Mary of Lorraine

by James Grant

Wedged together in a dense and yelling mass, the two clans were all mingled pellmell in wild mêlée, fighting man to man, scorning to seek quarter, and scorning to yield it. Heads were cloven through helmets of steel, bosoms pierced through lurichs of tempered rings, while hands and limbs were swept off as the sharp wind may sweep the withered reeds from a frozen brook in winter; and the long sword-blades, that flashed in the sun, seemed to whirl without ceasing, like a huge chevaux de frize, grinding all to death beneath them.

Conspicuous above all this fiery throng, like the Destroying Angel or the Spirit of Carnage, wearing three eagle's feathers in the cone of his helmet, and clad in a lurich of shining rings, which covered his whole bulky form from his neck to the edge of his kilt, towered the eldest son of Aileen, named Ian Mion, Mac an Abba (i.e., smooth John, the son of the abbot), an ironical sobriquet bestowed upon him in consequence of the roughness of his aspect and the coarse, grim, unyielding nature of his character. He bent all his energies to capture the Neishes' banner, which bore their crest, viz., a cupid with his bow in the dexter, and an arrow in the sinister hand, with the motto, Amicitiam trahit amor. The tall and bearded bearer was soon cloven down by Ian Mion, and the embroidered banner became the trophy of his prowess and daring.

On the other side, Finlay MacNeish, a chief of great age, but of wondrous strength and activity, fought with unparalleled bravery; but John MacNab and his eleven brothers bore all before them, and repeatedly hewed a bloody lane through the ranks of their foemen. At last their followers began to prevail; and in wild desperation and despair at the slaughter of his people, on beholding three of his sons perish by his side, and on finding the disgrace of defeat impending, the aged chief of the Neishes placed his back to a large rude granite block, which still marks the scene of this conflict, and, poising overhead his two-handed sword, stood like a lion at bay. His vast stature, his known strength and bravery, as he towered above the fray, with his white hair streaming in the wind (the clasps of his helmet having given way, he had lost it); the wild glare of his grey and haggard eyes; the blood streaming from his forehead, which had been wounded by an arrow, and from his long, uplifted sword, which (like the claymore of Alaster MacColl) had a remarkable accessory, in the shape of an iron ball, that slid along the back of the blade to give an additional weight to every cut,—all this combined, made the bravest of the MacNabs pause for a moment ere they encountered him; but after a dreadful struggle, in which he slew many of his assailants, the brave old man sank at last under a score of wounds inflicted by swords and daggers; and as his grey hairs mingled with the bloody heather, and were savagely trampled down, the triumphant yell of the MacNabs made the blue welkin ring and the mountains echo; while his people were swept from the field, and perished in scores as they fled, being hewed down on all sides by the swords and axes of the MacNabs, or pierced by their arrows; and the red lichens which spot the old grey stone in Glenboultachan are still believed by the peasantry to be the encrusted blood of the chief of the Neishes.

With MacCallum Glas, their bard, about twenty of the tribe escaped, and took refuge on a wooded islet at the eastern end of Lochearn, where, in wrath and sorrow, they could lurk and plan schemes of revenge, which the all-but total extinction of their name and number rendered futile; while the victorious MacNabs, after sweeping their whole country of cattle, and destroying all their farms, cottages, and dwellings, returned to hold high jubilee in Kennil House, the fortified residence of their chief, which stands upon a rocky isthmus, near the head of Loch Tay, and to inter their dead in the old burial-place of the abbot's children, Innis Bui—a greenswarded islet in the Dochart, where their graves are still shaded by a grove of those dark and solemn pines which were always planted by the Celts of old to mark where the tombs of their people lay; and there the impetuous Dochart, after rushing in foam over a long series of cascades, under the shadow of the giant Benlawers, ends its wild career in the Tay.

The slain of the enemy were stripped by the victors, and, by order of the remorseless Lady Aileen, were left as food for the wolf and raven. A few were interred by Alpin Maol (i.e. the Bald), an old monk of Inchaffray, who officiated as priest of the church of St. Fillan. He came to survey that terrible field at the close of eve; and of all the stately men who lay there on the blood-stained heather, gashed by wounds, and with their glazing eyes upturned to heaven, or lying half immersed in a tributary of Lochearn, towards which, many had crawled in their thirst and suffering, he found only one who survived. The rest, to the number of hundreds around, were dead. They lay in piles, amid vast gouts of blood and broken weapons, and tufts of heather uptorn by the clutches of the dead in their death-agony.

The wounded man proved to be the aged chief of the Neishes, whom the priest, Father Alpin, with the assistance of his sacristan, bore to a place of concealment, and, when his wounds were healed, conducted him in secret to the islet in the loch, where the remnant of his people were lurking, and where he found his daughter Muriel—a child of two years of age—the sole survivor of all his once numerous household; for in their mad fury the fierce MacNabs had spared no living thing, but swept all the land from Comrie to the beautiful banks of Lochearn, killing even the house and hunting-dogs of the vanquished. In every dwelling the clach-an-eorna, or rude mortar, then used for shelling barley by means of a wooden pestle, was broken and destroyed. The creel-houses, or wicker-work edifices, used as hunting-lodges, and even every baile mhuilainn, or mill-town, was burned and ruined, that never more might the Neishes find shelter or food. All the land was veritably burned up, as when ferns were burned in autumn—a Celtic superstition long since forgotten.

The feeble old chief was received with tears by the relics of his tribe; and these tears spoke more than a thousand languages of all they had suffered, and were ready yet to endure, for him and the now tarnished honour of their fallen race.

In a roughly-constructed hut, or creel-house, so named from being formed of stakes driven into the earth, with turf and wattled twigs between, the remnant of the MacNeishes lived the lives of outlaws; and having secured the only boat that lay in Lochearn, they were wont to make sudden and hostile descents on all sides of the lake, and suddenly at night, when least expected, the cries of those they were slaughtering without mercy arose with the flames of blazing cottages amid the wooded wilderness, and marked where they were dealing out vengeance on the spoilers. Then by a sudden retreat to their boat, they would gain the shelter of their isle, and there, defying all pursuit, would subsist for days on the precarious plunder won in these midnight creaghs or forays.

Penury, privation, and the despair of retrieving what they had lost, or of ever being able to make any resolute stand against the conquerors, made them wilder, more desperate, and savage, than any other landless and broken tribe,—even than the MacGregors in the days of James VI. They subsisted entirely by plunder, winning their daily food by the sword and the bow; and, ere a year was passed, their garments consisted of little else than the skins of deer and other wild animals. Thinly peopled as that mountain district was at all times, the operations of Finlay MacNeish and his twenty desperate men rendered it more desolate than ever; for the MacNabs and their adherents, finding the vicinity of Lochearn so troubled and dangerous, removed their families, with their flocks and herds, to a distance from its shores; but still, while the outlaws on the isle kept possession of their boat, and destroyed every other that was set afloat in the loch, they were enabled to lead their lawless life in security; while the government of the regent, John Duke of Albany, who had never much power at any time beyond the Highland border, gave itself no concern whatever in the matter, for the duke resided principally in France.

From the residence of these outlaws, the green islet which is in the middle of the lower part of Lochearn is still named the Isle of the Neishes.