And there he lay on his back on the cold stones with which his head had come into fearful contact. On his back he was, still as death, to all appearance dead. With half-open eyes and dilated pupils, and pulseless. His injuries to the skull were terrible. Two medical men besides myself despaired of his life. But above him, a few steps up the stairs, and lying across them half asleep and unhurt, lay the doer of the deed. Oh! what a sermon against the insinuating horribleness of intoxicating drink did the whole scene present!
The Morning of the Games.
It is going to be a beautiful day, that is evident. White fleecy clouds are constantly driving over the sun on the wings of a south-east wind.
Bands of music have been coming from every direction all the morning. They bring volunteers, and they bring their clansmen and the heroes who will soon take part in the coming struggle.
Now Highland gatherings and games, such as I am describing, are very ancient institutions indeed in Scotland I have no reference book near me from which to discover how old they are. But in “the ’45” last century, as most of my readers are probably aware, a great gathering of the clans took place among the Highland hills, presumably to celebrate games, but in reality to draw the claymore of revolt and to fight for Royal Charlie. They will know also how sadly this rebellion ended on the blood-red field of Culloden Moor.
During the summer and autumn seasons nearly every country district in the north has its great Highland gathering; but the two chief ones are Braemar and Inverness. The latter is called the northern meeting, and has a park retained all the year round for it. At Braemar, the Queen and Royal family hardly ever fail to put in an appearance.
The clans, arrayed in all the pomp and panoply of their war-dress, in “the garb of old Gaul,” each wearing its own tartan, each headed by its own chieftain, come from almost every part of the north-eastern Highlands to Braemar with banners floating and bagpipes playing, a spirit-stirring sight to see.
The ground on which the games take place is entirely encircled by a rope fence, and near are the white tents of the officers in charge, the various refreshment-rooms, and the grand stand itself. The whole scene is enlivening in the extreme; the dense crowd of well-dressed people around the ropes, the stand filled tier on tier with royalty, youth, and beauty, the white canvas, the gaily-fluttering flags, the mixture of tartans, the picturesque dresses, the green grass, the cloud-like trees, and last, but not least, the wild and rugged mountains themselves—the effect of the whole is charming, and would need the pen of a Walter Scott to do justice to it.
But to return to the games about to begin before me. Crowds are already beginning to assemble and surround the ropes, and independent of the grand stand, there are on this ground several round green hills, which give lounging-room to hundreds, who thus, reclining at their ease, can view the sports going on beneath them.
I am lying at full length on the top of my caravan, a most delightful position, from which I can see everything. Far down the field a brass band is discoursing a fantasia on old Scottish airs. But the effect is somewhat marred, for this reason—on the grass behind the grand stand, with truly Scottish independence of feeling, half-a-dozen pipers are strutting about in full Highland dress, and with gay ribbons fluttering from their chanters, while their independence is more especially displayed in the fact that every piper is playing the tune that pleases himself best, so that upon the whole it must be confessed that at present the music is of a somewhat mixed character.