CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE NEISH'S HEAD.
It fell about the Martimas time,
When winds blow snell and cauld.
That Adam o' Gordon said to his men,
Where will we get a hauld?
See ye not yon fair castle
Stands on yon lily lea?
The laird and I hae a deadly feud,
And the lady I fain would see.
Adam o' Gordon.
For ages, a feud had existed between the MacNabs and MacNeishes, two tribes of considerable strength and influence, who, without having any marked limits to their territories, possessed that wild and mountainous district which lies around Lochearn.
The former of these clans was a bravich of the Siol Alpin, and took its name (i.e., the sons of the abbot) from the ancient head of the Kuldee Abbey of Glendochart; and, during the reign of James IV., they had successfully carried fire and sword into the land of their enemies, who possessed the district then known as the Neishes' Country, lying between Comrie and Lochearn, comprising the Pass of Strathearn, Dundurn, the Hill of St. Fillan, Glentiarkin, and part of Glenartney. Embittered by old traditionary wrongs, transmitted orally by sire to son, from age to age, the rancour of these two tribes was without a parallel, even in the annals of ancient Celtic ferocity and lust of vengeance; and fired by the memory of a thousand real or imaginary acts of aggression the boys of each generation, while sitting on their fathers' knees, longed to be men, that they might bend the bow or bear the tuagh and claymore against their hereditary enemies.
On one occasion, the MacNeishes had carried off the holy bell of St. Fillan, a relic of remote antiquity, which in those days stood on a tombstone in the burial-ground of the saint's church, and was venerated by all; but it was miraculously restored; for this bell, like the old bells of Soissons, in Burgundy, and of St. Fillan's, in Meath, had the strange power of extricating itself from the hands of the spoilers, and came back through the air to Strathfillan, ringing merrily all the way; but the circumstance of its abstraction greatly increased the hostility between the rival tribes.
In this petty war, the chief of the MacNabs fell, being slain by an arrow from the bow of Finlay MacNeish, his enemy; but he left twelve sons and his widow, Aileen, a daughter of the clan Donald (the race of the Sea) to carry on the feud; and animated by hate and fury, this woman, stern by nature and savage in purpose, seemed to have no thought, no hope for, or idea of, the future, but as they might serve "to feed her revenge," which aimed at the destruction of the Neishes, root and branch, and the ultimate capture of their territory.
By her instigation, gathering all their fighting-men for one decisive effort for the supremacy of the district, her sons marched from Kennil House, and the two clans met in battle with nearly a thousand swordsmen on each side, in a wild and pastoral vale, named Glenboultachan, between two high and solitary mountains on the northern shore of Lochearn. Each was led by its chief, and they rushed at once down the green slope to mingle in close and mortal strife, with wild yells, bitter epithets and invectives, while the war-cries rang and the pipers blew, as additional incentives to slaughter and enthusiasm. Plying their sharp broadswords or long poleaxes with both hands, for greater freedom in the work of death, they tossed targets and plaids, breastplates and lurichs of steel, aside; and so that work, ever so rapid and terrible in a Highland battle, went fearfully on.
This battle took place on St. Fillan's Day, 1522, and the MacNabs bore with them the crook of the saint to ensure victory. It was borne by the MacIndoirs, who were the hereditary standard-bearers of MacNab, and had been custodiers of the crook ever since the death of St. Fillan, in 649, an office in which they were confirmed by a royal charter of King James II., in 1437. It is of solid silver, twelve inches long, elaborately carved, and having on one side a precious stone; on the other, the effigy of our Saviour, and was the same relic which, with the saint's arm-bone, Robert the Bruce had with him at the field of Bannockburn.[*]
[*] In 1818 the last of the MacIndoirs, a Highland emigrant, took this valuable relic with him to America, and it is now preserved, with the letters and charters of James II., in the township of MacNab, in Canada.
The morning sun, when pouring his light between the parted clouds athwart that gloomy mountain gorge, lighted up a terrible and bewildering scene, which Aileen MacNab, from the summit of a rocky peak, surveyed in gloomy joy, with her grey, dishevelled hair hanging over her shoulders, as she knelt on ashes strewn crosswise on the heather; and there, with a crucifix before her, and a rosary on her wrist, she implored God and St. Fillan to grant her children and her tribe a victory; and then she left her orisons, to shoot a shaft from her dead husband's bow, among the press of combatants that fought like a herd of tigers in the glen beneath her. Then she would again prostrate herself upon the ashes and before her cross, which was made of the aspen—for of that wood, saith old tradition, the true cross was made; hence the tree is accursed, and its leaves shall never rest.