Historical Tales and Legends of the Highlands

by Unknown

The house—a wee, wee cot house—has one little window in the end directed to the burn, and therein sits a cat, winking with listless satisfaction under the glow of the summer scene. There, too, sits a curched grandame working her stocking, rejoicing in the genial warmth which seldom comes so far up the glen, thinking, it may be, of the days when she was full of young life, or of the trials she has undergone since then, or the sad memories of family years which she has since then laid in the auld kirk-yard.

Whisking blithely past this outpost of civilisation, the burnie suddenly falls into a deep ravine, where it gets into a dreadful passion at finding itself confined between steep banks. It kicks, and flings, and fumes, and splutters, and gets into a dreadful fury, first dashing up one side with a splash, and then on the other with a whish, then hits some big stone with a hiss and then another, jumps madly over the heads of some, and goes poking under the ribs of others that are too big to be so dealt with. In fact, it is like many another scene of youthful violence, while it lasts, which fortunately is not very long; for, by-and-bye, it steals calmly out in an open rivulet between green banks, as gently as if nothing had happened, and were rather ashamed of its pranks. It has now come to the place where farm steadings and plantations begin looking onward in its course. Thatched roofs are seen at different points in the surrounding landscape; old-fashioned country wives begin to put it to use in bleaching their clothes on its banks, and there are some nice haughs on which, dotting them, are numerous cocks of meadow hay, and now and then, skipping the stream, a follower of Isaac Walton, when our burnie is now not merely a burn, but is known as the ‘Findhorn’ river, with a very bad character for rising in great floods occasionally, carrying off haycocks, bleachings, and whatever other trifle it can lay hold of. It has begun to show symptoms of earning for itself, by capricious changes of its channel, the character, which it afterwards fully bears out, of being a river not to be trusted to, and being a great friend to the lawyers, by shifting the boundaries of litigious lairds—lairds who have more money than brains, or at least not as many brains as would make them understand to give and take peacefully.

In its journey to the lower country, it runs to a considerable extent parallel with the river and strath of Nairn. Struggling on through many opposing barriers of granite rock, it rushes through narrow gorges with boiling and tumultuous currents, now reposing its still waters in some round sweeping dark pool, and anon patiently, but assiduously, wearing its way through the dark red sandstone cliffs which jut out from its channel, or range in layer above layer, forming high barriers on its banks, while plants and shrubs, and lofty trees, crown and encompass the steep heights, and finely contrast their variegated green with the deep red of the cliffs on which they grow. Here, in some overshadowed dells, the sun with difficulty penetrates and finds the solitary eyries of the eagle, or the falcon, with the dwellings of the congregated heron, thickly perched among the trees, while the ascending salmon rest by dozens during the summer’s noon-day heat in the deep dark pools beneath. As the stream winds towards the sea, its course becomes less interrupted and boisterous. It now sweeps along fertile meadows and wooded copses, till at last, all opposition giving way, it flows out into a broad, still, placid sheet of water, meeting the tides of the ocean half way up the smooth and sandy bay of ‘Findhorn.’

On its romantic banks are situated a succession of gentlemen’s seats, among many others, Altyre, Logie, Relugas, Dunphail, Kincorth, Tannachy, and Darnaway, or Tarnaway, the ancient sylvan retreat and hunting hall of the famous Randolph, Earl of Moray, and now the northern seat of his noble descendants. South of the Brodie station on the Highland Railway, in the lower fringe of the Darnaway oak and pine forest, which extends for many miles inland, and is the remains of the old Caledonian forest, concealed from view, though not two miles distant, is the Castle of Darnaway, famous in the history of the country and in the traditions of the neighbourhood as the home of a family, almost the kings of the district of Moray, and occupying at one time a most important position in the historical records of the country. Had it fortuned to an Englishman, twenty-five or thirty years ago, to visit the county of Elgin, he could not have failed to hear of the Earl of Moray’s forest of Tarnaway, which then stretched for miles along the banks of this grand Highland stream—the Findhorn—in all the untrimmed luxuriance which he could have expected in going to wait on the Duke of Arden. He would have been further surprised to hear of two brothers entirely realizing the old ballad ideas of gallant young huntsmen—superb figures attired in the ancient dress of the country, and full of chivalric feeling—who, giving up the common pursuits of the world, spent most of their days in following the deer through this pathless wild. Men of an old time they seemed to be; of frames more robust than what belongs to men now-a-days, and with a hardihood which appeared to make them superior to all personal exposure and fatigue. At the same time they possessed cultivated minds, and no small skill in many of the most elegant accomplishments. This is their description of the locality:—

‘Few knew what Tarnaway was in those days—almost untrodden, except by the deer, the roe, the fox, and the pine-martin. Its green dells filled with lilies of the valley, its banks covered with wild hyacinths, primroses, and pyrolas, and its deep thickets clothed with every species of woodland luxuriance, in blossoms, grass, moss, and timber of every kind, growing with the magnificence and solitude of an aboriginal wilderness, a world of unknown beauty and silent loneliness, broken only by the sough of the pines, the hum of the water, the hoarse bell of the buck, the long wild cry of the fox, the shriek of the heron, or the strange, mysterious tap of the northern wood-pecker. For ten years we knew every dell, and bank, and thicket, and, excepting the foresters and keepers, during the early part of that time, we can only remember to have met two or three old wives, who came to crack sticks or shear grass, and one old man to cut hazels for making baskets. If a new forester ventured in to the deep bosom of the wood alone, it was a chance that, like one of King Arthur’s errant-knights, he took a tree as his host for that night, unless he might hear the roar of the Findhorn, and, on reaching the banks, could follow its course out of the woods before the fail of light. One old wife, who had wandered for a day and night, we discovered at the foot of a tree, where at last she had sat down in despair, like poor old Jenny Mackintosh, who, venturing into the forest of Rothiemurchus to gather pine cones, never came out again. Three years afterwards she was found sitting at the foot of a great pine, on the skirt of the Braeriach, her wasted hands resting on her knees, and her head bent down on her withered fingers. The tatters of her dress still clung to the dry bones, like the lichen upon the old trees, except some shreds of her plaid, which were in the raven’s nest on Craigdhubh, and a lock of her grey hair that was under the young eagles in the eyrie of Loch-an-Eilean.’

The grounds themselves are well worthy of examination, but the castle hall, 90 feet in length, and 35 feet broad, is inferior to none in Scotland, and resembles much the Parliament House of Edinburgh; the walls rise to a height of 35 feet, and a carved roof of solid black oak, divided by compartments, forms the arched ceiling; a suitable fire-place, that would roast a stalled ox; an enormous table, and some carved chairs, still garnish this hall, though the modern apartments in front of it ill correspond with its Gothic character. Here Mary, Queen of Scots, held her court in 1564. Among the pictures is one of the Bonnie Earl of Moray, and also a portrait of Queen Mary, disguised, by way of a frolic, in boy’s clothes, in long scarlet stockings, black velvet coat, black kilt, white sleeves, and a high ruff. The present hall was preceded by a hunting lodge, erected in the fourteenth century, by Randolph, first Earl of Moray, the nephew, friend, and companion of Robert the Bruce, and Regent of Scotland during the minority of David II., but it was not the Earl’s chief country residence, as in the charter of erection of the earldom, the Castle of Elgin, ‘Manerium de Elgyn,’ is appointed ‘pro capitali mansione comitatus Moraviœ.’ It appears from the charter of Robert III. to Thomas le Graunt, son of Jno. le Graunt, dated 1390 (Regist. No. 22, p. 473), that there was an older royal Castle of Tarnaway, which was previously in the keeping of the Cummings, and afterwards of the Grants, and, in fact, the Cumming family—Earls of March—seem to have been introduced from Forfarshire as the great instrument for exterminating, or at least suppressing, the early insurrections of the Clan Chattan, who were thus in all probability the aboriginal inhabitants of Moray. The lately published work on the ‘Name of Cawdor’ shows likewise that the present magnificent hall was erected under the auspices, if not at the cost, of King James II. of Scotland. After the suppression of the Douglas rebellion, the King turned his attention to establishing order and authority in the North, especially in the Earldom of Moray. He took up his residence sometimes at Inverness, sometimes at Elgin, held Justice Courts, and transacted state business. He felt also the fascination of the country, and took means to enjoy it. Mr Innes, the editor of the ‘Cawdor Annual,’ says ‘The Castle of Lochindorbh, a formidable Norman fortress, in a woodland loch, which had been fortified against his authority by Douglas, King James doomed to destruction, and employed the Thane of Cawdor to demolish it. But he chose Darnaway for his own hunting seat, as old Thomas Randolph had done a century before, and completed the extensive repairs and new erections which the Earl had begun. The massive beams of oak and solid structure of the roof described in those accounts are still in part recognisable in the great hall of Darnaway, which popular tradition, ever leaning towards a fabulous antiquity, ascribes to Earl Randolph, but which is certainly of this period. Here, for two years, the King enjoyed the sports of the chase; great territories, on both sides of the river, were thrown out of cultivation for the sport, and tenants sat free of rent while their lands were waste. What was the manner of the hunting we are not informed. The sport of hawking, indeed, might well be enjoyed on the river bank at Darnaway, but hawking could not require a whole district to be laid waste. The fox was not of old esteemed a beast of chase in Scotland, nor perhaps, so early, in England. There is no doubt the King’s chief game was the red-deer, the natives of those hills, and it is probable that the hart was shot with arrows, and hunted down with the old rough greyhound, still known among us as the deerhound, and until lately in Ireland as the wolf dog, with such help of slower dogs of surer scent, as the country could afford, for the English hound was hardly known in old Scotland. But riding up to hounds, or riding at all, must have been very partially used among the peat mosses and rocks of the upper valley of the Findhorn.’

The Earldom of Moray was conferred by King Robert the Bruce upon Sir Thomas Randolph, son of Lady Isabel Bruce, the eldest daughter of Robert, Earl of Carrick, by Thomas Randolph, Lord of Strathnith. This Earldom, along with many goodly heritages, lands, and baronies, was the guerdon of the services so gallantly performed by Randolph in the service of his uncle, King Robert the Bruce, and it remained in the Randolph family until 1455, when the then Earl of Moray was attainted ‘for fortifying the Castles of Lochindore and Tarnau (Lochindorbh and Tarnaway) against the King, and for other acts of treason, by which attainder the Earldom of Moray became vested in the Crown.’

The next possessor of the Earldom was James Stewart, natural son of King James IV., by Janet, daughter of John, Lord Kennedy. It was conferred upon him when he was but two years old, by charter dated the 15th June 1501, and his son dying without issue male, 14th June 1544, the Earldom reverted to the Crown, and was conferred on George, the fourth Earl of Huntly, 15th February 1549, but the grant was recalled in 1554. The Earldom was next bestowed in 1562 by Queen Mary upon her half-brother, Lord James Stuart, natural son of King James V., and afterwards Regent of Scotland. From real or imaginary contradictions in his titles, great perplexity was occasioned respecting their inheritance, and several charters were granted to the Regent more or less confusing each other. He married Lady Anne Keith, daughter of the fourth Earl Marshal, afterwards Countess of Argyll, and by her he had two daughters—Elizabeth, Countess of Moray, and Margaret, afterwards Countess of Errol. In 1580, the youngest son of Lord Doune James Stuart (as the name was generally spelt after Queen Mary’s return) received from James VI. the ward and marriage of the two daughters of the Regent Moray, and a few days thereafter he married the elder, Lady Elizabeth, and assumed the title of the Earl of Moray. As this claim to the Earldom was doubtful, a charter was given to him in 1592, by James VI., and the Scottish estates ratifying to him and to his son all that had been granted to the Regent and the Lady Elizabeth, and since then the Earldom has remained in the uninterrupted possession of his descendants.

The Earl of Moray, whose personal appearance and high accomplishments in the learning and manners of the day acquired for him the title of the ‘Bonnie Earl;’ and as son-in-law of the good Regent Moray, and the inheritor of his estates, he naturally possessed a high degree of consideration in the State, particularly with the Presbyterian party, of which the Regent had been so long one of the chief supporters and the acknowledged leader. The Earl’s character, independent of his possessions, was such as to win him universal esteem. To the attractive beauty of his countenance and form he added a most amiable disposition, and perfect skill in all the chivalric accomplishments of the age. It is, therefore, scarcely to be wondered at that he should have been one of the most popular noblemen of the day, especially as the nation in general had by that time attached itself to the religious party of which he was a leading member. To this party also King James VI. belonged, though he was under the necessity of holding the balance equally between the Presbyterians and that still numerous party of Catholics to which many of his most powerful noblemen belonged, and were active adherents. Among the Catholic peers, the Earl of Huntly was the chief—a man of determination, and at heart ambitious and vindictive, and who for years had nursed a feud between his own family and that of the Earl of Moray. The real grounds of the feud consisted in the claims of the Gordon family to the possessions and Earldom of Moray, of which they had been deprived when it was bestowed by Queen Mary upon her illegitimate brother the Regent. This deep-seated cause of animosity had been long gathering strength from many and various disagreements arising out of it, and was particularly aggravated by an act of the Earl of Moray against the legal power of Huntly. In his capacity as the King’s Justiciary, the Earl of Huntly endeavoured to bring to justice persons against whom he had obtained a Royal Commission, and who having fled to the Earl of Moray, were protected by him against the Earl of Huntly, on some grounds or for some reason not known. Huntly, thus defied, was highly displeased against Moray, and proceeded with a large party, principally of his clansmen, to Darnaway Castle, for the purpose of getting possession of the felons’ persons. The expedition unfortunately terminated in widening the breach between the noblemen, for in the attempt to enter the castle, John Gordon, a brother of Gordon of Cluny, who was in the expedition in attendance on the Earl of Huntly, was killed by a shot from the castle. Whether the shot was fired by the Earl of Moray or not was not known, but from that hour the hostility between the families became of a more decided character, was participated in by almost every member of the Gordon clan, and revenge became a study in Huntly’s mind. This event took place a short time previous to the year 1591, but it was not immediately followed by any decided act of retaliation.

In the meantime, Campbell of Cawdor, a friend of Moray, became an object of hostility to many of the principal men of the Clan Campbell because he had been appointed tutor to the young Earl of Argyll.