The barbarous cruelties exercised by a neighbouring Duchess and a canting Marquis upon the poor, had so greatly exasperated the Mac Innons, that at fairs and elsewhere, they had been in the habit of openly threatening an armed resistance to any attempt to evict them from the glen, where they—the aboriginal race—had dwelt for ages before Laird or Peer or feudal parchments had a name in the land. Callum's character and mine were well known to be reckless, bold, and even desperate; thus Messieurs Snaggs and Mac Fee took their measures wisely, and accordingly selected the time for attack, when the whole of the male population were at the grave of the Mac Innons.
The rural police of the adjacent districts were secretly ordered to hold tryst in a wood about six miles distant. There they arrived about midnight, and received a harangue from Sheriff Mac Fee on the majesty of the law; there an oath was administered to them, and there Mr. Snaggs quoted Blair, and gave them that which proved much more acceptable—a jorum of whisky and ale. On mustering their forces, these worthy officials found that, including themselves, the Procurator Fiscal and a couple of clerks, with the police, they had only thirty men, but as well armed with hatchets, crow-bars, levers and pickaxes, as if they were about to invest the Redan. Doubtful still of success, application had been made to the Commandant at Fort William for a Serjeant's party of twelve men from the Irish Fusileers, with twenty rounds of ball-cartridge each, as there was a fear that the same rifles which had done such wonders at the recent Gathering, might cover the legal person of the great moralist. Thus the whole possé marched in array of battle into the glen, where, to the terror and dismay of the women, they appeared about half an hour after the last of the funeral procession had disappeared over the summit of the hill.
An immediate and indiscriminate attack was made upon the cottages and on the old jointure-house; and amid the shrieks, outcries, tears and lamentations of the women, the usual work of eviction and destruction progressed with as much spirit as if Huske, Hawley, Cumberland and Co., had left the infernal shades to visit upper air. Delay and mercy were craved alike in vain by these poor people. In vain did more than one young mother hold her new-born babe aloft; in vain did the daughters of those who fought with Moore and Wellington, implore pity, on bended knees, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, as they clung about the knees of Snaggs and Mac Fee; but each was "sullen as Ajax," and bent on upholding the dignity of the law and of wealth. The inmates were summoned to come forth, and if they refused, were roughly dragged out, some with babes at their breasts, and batoned with such brutality, that the Irish Fusileers, whose hearts revolted at the police, and who in their own land had seen too much of similar work, used the butts of their muskets against the limbs of the law, and thus offered some protection to our women.
Every article of furniture was flung out; box-beds were torn down; chairs, tables, kail-pots, and kettles, spinning-wheels, caups, quaighs and luggies, clothing and delft, were thrown on the sward, and in many instances destroyed in a spirit of sheer recklessness. Every little object which time, tenderness, or association made valuable in the humble eyes of the cottagers was demolished or carried off. The domestic shrine was rifled; its lares desecrated—its household gods destroyed. Everything eatable or drinkable was at once appropriated by the plunderers. The thatch was torn down; crow-bars and levers were applied to the huge boulder-stones, which in many instances formed the corners of the poor huts, and by one or two wrenches, the whole fabric was tumbled in a heap of ruin. The cabers and couples were cut through by saws or axes; and thus every hut, house, barn, stable, and hen-roost were destroyed. The old jointure-house was gutted of its furniture, every vestige of which was piled on carts with the miserable chattels of the people, and driven off towards the nearest market-town; not an article of my property escaped, save a few old seals and rings, which, with my father's sword, old Mhari and Minnie concealed about their persons. Then the mansion was unroofed; the doors hewn down; the windows dashed out; and the floors torn up and burned, to render it totally uninhabitable. Thus from house to house, from cot to cot, and from barn to byre, went these ministers of destruction; the sick were dragged from their beds; the aged mother of Alisdair Mac Gouran, a woman in her ninetieth year, and whose grey head had not left her pillow for three years, was borne out and flung on the damp hill side. Women scarcely recovered from the pains of maternity—and others on the point of becoming mothers, were alike brought forth, and those who resisted, or vainly attempted to save some prized article, though of little value, were beaten with batons until forced to relinquish their hold.
Seated by her fire, Widow Gillian (the relict of a soldier whose patronymic was Ca-Dearg), and who was the mother of three sons in our Highland Division, boldly refused to come forth, or to yield up her husband's silver medals, of which they endeavoured to deprive her. Rendered desperate and frantic, this woman, though aged, seemed stout and active; she clung, shrieking, to the posts of her bed; but the police tore her away. Then she caught wildly at the jambs of a door; but her fingers were soon bruised or broken by batons, and one constable tired of her screaming, dealt her a blow which fractured her skull, and covered her long grey hair with blood. Then she became insensible. Flora, her daughter, one of the prettiest girls in the glen, when seeking to defend her, received a kick in the breast, from which she never recovered.
Fire was now applied to all the remaining cottages, and their roofs of thatch, turf, and heather, with their old dry rafters of resinous mountain pine, burned bravely. The work of destruction was nearly complete.
Then the sheriff mounted his horse; Snaggs bestrode his trotting garron; the carts laden with such furniture as had not been burned, broken, or deemed worthless, were put in motion; the few sheep and cattle of the people were collected, and accompanied by the constables who were laden with everything they could lay hands upon, and surrounded by the pitying soldiers with their bayonets fixed, Messrs. Fungus Mac Fee, Ephraim Snaggs, and the Fiscal, headed the plunder of the glen, and departed, leaving that once beautiful little mountain-village a heap of smoking ruins—every hut levelled flat, or sinking amid smoke, flame, and dust—the jointure-house reduced to four bare walls; while the women and their little ones, bathed in tears, or covered with cuts, blood, and bruises, remained in a stupor of silent astonishment and horror at this irreparable destruction, which divested them of shelter, of food, furniture, clothing, and everything, and just when the rain-charged clouds of night were descending on the hills.
Let not the English reader deem this atrocious scene overdrawn. In Sutherland, Inverness, and Ross, in Moidart and the Isles, such have been enacted with even greater brutality since the beginning of this century. Yet the brave, hardy, frugal and patient Highlanders have endured it without complaint. In form of law, murders have been committed in open day—but then it was merely the manslaughter of a few Highland paupers, to enforce the dignity of ducal wealth and the majesty of feudal law.
'Thus it is,' says the brave old General Stewart, 'that the love of speculating in the brute creation, has invaded these mountains, into which no foreign enemy could ever penetrate, and has expelled a brave people whom no invader could ever subdue. It has converted whole glens and districts, once the abode of a bold, vigorous, and independent race of men, into scenes of desolation.'