It was a fine fat land this of ours, mile upon mile thick with herds, rolling in the grassy season like the seas, growing such lush crops as the remoter Highlands never dreamt of. Not a foot of good soil but had its ploughing, or at least gave food to some useful animal, and yet so rocky the hills between us and lower Lochow, so tremendous steep and inaccessible the peaks and corries north of Ben Bhuidhe, that they were relegated to the chase. There had the stag his lodging and the huntsman a home almost perpetual. It was cosy, indeed, to see at evening the peat-smoke from well-governed and comfortable hearths lingering on the quiet air, to go where you would and find bairns toddling on the braes or singing women bent to the peat-creel and the reaping-hook.
In that autumn I think nature gave us her biggest cup brimmingly, and my father, as he watched his servants binding corn head high, said he had never seen the like before. In the hazel-woods the nuts bent the branches, so thick were they, so succulent; the hip and the haw, the blaeberry and the rowan, swelled grossly in a constant sun; the orchards of the richer folks were in a revelry of fruit Somehow the winter grudged, as it were, to come. For ordinary, October sees the trees that beard Dun-chuach and hang for miles on the side of Creag Dubh searing and falling below the frost; this season the cold stayed aloof long, and friendly winds roved from the west and south. The forests gleamed in a golden fire that only cooled to darkness when the firs, my proud tall friends, held up their tasselled heads in unquenching green. Birds swarmed in the heather, and the sides of the bare hills moved constantly with deer. Never a stream in all real Argile but boiled with fish; you came down to Eas-a-chleidh on the Aora with a creel and dipped it into the linn to bring out salmon rolling with fat.
All this I dwell on for a sensible purpose, though it may seem to be but an old fellow’s boasting and a childish vanity about my own calf-country. ’Tis the picture I would paint—a land laughing and content, well governed by Gillesbeg, though Gruamach he might be by name and by nature. Fourpence a-day was a labourer’s wage, but what need had one of even fourpence, with his hut free and the food piling richly at his very door?
CHAPTER VI.—MY LADY OF MOODS.
On the 27th of July in this same year 1644 we saw his lordship and his clan march from Inneraora to the dreary north. By all accounts (brought in to the Marquis by foot-runners from the frontier of Lorn), the Irishry of Colkitto numbered no more than 1200, badly armed with old matchlocks and hampered by two or three dozen camp-women bearing the bairns of this dirty regiment at their breasts. Add to this as many Highlanders under Montrose and his cousin Para Dubh of Inchbrackie, and there was but a force of 3500 men for the good government of Argile to face. But what were they? If the Irish were poorly set up in weapons the Gaels were worse. On the spring before, Gillesbeg had harried Athole, and was cunning enough to leave its armouries as bare as the fields he burned, so now its clans had but home-made claymores, bows, and arrows, Lochaber tuaghs and cudgels, with no heavy pieces. The cavalry of this unholy gang was but three garrons, string and bone. Worse than their ill-arming, as any soldier of experience will allow, were the jealousies between the two bodies of the scratched-up army. Did ever one see a Gael that nestled to an Irishman? Here’s one who will swear it impossible, though it is said the blood is the same in both races, and we nowadays read the same Gaelic Bible. Colkitto MacDonald was Gael by birth and young breeding, but Erinach by career, and repugnant to the most malignant of the west clans before they got to learn, as they did later, his quality as a leader. He bore down on Athole, he and his towsy rabble, hoping to get the clans there to join him greedily for the sake of the old feud against MacCailein Mor, but the Stewarts would have nothing to say to him, and blows were not far off when Montrose and his cousin Black Pate came on the scene with his king’s licence.
To meet this array now playing havoc on the edge of Campbell country, rumour said two armies were moving from the north and east: if Argile knew of them he kept his own counsel on the point, but he gave colour to the tale by moving from Inneraora with no more than 2000 foot and a troop of horse. These regimentals had mustered three days previously, camping on the usual camping-ground at the Maltland, where I spent the last day and night with them. They were, for the main part, the Campbells of the shire: of them alone the chief could muster 5000 half-merkland men at a first levy, all capable swordsmen, well drilled and disciplined soldadoes, who had, in addition to the usual schooling in arms of every Gael, been taught many of the niceties of new-fashioned war, countermarch, wheeling, and pike-drill. To hear the orders, “Pouldron to pouldron; keep your files; and middlemen come forth!” was like an echo from my old days in Germanie. These manoeuvres they were instructed in by hired veterans of the Munro and Mackay battalions who fought with Adolphus. Four or five companies of Lowland soldiers from Dunbarton and Stirling eked out the strength; much was expected from the latter, for they were, unlike our clansmen, never off the parade-ground, and were in receipt of pay for their militant service; but as events proved, they were MacCailein’s poor reed.
I spent, as I have said, a day and a night in the camp between Aora river and the deep wood of Tarradubh. The plain hummed with our little army, where now are but the nettle and the ivied tower, and the yellow bee booming through the solitude; morning and night the shrill of the piob-mhor rang cheerily to the ear of Dun-chuach; the sharp call of the chieftains and sergeants, the tramp of the brogued feet in their simple evolutions, the clatter of arms, the contention and the laughing, the song, the reprimand, the challenge, the jest—all these were pleasant to me.
One morning I got up from a bed of gall or bog-myrtle I shared with John Splendid after a late game of chess, and fared out on a little eminence looking over the scene. Not a soldier stirred in his plaid; the army was drugged by the heavy fir-winds from the forest behind. The light of the morning flowed up wider and whiter from the Cowal hills, the birds woke to a rain of twittering prayer among the bushes ere ever a man stirred more than from side to side to change his dream. It was the most melancholy hour I ever experienced, and I have seen fields in the wan morning before many a throng and bloody day. I felt “fey,” as we say at home—a premonition that here was no conquering force, a sorrow for the glens raped of their manhood, and hearths to be desolate. By-and-by the camp moved into life, Dun-barton’s drums beat the reveille, the pipers arose, doffed their bonnets to the sun, and played a rouse; my gloom passed like a mist from the mountains.
They went north by the Aora passes into the country of Bredalbane, and my story need not follow them beyond.
Inneraora burghers went back to their commercial affairs, and I went to Glen Shira to spend calm days on the river and the hill. My father seemed to age perceptibly, reflecting on his companion gone, and he clung to me like the crotal to the stone. Then it was (I think) that some of the sobriety of life first came to me, a more often cogitation and balancing of affairs. I began to see some of the tanglement of nature, and appreciate the solemn mystery of our travel across this vexed and care-warped world. Before, I was full of the wine of youth, giving doubt of nothing a lodgment in my mind, acting ever on the impulse, sucking the lemon, seeds and all, and finding it