Legendary Tales of the Highlands (Volume 3 of 3) / A sequel to Highland Rambles

by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

John Smith would have much preferred to have placed himself under the standard of the Mackintosh, whom the Smiths or Gowe, the descendants of the celebrated Gowin Cromb, who fought on the Inch of Perth, held to be their chief, as head of the Clan-Chattan. But M’Taggart was unwilling to lose the personal support of so promising a soldier. Perhaps also he began to feel a certain interest in the young man; and he accordingly advised him to stick close to him at all times.

“Stick you by me, John,” said he—“stick close by my side; I shall then be able to see what you do, as well as to give a fair and honest, and I trust not unfavourable report of the gallant deeds which your brave spirit may prompt you to perform. Depend upon it, with my frequent opportunities of obtaining access to the Prince, I can do as much good for you, at least, as any Mackintosh.”

On the night of the 14th of April then, John Smith lay with M’Taggart and his company, among the whin and juniper bushes in the wood of Culloden, where the greater part of the Jacobite army that night disposed of themselves. Whatever might have been the ill-provided state of the other portions of the Prince’s troops, that with which John was now consorted, had no reason to complain of any want of those refreshments which human nature requires, and which are so important to soldiers. Large fires were speedily kindled; and the Pensassenach’s great sow, with all her little pigs, and the poor woman’s poultry of all kinds, together with some few similar delicacies which had elsewhere been picked up here and there, were soon divided, and prepared to undergo such rude cookery as each individual could command; and these, with the bread and cheese, and other such provisions, which they had carried off from the Pensassenach, as well as from some other houses, enabled them to spread for themselves what might be called a vurra liberal table in the wilderness. But the savoury odour which their culinary operations diffused around, brought hungry Highlanders from every quarter of the wood, like wolves upon them, so that each man of their party was fain to gobble up as much as he could swallow in haste, lest he should fail to secure to himself enough to satisfy his hunger, ere the whole feast should disappear under the active jaws of those intruders. The liquor was more under their own control. The flask was allowed to circulate through the hands of those only to whom it most properly belonged by the right of capture. John, for his part, had a good tasse of the Pensassenach’s brandy; and the smack did not seem to savour the worse within his lips, because it was prefaced with the toast of—“Success to the Prince, and confusion to the Duke of Cumberland!”

After this their refreshment, the men and officers disposed themselves to sleep around the fires of their bivouac, each in a natural bed of his own selection, John Smith, being a pious young man, retired under the shelter of a large juniper bush, and having there offered up his evening prayer to God, he wrapped himself up in his plaid, and consigned himself to sleep. How long he had slept he knew not; when, as he turned in his lair to change his position, his eye caught a dim human figure, which floated, as it were, in the air, stiff and erect, immediately under the high projecting limb of a great fir tree, that grew at some twenty paces distant from the spot where he lay. The figure seemed to have a preternatural power of supporting itself; and as the breeze wailed and moaned through the boughs, it appeared alternately to advance and to recede again with a slow tremulous motion. John’s heart, stout as it was against every thing of earthly mould, began to beat quick, and finally to thump against his very ribs, with all manner of superstitious fears. He gazed and trembled, without the power of rising, which he would have fain done, not for the purpose of investigating the mystery, but to take the wiser course of looking out for some other place of repose, where he might hope to escape from the appalling contemplation of this strange and most unaccountable apparition. He lay staring then at it in a cold sweat of fright, whilst the faint glimmering light from the nearest fire, as it rose or fell, now made it somewhat more visible, and now again somewhat more dim. At length, an accidental fall of some of the half burnt fuel, sent up a transient gleam that fully illuminated the ghastly countenance of the spectre, when, to John’s horror, he recognised the pale and corpse-like features of Mr. William Dallas, the packman, whom he had left so ingeniously inserted into the sack, and deposited in the Pensassenach’s lint-pot. Though the gag was gone, the mouth was wide open, and the large, protruded, and glazed eye-balls, glared fearfully upon him. Though the light was not sufficient to display the figure correctly, John’s fancy made him vividly behold the sack. He would have spoken if he could; but he felt that the apparition of a murdered man was floating before him. His throat grew dry of a sudden. He gasped—but could not utter a word. He doubted not that the packman had been forgotten by Morag, and that, having fallen down into the water through cold and exhaustion, the wretch had at last miserably perished; and he came very naturally to the conclusion, that he who had put the unfortunate man there, was now doomed to be henceforth continually haunted by his ghost. Fain would he have shut out this horrible sight, by closing his eyes, or by drawing his plaid over them; but this he was afraid to do, lest the object of his dread should swim towards him through the air, and congeal his very life’s-blood by its freezing touch. Much as he loved Morag, he had some difficulty in refraining from inwardly cursing her, for her supposed neglect of his express injunctions to relieve the packman from the pool. As he stared on this dreadful apparition, the flickering gleam from the faggot sunk again, and the countenance again grew dim; but John seemed still to see it in all its intensity of illumination. No more rest had he that night. Still, as he gazed on the figure, he again and again fancied that he saw it gradually and silently gliding nearer and nearer to him. The only relief he had was in fervent and earnest prayers, which he confusedly murmured, from time to time, in Gaelic. He eagerly petitioned for daylight, hoping that the morning air might remove all such unrealities from the earth. At length, the eastern horizon began to give forth the partial glimmer of dawn; but John was somewhat surprised to find, that, instead of the apparition fading away before it, the outlines of its horrible figure became gradually more and more distinct as it advanced, until even the features were by degrees rendered visible. But although John, by this time, began to discover that his fancy had supplied the sack, he now perceived something which he had not been able to see before, and that was, a thin rope which hung down from the horizontal limb of the fir tree, and suspended, by its lower extremity, the body of the poor packman by the neck. John was much shocked by this discovery. But he could not help thanking God that he was thus acquitted of the wretched man’s death; and after the misery that he had suffered from the supposed presence of the apparition of a man who had been drowned through his means, however innocently, the relief he now experienced was immense. He called up some of his comrades to explain the mystery; and from them he learned, that Mr. Dallas had been caught in the early part of the night, in the very act of attempting to carry off Captain M’Taggart’s horse from its piquet, and that he had been instantly tucked up to the bough of the fir tree, without even the ceremony of a trial.

The young Prince Charley was in the field by an early hour on the morning of the 15th, and being all alive to the critical nature of his circumstances, and by no means certain as yet how near the enemy might by this time be to him, he judged it important to collect, and to draw up his army on the most favourable ground he could find in the neighbourhood. He therefore marched them up the high, partly flattish, and partly sloping ridge, which, though commonly called Culloden Moor, from its being situated immediately above the house and grounds of that place, has in reality the name of Drummossie. He led them to a part of this ground, a little to the south eastward of their previous position in the wood of Culloden, and there he drew them up in order of battle. There they were most injudiciously kept lying on their arms the whole day, and if Captain M’Taggart’s men had feasted tolerably well the previous night, their commons were any thing but plentiful during the time they occupied that position. It was not in the nature of things, that subordination could be so strictly preserved in the Prince’s army, as it was in that of the Duke of Cumberland. I, who am well practeesed in the discipline of boys, gentlemen, know very well that it would be impossible to bring a regiment of them under immediate command, if the individuals composing it were to be collected together all at once, raw and untaught, from different parts of the district. It is only by bringing one or two at a time, into the already great disciplined mass, that either a schoolmaster, or a field-marischal can promise to have his troops always well under control. By the time evening came, the officers, as well as the men of the Prince’s army, began to suffer under the resistless orders of a commander to whom no human being can say nay. Hunger, I may say, was rugging at their vurra hearts, and as they all saw, or supposed that they saw, reason to believe that there was no chance of the enemy coming upon them that night, many of them went off to Inverness and elsewhere, in search of food. M’Taggart himself could not resist those internal admonitions, which his stomach was so urgently giving him from time to time, and accordingly, John Smith conceived he was guilty of no great dereliction of duty, in strictly following the first order which his captain had given him, viz., to “stick by his side,” which he at once resolved to do, as he saw him go off to look for something to support nature.

But the captain and his man had hardly got a quarter of a mile on the road to Inverness, when they, with other stragglers, were called back by a mounted officer, who was sent, with all speed, after them, to tell them that they must return, in order to march immediately. The object of their march was that ill-conceived, worse managed, and most unlucky expedition for a night attack on the Duke of Cumberland’s camp at Nairn, which had that evening been so hastily planned. Hungry as they were they had no choice but to obey, and accordingly they hurried to their standards. The word was given, and after having been harassed by marching all night, without food or refreshment of any kind, they at last got only near enough to Nairn just to enable them to discover that day must infallibly break before they could reach the enemy’s camp, and that consequently no surprise could possibly take place. Disheartened by this failure, they were led back to their ground, where they arrived in so very faint and jaded a condition, that even to go in search of food was beyond their strength, so that they sank down in irregular groups over the field, and fell asleep for a time. Awakened by hunger after a very brief slumber, they arose to forage. M’Taggart, and some of his party, and John Smith amongst the rest, went prowling across the river Nairn, which ran to the south of their position, and there they caught and killed a sheep. They soon managed to kindle a fire, and to subdivide the animal into fragments, but ere each man had time to broil his morsel, an alarm was given from their camp. Like ravenous savages they tore up and devoured as much of the half raw flesh as haste would allow them to swallow, and hurrying back, they reached their post about eight o’clock in the morning, when they found that the Duke of Cumberland was approaching with his army in full march.

The position chosen by the Prince as that where he was to make his stand on that memorable day, the 16th of April, was by no means very wisely or very well selected. It was a little way to the westward of that which his army had occupied on the previous day. Somewhat in advance, and to the right of his ground, there stood the walls of an enclosure, which the experienced eye of Lord George Murray soon enabled him to perceive, and he was at once so convinced that they presented too advantageous a cover to the assailing enemy, to be neglected by them, that he would fain have moved forward with a party to have broken them down, had time remained to have enabled him to have effected his purpose. But the Duke of Cumberland’s army was already in sight, advancing in three columns, steadily over the heath, from Dalcross Castle, the tower of which was seen rising towards its eastern extremity. The Highlanders were at this time dwindled to a mere handful, and some of the best friends of the cause of the Stewarts who were present, and perhaps even the young Prince himself, began to believe that he had been traitorously deserted. But the alarm had no sooner been fully spread by the clang of the pipes, and the shrill notes of the bugles, than small and irregular streams of armed men, in various coloured tartans, were seen rushing towards their common position, like mountain rills towards some Highland lake, and filling up the vacant ranks with all manner of expedition. Many a brave fellow, who had gone to look for something to satisfy the craving of an empty stomach, came hurrying back with as great a void as he had carried away with him, because he preferred fighting for him whom he conscientiously believed to be his king, to remaining ingloriously to subdue that hunger which was absolutely consuming him. No one was wilfully absent who could possibly contrive to be present, but yet the urgent demands of the demon of starvation, to which many of them had yielded, had very considerably thinned their numbers, and, in addition to this source of weakness, there was another obvious one, arising from the physical strength of those who were present being wofully diminished by the want they had endured, and the fatigue they had undergone. But with all these disadvantages the heroic souls of those who were on the field remained firm and resolute.

John Smith’s military knowledge was then too small to allow him to form any judgment of the state of affairs, far less to enable him to carry off, or to describe, any thing like the general arrangement of the order of battle on both sides. He could not even tell very well what regiments his corps was posted with: he only knew this, that according to the order he had received he stuck close to Captain M’Taggart. He always remembered with enthusiasm, indeed, that the Prince rode through the ranks with his attendants, doing all that he could to encourage his men, and that when he passed by where John himself stood, he smiled on him like an angel, and bid him do his duty like a man.

“Och, hoch!” cried John, with an exultation, which arose from the circumstance of his not being in the least aware that every individual near him had, like him, flattered himself that he was the person so distinguished.—“Fa wad hae soughts tat ta ponny Princey wad hae mindit on poor Shon Smiss? Fod, but she wad fichts for her till she was cut to collops!”

But John had little opportunity of fighting, though he appears to have borne plenty of the brunt of the battle. There were two cannons placed in each space between the battalions composing the first line of the Duke of Cumberland’s army, and these were so well served as to create a fearful carnage among the Highland ranks. To this dreadful discharge John Smith stood exposed, with men falling by dozens around him, mutilated and mashed, and exhibiting death in all his most horrible forms, till, to use his own very expressive words,—“She was bitin’ her ain lips for angher tat she could not get at tem.” But before John could get at them, the English dragoons, who, under cover of the walls of the enclosure I have mentioned, had advanced by the right of the Highland army, finally broke through the fence, and getting in behind their first line, came cutting and slashing on their backs, whilst the Campbells were attacking them in front, and mowing them down like grass. Then, indeed, did the melée become desperate, and then was it that John began to bestir himself in earnest. Throwing away his plaid, and the little bundle that it contained, he dealt deadly blows with his broad-sword, everywhere around him. He fought with the bravery and the perseverance of a hero. At length his bonnet was knocked from his head, and although he was still possessed with the most anxious desire to obey Captain M’Taggart’s order to stick to his side, he was surprised on looking about him to find that there was no M’Taggart, no, nor any one else left near him to stick to but enemies.