In 1883 I was staying at Brechin Castle with Lord and Lady Dalhousie, and Lady Dalhousie proposed one morning that we should drive over to Cortachy Castle to lunch. Brechin Castle and Cortachy Castle are both in Forfarshire and fourteen miles apart. At that time Cortachy Castle was let to the late Earl of Dudley; the seventh Earl of Airlie to whom it belonged having lately died. There's a tragic atmosphere for the eighth Earl was killed at Diamond Hill in South Africa in 1900; one of the many men of rank and position and fortune and everything to live for who, in the early disastrous days of the Boer War, gave up everything to fight for the flag and for their country and sovereign.
The family name is Ogilvy, and the family name and title are both old, going back to at least 1491. They were Ambassadors and great officers of State, and the seventh Lord Ogilvy was made an Earl. Two acts of attainder are testimony to the active part they took in those troubled times, and to their capacity for holding fast to the losing side. They were in the Earl of Mar's rebellion in 1715, and fought for the Pretender at Culloden.
Besides all that, the Ogilvys carried on for generations a feud with the Campbells. On both sides there were burnings and harryings and much shedding of blood. There's no need to ask which of them was the more in fault. The standards of those days were not as the standards of ours; and there was a good deal less of that homage which vice now pays to virtue. So it happened that one day early in the seventeenth century the Ogilvys found themselves besieged in Cortachy Castle by the then Earl of Argyll or his lieutenant. The besiegers sent in a herald with a drummer-boy to demand the surrender of the castle. The Ogilvy people took the drummer-boy and hanged him over the battlements, his mother looking from the camp outside. As the fashion was in those days, she launched a curse, or more than one, at the Ogilvys, and a prophecy. She foretold that whenever, through all the ages to come, death or disaster should visit them they would first hear the beating of the drum by the drummer-boy.
Such is the story as it was told to me. It is a well-known tradition, and you are told also that her prophecy has been strictly fulfilled. The beating of the drum by the drummer-boy has been heard at least once in each generation during the centuries that ever since then have witnessed the varying fortunes of this family. That is a matter as to which I neither affirm nor deny. How could I? I was not there. But the narrative is a necessary preface to the account of the day when the events I set out to describe did actually occur.
At luncheon Lady Dudley, known then and still as the beautiful Lady Dudley, told us that when Lord Hardwicke, one of the guests staying with them, came down to breakfast that morning he asked her whether the drummer-boy legend applied to the tenants of the castle for the time being or only to the Ogilvys.
"Oh, only to the Ogilvys, of course."
"Then you won't mind my telling you that I heard the drummer-boy beating his drum last night."
And Lady Dudley added:
"I did not mind in the least. Whether I believe in the menace or not, I never heard that it had anything to do with anybody but the Ogilvys. If it could effect anybody in this case it would be Lord Hardwicke, who heard it, and not us who did not hear it."
With which we naturally agreed. We finished our lunch peacefully and pleasantly, and at three o'clock Lady Dalhousie and I drove back to Brechin Castle, where there were in all twelve guests. We dined as usual at a quarter past eight, and shortly before ten the ladies left the dining-room. Just after ten the door opened again. Lady Dalhousie sailed in, her face brilliant with excitement, but her manner serene as usual, and said to her husband: