By the first blast of his bugle the erne was roused from its eyry among the cliffs of Kinpurnie; by the second the warder at Bailie-Craig was wakened from his sleep, and the hirsels lowed on the hills; but the third had scarcely been tossed among the mountain echoes by the wind, when between him and that midnight sky, which every instant was reddened by the bright but silent lightning, the valiant Scrimegeour saw a gigantic figure arise as if from the ground, with its long hair waving wildly, while it brandished a mace, which was furnished with a studded ball of steel, that swung at the end of an iron chain.
"Ewain Gavelrigg—man or fiend—come on!" exclaimed the knight, and though every pulse in his body for a moment stood still, he dashed forward to the combat.
By one blow of this iron mace, which descended like a thunder-bolt, the brains of the horse were dashed back into its rider's face, and the rider himself hurled prostrate on the path. Then the vampire or demon of Uach-dair Tir strode over him, brandishing his tremendous weapon, and uttering a succession of wild shouts of laughter. Grasping by the throat the half-stunned constable of Dundee, and compressing his gorget of steel as if it had been a lady's ruff of lace, he would have slain him there but for the valour of his companion, and a vow he had made to build a chapel in honour of St. John, if he escaped. Moreover, it is related, that he was almost suffocated by the inconceivable odour that pervaded the body of his herculean conqueror. While the latter, exulting in his victory, and laughing like a hyæna, was half strangling and half dragging the discomfited Scrimegeour towards the pine woods, he neither heard nor saw Drummond, who with his light Barbary courser, shod by soft felt, advanced over the velvet sward that bordered the wayside, but noiselessly, like the tall shadow of a man and horse.
The long sharp lance of Drummond was in the rest, and urged by the full force of a galloping steed and the thrust of a powerful arm, the head of steel and a yard of the tough ash pole, were driven through the body of the midnight marauder, who expired with a frightful cry.
When day broke and the body of this strange man was examined, it was found to be vast in its strength and proportion, but terrible in aspect; and multiplied by a hundred-fold, the odour of dead carrion pervaded it. When stripped, it was found to have four wounds, from all of which the black blood had been freely flowing; viz: those where Drummond's lance had pierced the back and breast, and those inflicted by the barbed shaft of the arrow-maker, and the sword of the dalmascar.
Two wild and haggard-looking women, his wife and daughter, came from their hut at Uach-dair Tir, and as a boon begged to have the body for interment, and as a refusal would have been deemed unknightly, it was freely bestowed by the valiant Laird of Dudhope, who first hewed off the hand which had grasped him by the throat, and nailed it on the western gate of Dundee, where the skeleton fingers were to be seen in the days of James IV.
In accordance with his vow, he endowed and dedicated a beautiful little chapel to St. John the Evangelist, which he built at the Sklait-hewchs, upon a rock near the burgh; but the walls of this fair oratory had barely been raised three feet in height, when again the travellers, who in that unruly age were hardy enough to traverse the wilds between Dundee and Strathmore, were found murdered and mutilated; children disappeared, desperate conflicts were fought and pools of blood found in the Glack of Newtyle, and all Angus was stricken with consternation by tidings that the wild man of the Sidlaws had come alive again!
By sound of trumpet at the burgh crosses, Sir Alexander Livingstone, of Calender, governor to the young King James I., proclaimed a general crusade against him. The hut at Uach-dair Tir was levelled and destroyed, when, in a chamber, or vault below it, there were found an incredible number of bones, which the credulity of the time magnified to a perfect hecatomb of human remains. Dudhope brought a hundred lances on horseback, the Lindesays of Crawford and the Abbot of Aberbrothwick a thousand each; the Laird of Bailie Craig brought a band of gallant archers; a general hunt began; the whole country was searched between Stenton Craig and Edzel Kirk, till, deep in a chasm of the Sidlaw hills, the sleuth bratches of Dudhope discovered Ewain Gavelrigg, who made a desperate and frantic resistance, slew eight men and three horses—after threatening all the rest with dire vengeance, even if he should be slain; but he was at last overborne by blunted spears, for the knights wished to capture and not to slay him; and for a charm each had tied to his lance's head a rosemary branch, with a twig of the rowan tree.
Having but one hand to fight with, he was soon bound hard and fast by cords and chains, slung under a horse's belly, and thus conveyed to Dundee, where he was sentenced by the Constable to be burned at the market-cross, together with his wife, daughter, and son, a little child, to make sure that none of a brood so terrible should ever come alive again.
Jellon Borthwick, a prebend of Dunkeld, pled hard to have the child delivered to him; and his boon was granted; but the others were burned in succession: first Gavelrigg, then his wife, and next their daughter, who was also accused, whether truly or falsely we know not, of having eaten the flesh of many children.