Glencoe

“ In all places, at all hours, whether he waked or slept, Glencoe was for ever before him. [240]
But, whatever apprehensions might disturb Breadalbane, whatever spectres might haunt Glenlyon, the Master of Stair had neither fear nor remorse. He was indeed mortified; but he was mortified only by the blunders of Hamilton and by the escape of so many of the damnable breed. "Do right, and fear nobody;" such is the language of his letters. "Can there be a more sacred duty than to rid the country of thieving? The only thing that I regret is that any got away." ”

“ About 1 m. beyond the head of the glen is Kingshouse, a relic of the old coaching days, when it was customary for tourists to drive from Ballachulish via Tyndrum to Loch Lomond. Now the Glencoe excursion is usually made from Oban—by rail to Achnacloich, steamer up Loch Etive, coach up Glen Etive and down Glencoe and steamer at Ballachulish to Oban. One mile to the west of the Glen lies the village of Ballachulish (pop. 1143) . It is celebrated for its slate quarries, which have been worked since 1760. The industry provides employment for 600 men and the annual output averages 30,000 tons. ”

“ Both Keppoch and Glencoe were named, but the personal rancour of Secretary Dalrymple decided the doom of the latter. The Secretary wrote thus:—"Argyle tells me that Glencoe hath not taken the oath, at which I rejoice. It is a great work of charity to be exact in rooting out that damnable set." The final instructions regarding Glencoe, which were issued on 16th January, 1692, are as follows:—
"William R.—As for M'Ian of Glencoe, and that tribe, if they can be well distinguished from the rest of the Highlanders, it will be proper for public justice to extirpate that set of thieves." ”

“ It was a long ride, and a hilly road, but not too long for the new hunter Glencoe, an animal with a tremendous reserve of force that had to be taken out of him somehow, an accumulated store of kicks and plunges which a clever rider could compound for in a good fast trot along the road, or a swinging gallop across the moorland. Bothwell and his horse were on excellent terms by the time they had gone three miles together, although the brute had insisted on going through Bodmin in a series of buck-jumps.
Life at Penmorval had been just a shade more sombre in its hue for the last week. ”

“ What a paradise will be my home, graced with a partner of such exquisite refinement! It will be a perfect fairy bower, buried among sweets and roses. Sophy shall live with us, and be the companion of all our enjoyments. Glencoe, too, shall no more be the solitary being that he now appears. He shall have a home with us. He shall have his study, where, when he pleases, he may shut himself up from the world, and bury himself in his own reflections. ”

“ From mother, maiden, child.
All's still!-save round yon mountain's head,
Where men of blood the snow-path tread,
Startling lest voices from the dead
A deed of hell proclaim.
Wo for thy clan, thou wild Glencoe!
Whose blood dyes deep the mountain snow
But deadlier bale, and deeper wo,
Glenorchy, on thy name.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ I felt a wonderful self-complacency at being on such excellent terms with a man whom I considered on a parallel with the sages of antiquity, and looked down with a sentiment of pity on the feebler intellects of my sisters, who could comprehend nothing of metaphysics. It is true, when I attempted to study them by myself, I was apt to get in a fog; but when Glencoe came to my aid, everything was soon as clear to me as day. My ear drank in the beauty of his words; my imagination was dazzled with the splendor of his illustrations. ”

“ I begged, therefore, to recommend him as a friend calculated to direct the studies of Miss Somerville; to lead her mind, by degrees, to the contemplation of abstract principles, and to produce habits of philosophical analysis; "which," added I, gently smiling, "are not often cultivated by young ladies." I ventured to hint, in addition, that he would find Mr. Glencoe a most valuable and interesting acquaintance for himself; one who would stimulate and evolve the powers of his mind; and who might open to him tracts of inquiry and speculation to which perhaps he had hitherto been a stranger. ”

“ He, however advised Glencoe to proceed instantly to Inverary, giving him at the same time a letter to [396] Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, sheriff of Argyleshire, begging him to receive Glencoe as “a lost sheep,” and to administer to him the necessary oaths. Hill also gave Glencoe a letter of protection, and an assurance that no proceedings should be instituted against him under the proclamation, till he should have an opportunity of laying his case before the king or the privy council. ”

“ Mary Avon knew very well who the friend was.
"I should be afraid, sir," said she, laughing, "to meddle with anything about Glencoe."
"Toots! toots!" said he; "ye have not enough confidence. I know twenty young men in Edinburgh and Glasgow who have painted every bit of Glencoe, from the bridge to the King's House inn, and not one of them able to come near ye. Mind, I'm looking forward to showing your pictures to Tom Galbraith; I'm thinking he'll stare!"
The Laird chuckled again.
"Oh, ay! he does not know what a formidable rival has come from the south ”

“ In fact, in the end of December Glencoe had gone to Fort William to take the oaths before Colonel Hill, but found that he must do so before the Sheriff of the shire at remote Inveraray. Various accidents of weather delayed him; the Sheriff also was not at Inveraray when Glencoe arrived, but administered the oaths on January 6. The document was taken to Edinburgh, where Lord Stair, Dalrymple’s father, and others caused it to be deleted. Glengarry was still unsworn, but Glengarry was too strong to be “rooted out” ”

“ He returned to Rome and lived there unharmed during the sickly season; thence he went to Florence, surveying with interest the glories of its art; and in fine he crossed the Alps by Mount Cenis to Geneva, composing on his way a poetical epistle to Montague, now Lord Halifax. The Alps do not seem to have much delighted his imagination. There are a few even still who look upon mountains as excrescences and deformities, and give to Glencoe only the homage of their unaffected fears, which is certainly better than the false raptures of others. ”

“ And he had always been on the unpopular side, always served the law not the people; he was merciless too, and reckless in making enemies; they who for two years had been working to spread the tale of Glencoe, found that to give some or any point to the general hate of the Master of Stair was as easy as putting a match to gunpowder; the mob shouted “Glencoe!”—as they would have shouted anything that voiced their long dislike; high and low, all Edinburgh, had combined on this pretext to pull the Dalrymple down.
The Earl stared at the mob a moment and his blue eyes darkened ”

“ Late as the season is, a few women are hay-making. What sunburnt, weather-beaten, wrinkled faces they have! Plump and buxom at eighteen, they are old women when they have reached twice that age.
As to Glencoe, what can I say of it that is not already recorded in the guide-books, and familiar to the reader of English history? The road is carried along the edge of Loch Leven, and is really romantic, with the rocks on one side, the winding glen in front, and the loch beneath. It is very narrow, and as we meet two four-horse cars returning with tourists we have scarce room to pass. ”

“ Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert with Breadalbane and Argyle, a plan for the destruction of the people of Glencoe. It was necessary to take the King's pleasure, not, indeed, as to the details of what was to be done, but as to the question whether Mac Ian and his people should or should not be treated as rebels out of the pale of the ordinary law. The Master of Stair found no difficulty in the royal closet. William had, in all probability, never heard the Glencoe men mentioned except as banditti. ”

“ To the north east of Glencoe, an arm of the sea runs up from the Sound of Mull called [Loch Leven] , which I now cross to describe the country of Mamore, inhabited by Camerons and belonging heritably to the Duke of Gordon, but a good part of it feued off to Locheil. The people all Protestants, but of the same kind with Appin and Glencoe. To the north east of Mamore lies Fort-William and a small Glen called Glennevis, above which stands the largest and the highest mountain in Scotland, called Ben Nevis. ”

“ Brice to Glencoe that afternoon with whatever papers or letters the Judge might wish to see. And since there was no convenient train in the evening, Colonel Carvel would feel honored if Mr. Brice would spend the night. The Colonel mentioned the train on which Mr. Brice was expected.
The Missouri side of the Mississippi is a very different country from the hot and treeless prairies of Illinois. As Stephen alighted at the little station at Glencoe and was driven away by Ned in the Colonel's buggy, he drew in deep breaths of the sweet air of the Meramec Valley. ”

“ Glencoe is a small station on the Missouri Pacific Railway, twenty-nine miles west of the city of St. Louis. An east bound train which carried both mail and passengers was boarded on the night of February 21, 1910, by two men, who climbed on the front end of what is known by railroad men as the blind baggage, next to the tender of the engine. These men were unobserved until the train had passed Glencoe station, when they climbed over the top of the tank to the engine and covered the engineer and fireman with drawn revolvers. ”

“ At any other time perhaps Glencoe and the regions round about it would be as well tenanted as any low-country strath, for it abounded on either hand with townships, with crofts that perched on brief plateaux, here and there with black bothy-houses such as are (they say) the common dwellings over all the Hebrid Isles. Yet, moving, not in the ultimate hollow of the valley, but in fighting fashion upon the upper levels, we were out of the way of molestation, and in any case it was a valley for the time deserted of men. ”

“ MacIan, the chief of the MacDonalds of Glencoe, was an old man, stately, venerable, sagacious. He now charged Breadalbane with having defrauded him of his share of the government money; the earl retorted that MacIan and his tribe had been persistent marauders over his Campbell clansmen’s lands round Glencoe, which was probably true enough, as there had been a feud of long standing between the clans. ”

“ Stewart's idea was that to-night we might cross Glencoe, dive into one of the passes that run between the mountains called the Big and Little Herdsman, or between the Little Herd and Ben Fhada, into the foot of the forest of Dalness, then by the corries through the Black Mount of Bredalbane to Glen-urchy. ”

“ Such was the awful massacre of Glencoe, an event which has left an indelible and execrable stain upon the memory of William of Orange. The records of Indian warfare can hardly afford a parallel instance of atrocity: and this deed, coupled with his deliberate treachery in the Darien scheme, whereby Scotland was for a time absolutely ruined, is sufficient to account for the little estimation in which the name of the "great Whig deliverer" is still regarded in the valleys of the North. ”

“ The sky was clear, not a cloud being visible as we resumed our walk down the glen, and in about three miles we reached the village of Glencoe. Here we heard blasting operations being carried on quite near our road, and presently we reached the edge of the loch, where there was a pier and a ferry. We now found that in directing us to Inverary our friends at the inn had taken it for granted that we wished to go the nearest way, which was across this ferry, and we were told there were others to cross before reaching Inverary. ”

“ At the village of Fortingall, on the north side of Loch Tay, are the shell of a yew conjectured to be 3000 years old and the remains of a Roman camp. Glenlyon House was the home of Campbell of Glenlyon, chief agent in the massacre of Glencoe. ”

“ At length, about the 25th of May, the gathering of the clans was complete, and Dundee held a review of his army in the plain of Macomer. There was the brave Glengarry with three hundred warriors in the flower of vigorous manhood; and following him closely was his brother with a hundred more. Next came Glencoe, huge-limbed, but strong and active, accompanied by another hundred claymores. Macdonald of Sleat headed a body of five hundred clansmen from the Isles of which he was the Lord. ”

“ Gilchrist, James, minister at Thurso, 72 and n. Glascoe, major Nicolas, 155 n, 208. Glasgow, fined by the rebels, 191 and n. —— regiment, 345 n, 350 and n, 351, 359 n; at the battle of Falkirk, 372 n, 411, 413. Glasterum. See Gordon. Glenbucket, garrisoned, 161. —— estate, 116. —— laird of. See Gordon, John. [Pg 465] Glencoe, 86. —— laird of. See Macdonald, Alexander. Glenelg, 80. Glengarry people are papists and notorious thieves, 88. —— laird of. See Macdonald. Glenkindy, laird of. See Leith. Glenlivat, 91, 92, 274. Glenmoriston, 89. —— lairds of. See Grant. ”

“ I have so sullied and tarnished a proud name that he could never bear it without reproach. 'Who is this Lord Glencore?' people would say. 'What is the strange story of his birth? Has any one yet got at the truth? Was the father the cruel tyrant, or the mother the worthless creature, we hear tell of? Is he even legitimate, and, if so, why does he walk apart from his equals, and live without recognition by his order?' This is the noble heritage I am to leave him,—this the proud position to which he is to succeed! And yet Upton says that the boy's rights are inalienable ”