"How came that to pass?" I asked with surprise; for the impressive manner of these Celts was strange and new to me.
"'Tis a story as well as any other, and I care not if I tell you, gentlemen," said the old captain of grenadiers. "Dunacha, throw some more sticks on the fire—Angus, pass round the black-jack, my son, while I tell of the doleful battle of Groynard. The presence of the Lord be about us, but that was a black day, and a dreary one for the house of Duairt and the Clan Gillian to boot!"
After this preamble and collecting his thoughts a little, the captain commenced the following strange story:—
History will tell you, gentlemen, that in the early part of the reign of his Majesty James VI. there arose a deadly feud between my people, the Clan Gillian in Mull, and the Clan Donald of Islay, concerning the claim which, from times beyond the memory of man, we had, or believed we had ('tis all one in the Highlands) to the Rhinns of Islay. For many a year our people and the Macdonalds invaded, harried, hacked, hewed, and shot each other; the axe and bow, the pistol and claymore were never relinquished for one entire week, but we were never nearer our end, for I must admit that our antagonists were a brave tribe, though in boyhood—such is the absurdity of a transmitted feud—I was taught to hate them more than death. I have been told that there was not a man of either of the hostile tribes but had lost his nearest and dearest kinsmen in that ungodly contest.
But now a crisis was coming.
My worthy ancestor, Sir Lauchlan Maclean of Duairt, was a soldier of high renown and bravery—one whose skill in war was acknowledged by all who saw him lead the Clan Gillian to victory at the great battle of Benrinnes, where twelve thousand Scottish Protestants measured swords with Lord Huntly's Catholics on the banks of the Livat, and there decided their religious differences like pretty men. Well, Sir Lauchlan, through the great favour in which he was held at court, obtained from the King's own hand at Holyrood a charter or warrant empowering him to take possession not only of those devilish Rhinns, but of the whole island of Islay—the patrimony and home of the Lords of the Isles—what think you of that, sirs? All Islay with Eilan-na-Corlle, or the Island of Council, the great castle in Loch Finlaggan, the Rock of the Silver Rent, the Rock of the Rent-in-Kind, with everything that flew over Islay, walked on its hills, or swam in its lakes, to him and his heirs for ever, heritably and irredeemably, until the day of doom.
This seemed a severe stroke of fortune to the poor Clan Donald, the more so as their chief, Angus of Kintyre, was aged and frail, and had not drawn a sword since last he fought our people in his seventieth year, and now he was eighty. His son, Sir James, was as yet unknown as a soldier, while Sir Lauchlan was in the noon of his strength and manhood—second to none that stepped on heather or ever wore the tartan: hence, full of hope and confident of success, he rejected with scorn the offers of mediation made by neighbouring chiefs; for old Angus had many friends, and my forefathers' claims were, to say the least of them, rather unjust. Sir Lauchlan summoned all the clan, his friends and kinsmen, to meet him in arms and with their galleys on a certain day to sail for Islay, when he hoped to crush the Clan Donald for ever in one decisive battle.
On the evening before the muster, mounted and alone he rode from Duairt to consult a witch who dwelt in an uncouth den known among us as "the cave of the Grey Woman." It was not without some misgivings that my ancestor paid this visit; but the advice and auguries of this woman, Aileen Glas, had never failed our race in times of war and peril.
As he drew near her dwelling, the night was closing in; the wind shook the boughs of the forest, and as he looked back, they resembled the long green waves of a sea of foliage rolling up the narrow glen. The "gloaming" darkened fast, and the silent dew distilled from the drooping leaves; the golden cups of the broom and the calices of the heather-bells were shrinking with many a summer fly and honey-bee concealed in their petals, for night was descending on the stormy shores and boisterous hills of Mull—boisterous indeed, for there the hollow winds rave and howl from peak to peak, and wreath up the mist into many a strange and many a fearful shape, till the ghosts of Ossian seem again to tower above Benmore and Bentaluidh.
Sir Lauchlan rode rapidly up the narrowing glen, till he found the cave of the Grey Woman before him. It yawned dark, lofty, and profound; so, dismounting, he tied his horse to a tree, and with his target and claymore advanced boldly, but with no small trouble, as the darkness was now intense, and the ascent to the cavern was rocky and difficult. Above his head rose its capacious arch, fringed by matted ivy and the light waving mountain ash that covered all the upper rocks, the splintered peaks of which shot up against the starless sky in abrupt and jagged outline. Clambering up, he entered with a stately step, though his heart beat fast with anxiety; before him lay a dark abyss of blackness and vacancy, opening into the bowels of the mountain; and though lightly shod in cuarans of soft deer hide, he could hear his footsteps echoing afar off.