower as I put its banks behind me after wading or leaping; or a song sung in a clear spring morning by a girl among heather hills muffling behind me to the blackguard discourse of banditty waiting with poignards out upon a lonely highway. ”

“ I could see a man here and there between us and the lime-kiln we must pass on our way up Dunchuach. I confessed myself in as black a quandary as ever man experienced. As for Sir Donald—good old soul!—he was now, as always, unable to come to any conclusion except such as John Splendid helped him to.
We lay, as I say, in the plump, each of us under his bush, and the whole of us overhung a foot or two by a brow of land bound together by the spreading beech-roots. ”

“ Maam, Elrigmore and Elrigbeg, Kilblaan and Ben Bhuidhe—their steep sides hung with cattle, and below crowded the reeking homes of tacksman and cottar; the bums poured hurriedly to the flat beneath their borders of hazel and ash; to the south, the fresh water we call Dubh Loch, flapping with ducks and fringed with shelisters or water-flags and bulrush, and farther off the Cowal hills; to the north, the wood of Drimlee and the wild pass the red Macgregors sometimes took for a back-road to our cattle-folds in cloud of night and darkness. ”