Did kill and eat when they could seize.”
Dugald Graham’s History of the Rebellion.
THE FORTY-FIVE.
With the solitary exception mentioned in the previous chapter, the whole people of Cromarty were loyal to the house of Hanover. They were all sound Protestants to the utmost of their ability, and never failed doing justice in a bumper to the “best in Christendom” but when the liquor was bad. It was therefore with no feelings of complacency, that, in the autumn of 1745, they learned that the Pretender, after landing in the western Highlands, had set off with a gathering of Gaelic Roman Catholics to take London from the King. They affirmed, however, that the redcoats were too numerous, and London too strong, to leave the enterprise a chance of success; and it was not until Cope had been set a-scampering, and the bayonets of England proved insufficient to defend it on the Scottish side, that they began to pity George Rex (poor man), and to talk about the downfall of the Kirk. Their attention, however, was called off from all such minor matters to a circumstance connected with the outbreaking which directly affected themselves. Parties of wild Highlanders, taking advantage of the defenceless state of the Lowlands, and the cause of the Pretender, went prowling about the country, robbing as the smith fought, “every man to his own hand;” and stories of their depredations began to pour into the town. They were doing great skaith, it was said, to victual and drink, spulzieing women of their yarn, and men of their shoes and bonnets; as for money, there was luckily very little in the country. Nor was it possible to conciliate them by any adaptation whatever of one’s politics to the Jacobite code. A man of Ferindonald, a genuine friend to the Stuart, had gone out to meet with them, and in the fulness of his heart, after perching himself on a hillock by the wayside, he continued to cry out, “You’re welcome! you’re welcome!” from their first appearance until they had come up to him. “Welcomes or na welcomes,” said a bareheaded, barefooted Highlander, as stooping down he seized him by the ankles; “welcomes or na welcomes, thoir dho do brougan.” (Give me your shoes.)
Every day brought a new story of the marauders;—a Navity tacksman, who had listened himself half crazy, and could speak or think of nothing else, was enough of himself to destroy the quiet of the whole parish. Some buried casks of meal under their barn floors, others chests of plaiding and yarn. The tacksman interred an immense girnal, containing five bolls of oatmeal, which escaped the rebels only to be devoured by the rats. So thoroughly had he prepared himself for the worst, that, when week after week went by, and still no Highlanders, he seemed actually disappointed. One morning, however, in the end of January 1746, he was called out to his cottage door to see something unusual on the hill of Eathie; a number of fairy-like figures seemed moving along the ridge, and then, as they descended in a dark compact body to the hollow beneath, there were seen to shoot out from them, at uncertain intervals, quick, sudden flashes, like lightnings from a cloud. “Och, och!” exclaimed the tacksman, who well knew what the apparition indicated, “the longest day that e’er came, even came at last.” And away he went to reside, until the return of quieter times, in a solitary cave of the hill.
NANNIE MILLER’S ONSLAUGHT.
The marauders entered the town about mid-day. They were armed every one after his own fashion, some with dirks and broadswords, some with pistols and fowling-pieces, and not a few with scythes, pikes, and Lochaber-axes. Some carried immense bunches of yarn, some webs of plaiding, some bundles of shirts and stockings. Most of the men of the place, who would readily enough have joined issue with them at the cudgel, but bore no marked affection to broadswords and Lochaber-axes, had conveyed themselves out of the way, leaving their wives to settle with them as they best might. They entered the better-looking houses by half-dozens, turned the furniture topsy-turvy, emptied chests and drawers, did wonderful execution on dried salmon and hung beef, and set ale-barrels abroach. One poor woman, in attempting to rescue a bundle of yarn, had her cheek laid open by a fellow who dashed the muzzle of his pistol into her face; another was thrown down and robbed of her shoes. There lived at this time one Nannie Miller, a matron of the place, who sold ale. She was a large-boned, amazon-looking woman, about six feet in height, of immense strength, and no ordinary share of courage. Two of the Highlanders entered her cottage, and with much good-nature (for they had had a long walk, she said) she set down before them a pint of her best ale and a basket of scones, with some dried fish. They ate and drank, and then rose to spulzie; but they were too few, as it proved, for the enterprise; for when one of them was engaged in ransacking a large meal-barrel, and the other in breaking open a chest, Nannie made a sudden onslaught, bundled the one fellow head-foremost into the barrel, and turning on his companion as he rushed in to the rescue, floored him with a single blow. The day was all her own in a twinkling; the Highlanders fled, one of them half-choked by the meal, the other more than half-throttled by Nannie; but glad, notwithstanding, to get off so well.
THE RETREAT.
In the middle of the spulzie a sloop of war hove in sight, and a boat was seen shooting out to meet her from under the rocks of the hill. Sail after sail was run out on her yards as soon as the boat touched her side, and she came careering up the Firth like an angry giant. The Highlanders gathered in the street, and, according to old Dunbar,
Fu’ loud in Ershe they begowt to clatter,