A thrust which he made full at the broad breast of Ian Mion, was parried with such force, that his arm tingled to the shoulder; and now the poor old man felt the weakness of his many years, and the hopelessness of resistance.
"MacNeish, you fight without hope—a man foredoomed to evil," said Ian mockingly.
"True; to evil and vengeance!" exclaimed the other gloomily, for his mother had borne him on Childermas Day, 1467 (the 28th December) the anniversary of Herod's slaughter of the innocents; a day of especial ill omen in Scotland, for which it was deemed unlucky for a man to put on a new doublet, to clip his beard, or attempt anything in this world—then how much less to have the effrontery to come into it!
It was vain for the old man to contend with an antagonist so formidable as Ian Mion, who soon beat him to the earth by a mortal wound, trod upon his sword and broke it. Then, twisting his fingers through the silver locks of Mac Neish's ample beard, he dragged him to the block of wood on which he had been so recently seated, and there ruthlessly severed his head from his body by one slash of the claymore.
Ere the combat had ended, by a catastrophe so sudden and terrible, his eleven brothers had pierced and cut to pieces the whole band as they lay in their drunken slumber, and incapable of resistance. Of all the tribe of MacNeish none escaped, but Muriel, his child, and a little boy (the son of Grey Callum, the bard) who concealed himself under a creel, and lay there in deadly fear, and drenched by the warm blood which flowed more than an inch deep over the clay floor of this frightful hut.
The summits of Benvoirlich, and of the wooded hills that look down on lovely Lochearn, were tinged with gold and purple by the rising sun, as, with panting hearts and bloody hands, the twelve brothers rowed their birlinn from that isle of death towards the wooded shore, bearing with them the white head of MacNeish; nor did they rest for a moment until they reached the hall of Kennil House, where their pale, grim mother, who had never once closed her blood-shot eyes in sleep, awaited them.
"Mo mather—na biodh fromgh, oirbh!" ("My mother, fear nothing now!") exclaimed Ian Mion, as he held aloft the ghastly head by its silver locks; and from that hour the MacNabs took as their crest, "the Neish's head," affrontée, with the motto Dreid Nocht. Aileen embraced her twelve savage sons, with stern exultation, and ordered the head to be spiked on the summit of her mansion; while a banquet was spread, and the piper marched before the door, making every chamber ring to the notes of the clan salute, Failte Mhic an Abba.
Lady Aileen would not permit the slaughtered caterans to receive the rights of sepulture.
"There, on the Neish's isle, let them lie unburied," she exclaimed, "without aid from priest or prayer, torch or taper, mass-bell or mourner,—that their bones may whiten as a terrible memorial to all that would dare to withstand us!"
So said this fierce woman; but gentle Father Alpin Maol, the good old monk of Inchaffray, had them interred in one grave, over which he placed a cairn of stones, and one of those Celtic crosses of a fashion which is only to be found in Scotland and Ireland. On the island the ruins of the Neishes' dwelling may still be traced, and on Innis Bui there still stands a monument erected by the MacNabs in commemoration of their savage triumph.