Legends of the Black Watch; or, Forty-second Highlanders

by James Grant

Still my ancestor felt far from easy; but he forgot it before night, when a heavy gale came on, and the birlinns were scattered on the waters of the darkening deep like a flock of gulls; and it was in vain that he fired his pateraroes as signals to keep together.

The storm increased, and while some of the little fleet narrowly escaped being sucked (like the Danish prince of old) into the roaring whirlpool of Coirvreckan, many were blown to the Isle of Colonsay and others to the Sound of Jura. Many days—all days of storm with nights of pitchy blackness—followed, and on the first Thursday of the next week the little fleet of birlinns made the low green shores and sandy inlets of Islay, and saw the rising sun gild the woods and hills that rise upon its eastern coast. Still the stormy wind ploughed up the sea; the sun was enveloped in watery clouds, and the tempest-tossed Clan Gillian gladly steered their vessels (oh, fatality!) into the salt Loch of Groynard, a shallow bay on the north-west of the isle, where, with a shout of triumph, they ran the keels into the sand and leaped ashore with brandished swords, and formed their ranks, all barelegged, in the water.

But long ere this the crian tarigh, or cross of fire, had blazed upon the hills of Islay!

Under their young chief, Sir James, the whole Clan Donald, many of whom had been trained to service in the Irish wars, were drawn up in array of battle at the head of Loch Groynard; and there, with all their weapons glittering from the purple heather, they hovered like a cloud of battle. As the hostile bands drew near, some gentlemen of the Clan Donald, to prevent the effusion of Christian blood, prevailed upon Sir James to promise that he would resign one half of Islay to Maclean during his life, provided he would acknowledge that he held it for personal service to the Clan Donald, in the same manner as our forefathers had held the Rhinns of Islay.

But, rendered furious on finding that he had doubly transgressed the wizard warnings he received, Sir Lauchlan laughed the proposition to scorn. Then the young chief offered to submit the matter in dispute to any impartial umpires Duairt might choose, with the proviso that, if they should disagree, his Majesty the King should be their arbiter.

But my ancestor drew off his glove, and, taking a handful of water from a fountain that gurgled from a rock near him, exclaimed—

"May this water prove my poison, if I will have any arbiter but my sword, or any terms but an absolute surrender of the whole island!"

Then my grand-uncle Lauchlan Barroch uttered a cry of terror—for Duairt in his anger had forgotten the prediction, and drank of "the well at the head of Loch Groynard, where one Maclean was to fall"—and there, in ten minutes after, he was slain by a MacDonald, who by a single blow of a claymore swept his head off his shoulders.

Long and bloody was the battle that ensued when the MacDonalds rushed down the hill to close with the Clan Gillian, who were routed, leaving eighty duinewassals and two hundred soldiers, with their chief, dead upon the field. Ronald Maclean of the Drums—a little tower upon the peninsula of Loch Suinard—was shot by an arrow, and not one who left Duairt with "a fasting stomach," escaped;—why, God alone knows; for though my grand-uncle Lauchlan Barroch retreated with a remnant of our people to the birlinns, he was mortally wounded by a musket-shot. Of the Clan Donald, only thirty men were killed and sixty wounded. Among the latter was their young chief—afterwards a general of the Scots Brigade in Holland—who was found on the field with an arrow in his breast.

I have heard my mother say that all that night the watchman on the keep of Duairt heard cries and moans coming from the seaward, though the castle was more than fifty miles distant from Groynard; for it seemed as if the spirits of the air brought the sounds of battle on their wings from the fatal shore of Islay. Late that night, the hoofs of a galloping horse were heard reverberating in the glen and ringing on the roadway that led to Duairt; and soon a horse and rider were seen in the moonlight approaching rapidly, the hoofs of the steed striking fire from the flinty path.