Laura Everingham; or, The Highlanders of Glen Ora

by James Grant

A few ducks and hens, which had been wandering and scraping among the ruins of the cottages, were now collected and carried off by the constables, lest they might afford a day's food to the homeless, who were threatened with fresh vengeance by those jacks-in-office, if found in the glen to-morrow. Mr. Snaggs, who always spoke blandly, quoted Scripture and Blair on the folly of resistance; the beauty of submission to the will of God, and more especially of the new proprietor, for 'go they must—a ship was coming round to Loch Ora with sheep; and on the morrow there would arrive several hampers of a new species of game with which Sir Horace meant to stock the glen. Go then, my dear friends,' continued Mr. Snaggs, with a gloating eye at Minnie, who was kneeling over some sick children; 'go, and the Lord will provide for you in Canada—"for," as the divine Blair says, "neither obscurity of station, nor imperfection of knowledge sink below his regard those who obey and worship him."'

With this trite quotation, the elder and the factor whipped up his pony, and departed with a couple of fat ducks dangling at its saddle-bow.

Next morning, the keepers arrived with their hampers of game on a cart, and as they entered the glen by the lower pass, the original inhabitants retired by the upper, (bearing their dead, their dying, the sick, aged, and little ones, slung in plaids over the shoulders of the stoutest men,) towards the only shelter that remained to them—and assuredly the last which the Gael would think of adopting—the old ruined chapel of St. Colme upon the sea-beaten rocks of the western coast, for, as no Highland landlord will allow the evicted tenants of another to tarry within his bounds, the graveyards alone are now the neutral ground. There among the tombs they formed a new bivouac above the long rank grass that wrapped their fathers' dust. Close by were the moss-covered and lichen-spotted ruins of the old chapel, where the owl and the bat had their nests, and where the sombre ivy grew in luxuriance—a place of many solemn memories and many legendary terrors.

Location of every kind was refused by the adjacent proprietors; so with a vast tract of wild and rugged mountains and pathless hunting forests around them, our people were compelled to herd like cattle within the circular wall of the burying-ground; for most of the modern tyrants of the North share alike the love of game, the lust of gold, and a horror of the Celtic race.

It was on the fourth day that the widow of the Ca-Dearg (whose head had been fractured by the blow of a baton) died; and a cry for vengeance against her murderers went up to heaven from the denizens of that uncouth bivouac, as they committed her body to the earth; and it was fortunate that all the rifles and weapons of the people had been seized; for in Callum's breast and mine, there swelled up such a glow of fury, that we would assuredly have committed some fierce and retributive act, at which all Britain would have been startled.

'Are we slaves?' exclaimed Callum, furiously; 'I speak in English, Mac Innon; for, thank heaven, the Gaelic is the only language in the world that has no word expressive of slavery.'

'A bootless boast,' said I, gloomily; 'and what matters it, when we may be murdered with impunity?'

'Evil has come upon us like snow upon the mountains, unsought and unsent for,' said he, as we closed the grave of the soldier's widow; 'poor old woman! Her blood has been shed by a staff that bore the royal crown and cypher—and for that crown her three brave sons are fighting in the East. A chial! a Highland soldier, or a Highland soldier's mother, are of less value than a grouse or plover—a sheep or a cow; for they cannot be shot for pleasure like the former, nor fattened to feed the southern market like the latter; and it is for a Government that treats us thus our soldiers fight and die! Is samhach an obair dol a dholaidh!'

'Alas, yes—silent is the progress of ruin!' I replied, repeating the proverb; 'but had our glen been in Tipperary, at what premium would the lives of Snaggs and Sir Horace been insured?'

'Sir Horace has driven us forth, that our glen may be peopled by wild animals; but if fire will burn, by the five wounds of God, and by the Black Stone of Scone, he will make little of that!' swore Callum, in a hoarse Gaelic whisper.