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A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 51 | “My father’s curse upon my father’s son,” said Allan, interrupting him, “if he receive from you one penny! It is enough that you claim no right to exact from him what is his own.”
Lord Menteith eagerly supported Allan’s opinion, and the elder M’Aulay readily joined, declaring the whole to be a fool’s business, and not worth speaking more about. The Englishmen, after some courteous opposition, were persuaded to regard the whole as a joke.
“And now, Allan,” said the Laird, “please to remove your candles; for, since the Saxon gentlemen have seen them, they will eat their dinner as comfortably by the light of the old tin sconces, without scomfishing them with so much smoke.”
Accordingly, at a sign from Allan, the living chandeliers, recovering their broadswords, and holding the point erect, marched out of the hall, and left the guests to enjoy their refreshment. [Such a bet as that mentioned in the text is said to have been taken by MacDonald of Keppoch, who extricated himself in the manner there narrated.]
Notwithstanding the proverbial epicurism of the English,—proverbial, that is to say, in Scotland at the period,—the English visitors made no figure whatever at the entertainment, compared with the portentous voracity of Captain Dalgetty, although that gallant soldier had already displayed much steadiness and pertinacity in his attack upon the lighter refreshment set before them at their entrance, by way of forlorn hope. He spoke to no one during the time of his meal; and it was not until the victuals were nearly withdrawn from the table, that he gratified the rest of the company, who had watched him with some surprise, with an account of the reasons why he ate so very fast and so very long.
“The former quality,” he said, “he had acquired, while he filled a place at the bursar’s table at the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen; when,” said he; “if you did not move your jaws as fast as a pair of castanets, you were very unlikely to get any thing to put between them. And as for the quantity of my food, be it known to this honourable company,” continued the Captain, “that it’s the duty of every commander of a fortress, on all occasions which offer, to secure as much munition and vivers as their magazines can possibly hold, not knowing when they may have to sustain a siege or a blockade. Upon which principle, gentlemen,” said he, “when a cavalier finds that provant is good and abundant, he will, in my estimation, do wisely to victual himself for at least three days, as there is no knowing when he may come by another meal.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 52 | The Laird expressed his acquiescence in the prudence of this principle, and recommended to the veteran to add a tass of brandy and a flagon of claret to the substantial provisions he had already laid in, to which proposal the Captain readily agreed.
When dinner was removed, and the servants had withdrawn, excepting the Laird’s page, or henchman, who remained in the apartment to call for or bring whatever was wanted, or, in a word, to answer the purposes of a modern bell-wire, the conversation began to turn upon politics, and the state of the country; and Lord Menteith enquired anxiously and particularly what clans were expected to join the proposed muster of the King’s friends.
“That depends much, my lord, on the person who lifts the banner,” said the Laird; “for you know we Highlanders, when a few clans are assembled, are not easily commanded by one of our own Chiefs, or, to say the truth, by any other body. We have heard a rumour, indeed, that Colkitto—that is, young Colkitto, or Alaster M’Donald, is come over the Kyle from Ireland, with a body of the Earl of Antrim’s people, and that they had got as far as Ardnamurchan. They might have been here before now, but, I suppose, they loitered to plunder the country as they came along.”
“Will Colkitto not serve you for a leader, then?” said Lord Menteith.
“Colkitto?” said Allan M’Aulay, scornfully; “who talks of Colkitto?—There lives but one man whom we will follow, and that is Montrose.”
“But Montrose, sir,” said Sir Christopher Hall, “has not been heard of since our ineffectual attempt to rise in the north of England. It is thought he has returned to the King at Oxford for farther instructions.”
“Returned!” said Allan, with a scornful laugh; “I could tell ye, but it is not worth my while; ye will know soon enough.”
“By my honour, Allan,” said Lord Menteith, “you will weary out your friends with this intolerable, froward, and sullen humour—But I know the reason,” added he, laughing; “you have not seen Annot Lyle to-day.”
“Whom did you say I had not seen?” said Allan, sternly.
“Annot Lyle, the fairy queen of song and minstrelsy,” said Lord Menteith.
“Would to God I were never to see her again,” said Allan, sighing, “On condition the same weird were laid on you!”
“And why on me?” said Lord Menteith, carelessly.
“Because,” said Allan, “it is written on your forehead, that you are to be the ruin of each other.” So saying, he rose up and left the room.
“Has he been long in this way?” asked Lord Menteith, addressing his brother. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 53 | “And why on me?” said Lord Menteith, carelessly.
“Because,” said Allan, “it is written on your forehead, that you are to be the ruin of each other.” So saying, he rose up and left the room.
“Has he been long in this way?” asked Lord Menteith, addressing his brother.
“About three days,” answered Angus; “the fit is wellnigh over, he will be better to-morrow.—But come, gentlemen, don’t let the tappit-hen scraugh to be emptied. The King’s health, King Charles’s health! and may the covenanting dog that refuses it, go to Heaven by the road of the Grassmarket!”
The health was quickly pledged, and as fast succeeded by another, and another, and another, all of a party cast, and enforced in an earnest manner. Captain Dalgetty, however, thought it necessary to enter a protest.
“Gentlemen cavaliers,” he said, “I drink these healths, PRIMO, both out of respect to this honourable and hospitable roof-tree, and, SECUNDO, because I hold it not good to be preceese in such matters, INTER POCULA; but I protest, agreeable to the warrandice granted by this honourable lord, that it shall be free to me, notwithstanding my present complaisance, to take service with the Covenanters to-morrow, providing I shall be so minded.”
M’Aulay and his English guests stared at this declaration, which would have certainly bred new disturbance, if Lord Menteith had not taken up the affair, and explained the circumstances and conditions. “I trust,” he concluded, “we shall be able to secure Captain Dalgetty’s assistance to our own party.”
“And if not,” said the Laird, “I protest, as the Captain says, that nothing that has passed this evening, not even his having eaten my bread and salt, and pledged me in brandy, Bourdeaux, or usquebaugh, shall prejudice my cleaving him to the neck-bone.”
“You shall be heartily welcome,” said the Captain, “providing my sword cannot keep my head, which it has done in worse dangers than your fend is likely to make for me.”
Here Lord Menteith again interposed, and the concord of the company being with no small difficulty restored, was cemented by some deep carouses. Lord Menteith, however, contrived to break up the party earlier than was the usage of the Castle, under pretence of fatigue and indisposition. This was somewhat to the disappointment of the valiant Captain, who, among other habits acquired in the Low countries, had acquired both a disposition to drink, and a capacity to bear, an exorbitant quantity of strong liquors. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 54 | Their landlord ushered them in person to a sort of sleeping gallery, in which there was a four-post bed, with tartan curtains, and a number of cribs, or long hampers, placed along the wall, three of which, well stuffed with blooming heather, were prepared for the reception of guests.
“I need not tell your lordship,” said M’Aulay to Lord Menteith, a little apart, “our Highland mode of quartering. Only that, not liking you should sleep in the room alone with this German land-louper, I have caused your servants’ beds to be made here in the gallery. By G—d, my lord, these are times when men go to bed with a throat hale and sound as ever swallowed brandy, and before next morning it may be gaping like an oyster-shell.”
Lord Menteith thanked him sincerely, saying, “It was just the arrangement he would have requested; for, although he had not the least apprehension of violence from Captain Dalgetty, yet Anderson was a better kind of person, a sort of gentleman, whom he always liked to have near his person.”
“I have not seen this Anderson,” said M’Aulay; “did you hire him in England?”
“I did so,” said Lord Menteith; “you will see the man to-morrow; in the meantime I wish you good-night.”
His host left the apartment after the evening salutation, and was about to pay the same compliment to Captain Dalgetty, but observing him deeply engaged in the discussion of a huge pitcher filled with brandy posset, he thought it a pity to disturb him in so laudable an employment, and took his leave without farther ceremony.
Lord Menteith’s two attendants entered the apartment almost immediately after his departure. The good Captain, who was now somewhat encumbered with his good cheer, began to find the undoing of the clasps of his armour a task somewhat difficult, and addressed Anderson in these words, interrupted by a slight hiccup,—“Anderson, my good friend, you may read in Scripture, that he that putteth off his armour should not boast himself like he that putteth it on—I believe that is not the right word of command; but the plain truth of it is, I am like to sleep in my corslet, like many an honest fellow that never waked again, unless you unloose this buckle.”
“Undo his armour, Sibbald,” said Anderson to the other servant.
“By St. Andrew!” exclaimed the Captain, turning round in great astonishment, “here’s a common fellow—a stipendiary with four pounds a-year and a livery cloak, thinks himself too good to serve Ritt-master Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, who has studied humanity at the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen, and served half the princes of Europe!” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 55 | “Captain Dalgetty,” said Lord Menteith, whose lot it was to stand peacemaker throughout the evening, “please to understand that Anderson waits upon no one but myself; but I will help Sibbald to undo your corslet with much pleasure.”
“Too much trouble for you, my lord,” said Dalgetty; “and yet it would do you no harm to practise how a handsome harness is put on and put off. I can step in and out of mine like a glove; only to-night, although not EBRIUS, I am, in the classic phrase, VINO CIBOQUE GRAVATUS.”
By this time he was unshelled, and stood before the fire musing with a face of drunken wisdom on the events of the evening. What seemed chiefly to interest him, was the character of Allan M’Aulay. “To come over the Englishmen so cleverly with his Highland torch-bearers—eight bare-breeched Rories for six silver candlesticks!—it was a master-piece—a TOUR DE PASSE—it was perfect legerdemain—and to be a madman after all!—I doubt greatly, my lord” (shaking his head), “that I must allow him, notwithstanding his relationship to your lordship, the privileges of a rational person, and either batoon him sufficiently to expiate the violence offered to my person, or else bring it to a matter of mortal arbitrement, as becometh an insulted cavalier.”
“If you care to hear a long story,” said Lord Menteith, “at this time of night, I can tell you how the circumstances of Allan’s birth account so well for his singular character, as to put such satisfaction entirely out of the question.”
“A long story, my lord,” said Captain Dalgetty, “is, next to a good evening draught and a warm nightcap, the best shoeinghorn for drawing on a sound sleep. And since your lordship is pleased to take the trouble to tell it, I shall rest your patient and obliged auditor.”
“Anderson,” said Lord Menteith, “and you, Sibbald, are dying to hear, I suppose, of this strange man too! and I believe I must indulge your curiosity, that you may know how to behave to him in time of need. You had better step to the fire then.”
Having thus assembled an audience about him, Lord Menteith sat down upon the edge of the four-post bed, while Captain Dalgetty, wiping the relics of the posset from his beard and mustachoes, and repeating the first verse of the Lutheran psalm, ALLE GUTER GEISTER LOBEN DEN HERRN, etc. rolled himself into one of the places of repose, and thrusting his shock pate from between the blankets, listened to Lord Menteith’s relation in a most luxurious state, between sleeping and waking. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 56 | “The father,” said Lord Menteith, “of the two brothers, Angus and Allan M’Aulay, was a gentleman of consideration and family, being the chief of a Highland clan, of good account, though not numerous; his lady, the mother of these young men, was a gentlewoman of good family, if I may be permitted to say so of one nearly connected with my own. Her brother, an honourable and spirited young man, obtained from James the Sixth a grant of forestry, and other privileges, over a royal chase adjacent to this castle; and, in exercising and defending these rights, he was so unfortunate as to involve himself in a quarrel with some of our Highland freebooters or caterans, of whom I think, Captain Dalgetty, you must have heard.”
“And that I have,” said the Captain, exerting himself to answer the appeal. “Before I left the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen, Dugald Garr was playing the devil in the Garioch, and the Farquharsons on Dee-side, and the Clan Chattan on the Gordons’ lands, and the Grants and Camerons in Moray-land. And since that, I have seen the Cravats and Pandours in Pannonia and Transylvania, and the Cossacks from the Polish frontier, and robbers, banditti, and barbarians of all countries besides, so that I have a distinct idea of your broken Highlandmen.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 57 | “The clan,” said Lord Menteith, “with whom the maternal uncle of the M’Aulays had been placed in feud, was a small sept of banditti, called, from their houseless state, and their incessantly wandering among the mountains and glens, the Children of the Mist. They are a fierce and hardy people, with all the irritability, and wild and vengeful passions, proper to men who have never known the restraint of civilized society. A party of them lay in wait for the unfortunate Warden of the Forest, surprised him while hunting alone and unattended, and slew him with every circumstance of inventive cruelty. They cut off his head, and resolved, in a bravado, to exhibit it at the castle of his brother-in-law. The laird was absent, and the lady reluctantly received as guests, men against whom, perhaps, she was afraid to shut her gates. Refreshments were placed before the Children of the Mist, who took an opportunity to take the head of their victim from the plaid in which it was wrapt, placed it on the table, put a piece of bread between the lifeless jaws, bidding them do their office now, since many a good meal they had eaten at that table. The lady, who had been absent for some household purpose, entered at this moment, and, upon beholding her brother’s head, fled like an arrow out of the house into the woods, uttering shriek upon shriek. The ruffians, satisfied with this savage triumph, withdrew. The terrified menials, after overcoming the alarm to which they had been subjected, sought their unfortunate mistress in every direction, but she was nowhere to be found. The miserable husband returned next day, and, with the assistance of his people, undertook a more anxious and distant search, but to equally little purpose. It was believed universally, that, in the ecstasy of her terror, she must either have thrown herself over one of the numerous precipices which overhang the river, or into a deep lake about a mile from the castle. Her loss was the more lamented, as she was six months advanced in her pregnancy; Angus M’Aulay, her eldest son, having been born about eighteen months before.—But I tire you, Captain Dalgetty, and you seem inclined to sleep.”
“By no means,” answered the soldier; “I am no whit somnolent; I always hear best with my eyes shut. It is a fashion I learned when I stood sentinel.”
“And I daresay,” said Lord Menteith, aside to Anderson, “the weight of the halberd of the sergeant of the rounds often made him open them.”
Being apparently, however, in the humour of story-telling, the young nobleman went on, addressing himself chiefly to his servants, without minding the slumbering veteran. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 58 | “And I daresay,” said Lord Menteith, aside to Anderson, “the weight of the halberd of the sergeant of the rounds often made him open them.”
Being apparently, however, in the humour of story-telling, the young nobleman went on, addressing himself chiefly to his servants, without minding the slumbering veteran.
“Every baron in the country,” said he, “now swore revenge for this dreadful crime. They took arms with the relations and brother-in-law of the murdered person, and the Children of the Mist were hunted down, I believe, with as little mercy as they had themselves manifested. Seventeen heads, the bloody trophies of their vengeance, were distributed among the allies, and fed the crows upon the gates of their castles. The survivors sought out more distant wildernesses, to which they retreated.”
“To your right hand, counter-march and retreat to your former ground,” said Captain Dalgetty; the military phrase having produced the correspondent word of command; and then starting up, professed he had been profoundly atttentive to every word that had been spoken.
“It is the custom in summer,” said Lord Menteith, without attending to his apology, “to send the cows to the upland pastures to have the benefit of the grass; and the maids of the village, and of the family, go there to milk them in the morning and evening. While thus employed, the females of this family, to their great terror, perceived that their motions were watched at a distance by a pale, thin, meagre figure, bearing a strong resemblance to their deceased mistress, and passing, of course, for her apparition. When some of the boldest resolved to approach this faded form, it fled from them into the woods with a wild shriek. The husband, informed of this circumstance, came up to the glen with some attendants, and took his measures so well as to intercept the retreat of the unhappy fugitive, and to secure the person of his unfortunate lady, though her intellect proved to be totally deranged. How she supported herself during her wandering in the woods could not be known—some supposed she lived upon roots and wild-berries, with which the woods at that season abounded; but the greater part of the vulgar were satisfied that she must have subsisted upon the milk of the wild does, or been nourished by the fairies, or supported in some manner equally marvellous. Her re-appearance was more easily accounted for. She had seen from the thicket the milking of the cows, to superintend which had been her favourite domestic employment, and the habit had prevailed even in her deranged state of mind. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 59 | “In due season the unfortunate lady was delivered of a boy, who not only showed no appearance of having suffered from his mother’s calamities, but appeared to be an infant of uncommon health and strength. The unhappy mother, after her confinement, recovered her reason—at least in a great measure, but never her health and spirits. Allan was her only joy. Her attention to him was unremitting; and unquestionably she must have impressed upon his early mind many of those superstitious ideas to which his moody and enthusiastic temper gave so ready a reception. She died when he was about ten years old. Her last words were spoken to him in private; but there is little doubt that they conveyed an injunction of vengeance upon the Children of the Mist, with which he has since amply complied. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 60 | “From this moment, the habits of Allan M’Aulay were totally changed. He had hitherto been his mother’s constant companion, listening to her dreams, and repeating his own, and feeding his imagination, which, probably from the circumstances preceding his birth, was constitutionally deranged, with all the wild and terrible superstitions so common to the mountaineers, to which his unfortunate mother had become much addicted since her brother’s death. By living in this manner, the boy had gotten a timid, wild, startled look, loved to seek out solitary places in the woods, and was never so much terrified, as by the approach of children of the same age. I remember, although some years younger, being brought up here by my father upon a visit, nor can I forget the astonishment with which I saw this infant-hermit shun every attempt I made to engage him in the sports natural to our age. I can remember his father bewailing his disposition to mine, and alleging, at the same time, that it was impossible for him to take from his wife the company of the boy, as he seemed to be the only consolation that remained to her in this world, and as the amusement which Allan’s society afforded her seemed to prevent the recurrence, at least in its full force, of that fearful malady by which she had been visited. But, after the death of his mother, the habits and manners of the boy seemed at once to change. It is true he remained as thoughtful and serious as before; and long fits of silence and abstraction showed plainly that his disposition, in this respect, was in no degree altered. But at other times, he sought out the rendezvous of the youth of the clan, which he had hitherto seemed anxious to avoid. He took share in all their exercises; and, from his very extraordinary personal strength, soon excelled his brother and other youths, whose age considerably exceeded his own. They who had hitherto held him in contempt, now feared, if they did not love him; and, instead of Allan’s being esteemed a dreaming, womanish, and feeble-minded boy, those who encountered him in sports or military exercise, now complained that, when heated by the strife, he was too apt to turn game into earnest, and to forget that he was only engaged in a friendly trial of strength.—But I speak to regardless ears,” said Lord Menteith, interrupting himself, for the Captain’s nose now gave the most indisputable signs that he was fast locked in the arms of oblivion. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 61 | “If you mean the ears of that snorting swine, my lord,” said Anderson, “they are, indeed, shut to anything that you can say; nevertheless, this place being unfit for more private conference, I hope you will have the goodness to proceed, for Sibbald’s benefit and for mine. The history of this poor young fellow has a deep and wild interest in it.”
“You must know, then,” proceeded Lord Menteith, “that Allan continued to increase in strength and activity, till his fifteenth year, about which time he assumed a total independence of character, and impatience of control, which much alarmed his surviving parent. He was absent in the woods for whole days and nights, under pretence of hunting, though he did not always bring home game. His father was the more alarmed, because several of the Children of the Mist, encouraged by the increasing troubles of the state, had ventured back to their old haunts, nor did he think it altogether safe to renew any attack upon them. The risk of Allan, in his wanderings, sustaining injury from these vindictive freebooters, was a perpetual source of apprehension.
“I was myself upon a visit to the castle when this matter was brought to a crisis. Allan had been absent since day-break in the woods, where I had sought for him in vain; it was a dark stormy night, and he did not return. His father expressed the utmost anxiety, and spoke of detaching a party at the dawn of morning in quest of him; when, as we were sitting at the supper-table, the door suddenly opened, and Allan entered the room with a proud, firm, and confident air. His intractability of temper, as well as the unsettled state of his mind, had such an influence over his father, that he suppressed all other tokens of displeasure, excepting the observation that I had killed a fat buck, and had returned before sunset, while he supposed Allan, who had been on the hill till midnight, had returned with empty hands. ‘Are you sure of that?’ said Allan, fiercely; ‘here is something will tell you another tale.’ |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 62 | “We now observed his hands were bloody, and that there were spots of blood on his face, and waited the issue with impatience; when suddenly, undoing the corner of his plaid, he rolled down on the table a human head, bloody and new severed, saying at the same time, ‘Lie thou where the head of a better man lay before ye.’ From the haggard features, and matted red hair and beard, partly grizzled with age, his father and others present recognised the head of Hector of the Mist, a well-known leader among the outlaws, redoubted for strength and ferocity, who had been active in the murder of the unfortunate Forester, uncle to Allan, and had escaped by a desperate defence and extraordinary agility, when so many of his companions were destroyed. We were all, it may be believed, struck with surprise, but Allan refused to gratify our curiosity; and we only conjectured that he must have overcome the outlaw after a desperate struggle, because we discovered that he had sustained several wounds from the contest. All measures were now taken to ensure him against the vengeance of the freebooters; but neither his wounds, nor the positive command of his father, nor even the locking of the gates of the castle and the doors of his apartment, were precautions adequate to prevent Allan from seeking out the very persons to whom he was peculiarly obnoxious. He made his escape by night from the window of the apartment, and laughing at his father’s vain care, produced on one occasion the head of one, and upon another those of two, of the Children of the Mist. At length these men, fierce as they were, became appalled by the inveterate animosity and audacity with which Allan sought out their recesses. As he never hesitated to encounter any odds, they concluded that he must bear a charmed life, or fight under the guardianship of some supernatural influence. Neither gun, dirk, nor dourlach [DOURLACH—quiver; literally, satchel—of arrows.], they said, availed aught against him. They imputed this to the remarkable circumstances under which he was born; and at length five or six of the stoutest caterans of the Highlands would have fled at Allan’s halloo, or the blast of his horn. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 63 | “In the meanwhile, however, the Children of the Mist carried on their old trade, and did the M’Aulays, as well as their kinsmen and allies, as much mischief as they could. This provoked another expedition against the tribe, in which I had my share; we surprised them effectually, by besetting at once the upper and under passes of the country, and made such clean work as is usual on these occasions, burning and slaying right before us. In this terrible species of war, even the females and the helpless do not always escape. One little maiden alone, who smiled upon Allan’s drawn dirk, escaped his vengeance upon my earnest entreaty. She was brought to the castle, and here bred up under the name of Annot Lyle, the most beautiful little fairy certainly that ever danced upon a heath by moonlight. It was long ere Allan could endure the presence of the child, until it occurred to his imagination, from her features perhaps, that she did not belong to the hated blood of his enemies, but had become their captive in some of their incursions; a circumstance not in itself impossible, but in which he believes as firmly as in holy writ. He is particularly delighted by her skill in music, which is so exquisite, that she far exceeds the best performers in this country in playing on the clairshach, or harp. It was discovered that this produced upon the disturbed spirits of Allan, in his gloomiest moods, beneficial effects, similar to those experienced by the Jewish monarch of old; and so engaging is the temper of Annot Lyle, so fascinating the innocence and gaiety of her disposition, that she is considered and treated in the castle rather as the sister of the proprietor, than as a dependent upon his charity. Indeed, it is impossible for any one to see her without being deeply interested by the ingenuity, liveliness, and sweetness of her disposition.”
“Take care, my lord,” said Anderson, smiling; “there is danger in such violent commendations. Allan M’Aulay, as your lordship describes him, would prove no very safe rival.”
“Pooh! pooh!” said Lord Menteith, laughing, yet blushing at the same time; “Allan is not accessible to the passion of love; and for myself,” said he, more gravely; “Annot’s unknown birth is a sufficient reason against serious designs, and her unprotected state precludes every other.”
“It is spoken like yourself, my lord,” said Anderson.—“But I trust you will proceed with your interesting story.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 64 | “It is spoken like yourself, my lord,” said Anderson.—“But I trust you will proceed with your interesting story.”
“It is wellnigh finished,” said Lord Menteith; “I have only to add, that from the great strength and courage of Allan M’Aulay, from his energetic and uncontrollable disposition, and from an opinion generally entertained and encouraged by himself that he holds communion with supernatural beings, and can predict future events, the clan pay a much greater degree of deference to him than even to his brother, who is a bold-hearted rattling Highlander, but with nothing which can possibly rival the extraordinary character of his younger brother.”
“Such a character,” said Anderson, “cannot but have the deepest effect on the minds of a Highland host. We must secure Allan, my lord, at all events. What between his bravery and his second sight—”
“Hush!” said Lord Menteith, “that owl is awaking.”
“Do you talk of the second sight, or DEUTERO-SCOPIA?” said the soldier; “I remember memorable Major Munro telling me how Murdoch Mackenzie, born in Assint, a private gentleman in a company, and a pretty soldier, foretold the death of Donald Tough, a Lochaber man, and certain other persons, as well as the hurt of the major himself at a sudden onfall at the siege of Trailsund.”
“I have often heard of this faculty,” observed Anderson, “but I have always thought those pretending to it were either enthusiasts or impostors.”
“I should be loath,” said Lord Menteith, “to apply either character to my kinsman, Allan M’Aulay. He has shown on many occasions too much acuteness and sense, of which you this night had an instance, for the character of an enthusiast; and his high sense of honour, and manliness of disposition, free him from the charge of imposture.”
“Your lordship, then,” said Anderson, “is a believer in his supernatural attributes?”
“By no means,” said the young nobleman; “I think that he persuades himself that the predictions which are, in reality, the result of judgment and reflection, are supernatural impressions on his mind, just as fanatics conceive the workings of their own imagination to be divine inspiration—at least, if this will not serve you, Anderson, I have no better explanation to give; and it is time we were all asleep after the toilsome journey of the day.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 65 | At an early hour in the morning the guests of the castle sprung from their repose; and, after a moment’s private conversation with his attendants, Lord Menteith addressed the soldier, who was seated in a corner burnishing his corslet with rot-stone and chamois-leather, while he hummed the old song in honour of the victorious Gustavus Adolphus:— When cannons are roaring, and bullets are flying, The lad that would have honour, boys, must never fear dying.
“Captain Dalgetty,” said Lord Menteith, “the time is come that we must part, or become comrades in service.”
“Not before breakfast, I hope?” said Captain Dalgetty.
“I should have thought,” replied his lordship, “that your garrison was victualled for three days at least.”
“I have still some stowage left for beef and bannocks,” said the Captain; “and I never miss a favourable opportunity of renewing my supplies.”
“But,” said Lord Menteith, “no judicious commander allows either flags of truce or neutrals to remain in his camp longer than is prudent; and therefore we must know your mind exactly, according to which you shall either have a safe-conduct to depart in peace, or be welcome to remain with us.”
“Truly,” said the Captain, “that being the case, I will not attempt to protract the capitulation by a counterfeited parley, (a thing excellently practised by Sir James Ramsay at the siege of Hannau, in the year of God 1636,) but I will frankly own, that if I like your pay as well as your provant and your company, I care not how soon I take the oath to your colours.”
“Our pay,” said Lord Menteith, “must at present be small, since it is paid out of the common stock raised by the few amongst us who can command some funds—As major and adjutant, I dare not promise Captain Dalgetty more than half a dollar a-day.”
“The devil take all halves and quarters!” said the Captain; “were it in my option, I could no more consent to the halving of that dollar, than the woman in the Judgment of Solomon to the disseverment of the child of her bowels.”
“The parallel will scarce hold, Captain Dalgetty, for I think you would rather consent to the dividing of the dollar, than give it up entire to your competitor. However, in the way of arrears, I may promise you the other half-dollar at the end of the campaign.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 66 | “The parallel will scarce hold, Captain Dalgetty, for I think you would rather consent to the dividing of the dollar, than give it up entire to your competitor. However, in the way of arrears, I may promise you the other half-dollar at the end of the campaign.”
“Ah! these arrearages!” said Captain Dalgetty, “that are always promised, and always go for nothing! Spain, Austria, and Sweden, all sing one song. Oh! long life to the Hoganmogans! if they were no officers of soldiers, they were good paymasters.—And yet, my lord, if I could but be made certiorate that my natural hereditament of Drumthwacket had fallen into possession of any of these loons of Covenanters, who could be, in the event of our success, conveniently made a traitor of, I have so much value for that fertile and pleasant spot, that I would e’en take on with you for the campaign.”
“I can resolve Captain Dalgetty’s question,” said Sibbald, Lord Menteith’s second attendant; “for if his estate of Drumthwacket be, as I conceive, the long waste moor so called, that lies five miles south of Aberdeen, I can tell him it was lately purchased by Elias Strachan, as rank a rebel as ever swore the Covenant.”
“The crop-eared hound!” said Captain Dalgetty, in a rage; “What the devil gave him the assurance to purchase the inheritance of a family of four hundred years standing?—CYNTHIUS AUREM VELLET, as we used to say at Mareschal-College; that is to say, I will pull him out of my father’s house by the ears. And so, my Lord Menteith, I am yours, hand and sword, body and soul, till death do us part, or to the end of the next campaign, whichever event shall first come to pass.”
“And I,” said the young nobleman, “rivet the bargain with a month’s pay in advance.”
“That is more than necessary,” said Dalgetty, pocketing the money however. “But now I must go down, look after my war-saddle and abuilziements, and see that Gustavus has his morning, and tell him we have taken new service.”
“There goes your precious recruit,” said Lord Menteith to Anderson, as the Captain left the room; “I fear we shall have little credit of him.”
“He is a man of the times, however,” said Anderson; “and without such we should hardly be able to carry on our enterprise.”
“Let us go down,” answered Lord Menteith, “and see how our muster is likely to thrive, for I hear a good deal of bustle in the castle.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 67 | “He is a man of the times, however,” said Anderson; “and without such we should hardly be able to carry on our enterprise.”
“Let us go down,” answered Lord Menteith, “and see how our muster is likely to thrive, for I hear a good deal of bustle in the castle.”
When they entered the hall, the domestics keeping modestly in the background, morning greetings passed between Lord Menteith, Angus M’Aulay, and his English guests, while Allan, occupying the same settle which he had filled the preceding evening, paid no attention whatever to any one. Old Donald hastily rushed into the apartment. “A message from Vich Alister More; [The patronymic of MacDonell of Glengarry.] he is coming up in the evening.”
“With how many attendants?” said M’Aulay.
“Some five-and-twenty or thirty,” said Donald, “his ordinary retinue.”
“Shake down plenty of straw in the great barn,” said the Laird.
Another servant here stumbled hastily in, announcing the expected approach of Sir Hector M’Lean, “who is arriving with a large following.”
“Put them in the malt-kiln,” said M’Aulay; “and keep the breadth of the middenstead between them and the M’Donalds; they are but unfriends to each other.”
Donald now re-entered, his visage considerably lengthened—“The tell’s i’ the folk,” he said; “the haill Hielands are asteer, I think. Evan Dhu, of Lochiel, will be here in an hour, with Lord kens how many gillies.”
“Into the great barn with them beside the M’Donalds,” said the Laird.
More and more chiefs were announced, the least of whom would have accounted it derogatory to his dignity to stir without a retinue of six or seven persons. To every new annunciation, Angus M’Aulay answered by naming some place of accommodation,—the stables, the loft, the cow-house, the sheds, every domestic office, were destined for the night to some hospitable purpose or other. At length the arrival of M’Dougal of Lorn, after all his means of accommodation were exhausted, reduced him to some perplexity. “What the devil is to be done, Donald?” said he; “the great barn would hold fifty more, if they would lie heads and thraws; but there would be drawn dirks amang them which should lie upper-most, and so we should have bloody puddings before morning!”
“What needs all this?” said Allan, starting up, and coming forward with the stern abruptness of his usual manner; “are the Gael to-day of softer flesh or whiter blood than their fathers were? Knock the head out of a cask of usquebae; let that be their night-gear—their plaids their bed-clothes—the blue sky their canopy, and the heather their couch.—Come a thousand more, and they would not quarrel on the broad heath for want of room!” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 68 | “Allan is right,” said his brother; “it is very odd how Allan, who, between ourselves,” said he to Musgrave, “is a little wowf, [WOWF, i.e. crazed.] seems at times to have more sense than us all put together. Observe him now.”
“Yes,” continued Allan, fixing his eyes with a ghastly stare upon the opposite side of the hall, “they may well begin as they are to end; many a man will sleep this night upon the heath, that when the Martinmas wind shalt blow shall lie there stark enough, and reck little of cold or lack of covering.”
“Do not forespeak us, brother,” said Angus; “that is not lucky.”
“And what luck is it then that you expect?” said Allan; and straining his eyes until they almost started from their sockets, he fell with a convulsive shudder into the arms of Donald and his brother, who, knowing the nature of his fits, had come near to prevent his fall. They seated him upon a bench, and supported him until he came to himself, and was about to speak.
“For God’s sake, Allan,” said his brother, who knew the impression his mystical words were likely to make on many of the guests, “say nothing to discourage us.”
“Am I he who discourages you?” said Allan; “let every man face his world as I shall face mine. That which must come, will come; and we shall stride gallantly over many a field of victory, ere we reach yon fatal slaughter-place, or tread yon sable scaffolds.”
“What slaughter-place? what scaffolds?” exclaimed several voices; for Allan’s renown as a seer was generally established in the Highlands.
“You will know that but too soon,” answered Allan. “Speak to me no more, I am weary of your questions.” He then pressed his hand against his brow, rested his elbow upon his knee, and sunk into a deep reverie.
“Send for Annot Lyle, and the harp,” said Angus, in a whisper, to his servant; “and let those gentlemen follow me who do not fear a Highland breakfast.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 69 | “Send for Annot Lyle, and the harp,” said Angus, in a whisper, to his servant; “and let those gentlemen follow me who do not fear a Highland breakfast.”
All accompanied their hospitable landlord excepting only Lord Menteith, who lingered in one of the deep embrasures formed by the windows of the hall. Annot Lyle shortly after glided into the room, not ill described by Lord Menteith as being the lightest and most fairy figure that ever trode the turf by moonlight. Her stature, considerably less than the ordinary size of women, gave her the appearance of extreme youth, insomuch, that although she was near eighteen, she might have passed for four years younger. Her figure, hands, and feet, were formed upon a model of exquisite symmetry with the size and lightness of her person, so that Titania herself could scarce have found a more fitting representative. Her hair was a dark shade of the colour usually termed flaxen, whose clustering ringlets suited admirably with her fair complexion, and with the playful, yet simple, expression of her features. When we add to these charms, that Annot, in her orphan state, seemed the gayest and happiest of maidens, the reader must allow us to claim for her the interest of almost all who looked on her. In fact, it was impossible to find a more universal favourite, and she often came among the rude inhabitants of the castle, as Allan himself, in a poetical mood, expressed it, “like a sunbeam on a sullen sea,” communicating to all others the cheerfulness that filled her own mind.
Annot, such as we have described her, smiled and blushed, when, on entering the apartment, Lord Menteith came from his place of retirement, and kindly wished her good-morning.
“And good-morning to you, my lord,” returned she, extending her hand to her friend; “we have seldom seen you of late at the castle, and now I fear it is with no peaceful purpose.”
“At least, let me not interrupt your harmony, Annot,” said Lord Menteith, “though my arrival may breed discord elsewhere. My cousin Allan needs the assistance of your voice and music.”
“My preserver,” said Annot Lyle, “has a right to my poor exertions; and you, too, my lord,—you, too, are my preserver, and were the most active to save a life that is worthless enough, unless it can benefit my protectors.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 70 | “My preserver,” said Annot Lyle, “has a right to my poor exertions; and you, too, my lord,—you, too, are my preserver, and were the most active to save a life that is worthless enough, unless it can benefit my protectors.”
So saying, she sate down at a little distance upon the bench on which Allan M’Aulay was placed, and tuning her clairshach, a small harp, about thirty inches in height, she accompanied it with her voice. The air was an ancient Gaelic melody, and the words, which were supposed to be very old, were in the same language; but we subjoin a translation of them, by Secundus Macpherson, Esq. of Glenforgen, which, although submitted to the fetters of English rhythm, we trust will be found nearly as genuine as the version of Ossian by his celebrated namesake.
“Birds of omen dark and foul, Night-crow, raven, bat, and owl, Leave the sick man to his dream—All night long he heard your scream—Haste to cave and ruin’d tower,Ivy, tod, or dingled bower, There to wink and mope, for, hark! In the mid air sings the lark. Hie to moorish gills and rocks, Prowling wolf and wily fox,—Hie you fast, nor turn your view, Though the lamb bleats to the ewe. Couch your trains, and speed your flight, Safety parts with parting night; And on distant echo borne, Comes the hunter’s early horn. The moon’s wan crescent scarcely gleams, Ghost-like she fades in morning beams; Hie hence each peevish imp and fay, That scare the pilgrim on his way:—Quench, kelpy! quench, in bog and fen, Thy torch that cheats benighted men; Thy dance is o’er, thy reign is done, For Benyieglo hath seen the sun. Wild thoughts, that, sinful, dark, and deep, O’erpower the passive mind in sleep, Pass from the slumberer’s soul away, Like night-mists from the brow of day: Foul hag, whose blasted visage grim Smothers the pulse, unnerves the limb, Spur thy dark palfrey, and begone! Thou darest not face the godlike sun.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 71 | As the strain proceeded, Allan M’Aulay gradually gave signs of recovering his presence of mind, and attention to the objects around him. The deep-knit furrows of his brow relaxed and smoothed themselves; and the rest of his features, which had seemed contorted with internal agony, relapsed into a more natural state. When he raised his head and sat upright, his countenance, though still deeply melancholy, was divested of its wildness and ferocity; and in its composed state, although by no means handsome, the expression of his features was striking, manly, and even noble. His thick, brown eyebrows, which had hitherto been drawn close together, were now slightly separated, as in the natural state; and his grey eyes, which had rolled and flashed from under them with an unnatural and portentous gleam, now recovered a steady and determined expression.
“Thank God!” he said, after sitting silent for about a minute, until the very last sounds of the harp had ceased to vibrate, “my soul is no longer darkened—the mist hath passed from my spirit.”
“You owe thanks, cousin Allan,” said Lord Menteith, coming forward, “to Annot Lyle, as well as to heaven, for this happy change in your melancholy mood.”
“My noble cousin Menteith,” said Allan, rising and greeting him very respectfully, as well as kindly, “has known my unhappy circumstances so long, that his goodness will require no excuse for my being thus late in bidding him welcome to the castle.”
“We are too old acquaintances, Allan,” said Lord Menteith, “and too good friends, to stand on the ceremonial of outward greeting; but half the Highlands will be here to-day, and you know, with our mountain Chiefs, ceremony must not be neglected. What will you give little Annot for making you fit company to meet Evan Dhu, and I know not how many bonnets and feathers?”
“What will he give me?” said Annot, smiling; “nothing less, I hope, than the best ribbon at the Fair of Doune.”
“The Fair of Doune, Annot?” said Allan sadly; “there will be bloody work before that day, and I may never see it; but you have well reminded me of what I have long intended to do.”
Having said this, he left the room.
“Should he talk long in this manner,” said Lord Menteith, “you must keep your harp in tune, my dear Annot.”
“I hope not,” said Annot, anxiously; “this fit has been a long one, and probably will not soon return. It is fearful to see a mind, naturally generous and affectionate, afflicted by this constitutional malady.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 72 | “I hope not,” said Annot, anxiously; “this fit has been a long one, and probably will not soon return. It is fearful to see a mind, naturally generous and affectionate, afflicted by this constitutional malady.”
As she spoke in a low and confidential tone, Lord Menteith naturally drew close, and stooped forward, that he might the better catch the sense of what she said. When Allan suddenly entered the apartment, they as naturally drew back from each other with a manner expressive of consciousness, as if surprised in a conversation which they wished to keep secret from him. This did not escape Allan’s observation; he stopt short at the door of the apartment—his brows were contracted—his eyes rolled; but it was only the paroxysm of a moment. He passed his broad sinewy hand across his brow, as if to obliterate these signs of emotion, and advanced towards Annot, holding in his hand a very small box made of oakwood, curiously inlaid. “I take you to witness,” he said, “cousin Menteith, that I give this box and its contents to Annot Lyle. It contains a few ornaments that belonged to my poor mother—of trifling value, you may guess, for the wife of a Highland laird has seldom a rich jewel-casket.”
“But these ornaments,” said Annot Lyle, gently and timidly refusing the box, “belong to the family—I cannot accept—”
“They belong to me alone, Annot,” said Allan, interrupting her; “they were my mother’s dying bequest. They are all I can call my own, except my plaid and my claymore. Take them, therefore—they are to me valueless trinkets—and keep them for my sake—should I never return from these wars.”
So saying, he opened the case, and presented it to Annot. “If,” said he, “they are of any value, dispose of them for your own support, when this house has been consumed with hostile fire, and can no longer afford you protection. But keep one ring in memory of Allan, who has done, to requite your kindness, if not all he wished, at least all he could.”
Annot Lyle endeavoured in vain to restrain the gathering tears, when she said, “ONE ring, Allan, I will accept from you as a memorial of your goodness to a poor orphan, but do not press me to take more; for I cannot, and will not, accept a gift of such disproportioned value.”
“Make your choice, then,” said Allan; “your delicacy may be well founded; the others will assume a shape in which they may be more useful to you.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 73 | “Make your choice, then,” said Allan; “your delicacy may be well founded; the others will assume a shape in which they may be more useful to you.”
“Think not of it,” said Annot, choosing from the contents of the casket a ring, apparently the most trifling in value which it contained; “keep them for your own, or your brother’s bride.—But, good heavens!” she said, interrupting herself, and looking at the ring, “what is this that I have chosen?”
Allan hastened to look upon it, with eyes of gloomy apprehension; it bore, in enamel, a death’s head above two crossed daggers. When Allan recognised the device, he uttered a sigh so deep, that she dropped the ring from her hand, which rolled upon the floor. Lord Menteith picked it up, and returned it to the terrified Annot.
“I take God to witness,” said Allan, in a solemn tone, “that your hand, young lord, and not mine, has again delivered to her this ill-omened gift. It was the mourning ring worn by my mother in memorial of her murdered brother.”
“I fear no omens,” said Annot, smiling through her tears; “and nothing coming through the hands of my two patrons,” so she was wont to call Lord Menteith and Allan, “can bring bad luck to the poor orphan.”
She put the ring on her finger, and, turning to her harp, sung, to a lively air, the following verses of one of the fashionable songs of the period, which had found its way, marked as it was with the quaint hyperbolical taste of King Charles’s time, from some court masque to the wilds of Perthshire:— “Gaze not upon the stars, fond sage, In them no influence lies; To read the fate of youth or age, Look on my Helen’s eyes. “Yet, rash astrologer, refrain! Too dearly would be won The prescience of another’s pain, If purchased by thine own.”
“She is right, Allan,” said Lord Menteith; “and this end of an old song is worth all we shall gain by our attempt to look into futurity.”
“She is WRONG, my lord,” said Allan, sternly, “though you, who treat with lightness the warnings I have given you, may not live to see the event of the omen.—laugh not so scornfully,” he added, interrupting himself “or rather laugh on as loud and as long as you will; your term of laughter will find a pause ere long.”
“I care not for your visions, Allan,” said Lord Menteith; “however short my span of life, the eye of no Highland seer can see its termination.”
“For heaven’s sake,” said Annot Lyle, interrupting him, “you know his nature, and how little he can endure—” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 74 | “I care not for your visions, Allan,” said Lord Menteith; “however short my span of life, the eye of no Highland seer can see its termination.”
“For heaven’s sake,” said Annot Lyle, interrupting him, “you know his nature, and how little he can endure—”
“Fear me not,” said Allan, interrupting her,—“my mind is now constant and calm.—But for you, young lord,” said he, turning to Lord Menteith, “my eye has sought you through fields of battle, where Highlanders and Lowlanders lay strewed as thick as ever the rooks sat on those ancient trees,” pointing to a rookery which was seen from the window—“my eye sought you, but your corpse was not there—my eye sought you among a train of unresisting and disarmed captives, drawn up within the bounding walls of an ancient and rugged fortress;—flash after flash—platoon after platoon—the hostile shot fell amongst them, They dropped like the dry leaves in autumn, but you were not among their ranks;—scaffolds were prepared—blocks were arranged, saw-dust was spread—the priest was ready with his book, the headsman with his axe—but there, too, mine eye found you not.”
“The gibbet, then, I suppose, must be my doom?” said Lord Menteith. “Yet I wish they had spared me the halter, were it but for the dignity of the peerage.”
He spoke this scornfully, yet not without a sort of curiosity, and a wish to receive an answer; for the desire of prying into futurity frequently has some influence even on the minds of those who disavow all belief in the possibility of such predictions.
“Your rank, my lord, will suffer no dishonour in your person, or by the manner of your death. Three times have I seen a Highlander plant his dirk in your bosom—and such will be your fate.”
“I wish you would describe him to me,” said Lord Menteith, “and I shall save him the trouble of fulfilling your prophecy, if his plaid be passible to sword or pistol.”
“Your weapons,” said Allan, “would avail you little; nor can I give you the information you desire. The face of the vision has been ever averted from me.”
“So be it then,” said Lord Menteith, “and let it rest in the uncertainty in which your augury has placed it. I shall dine not the less merrily among plaids, and dirks, and kilts to-day.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 75 | “So be it then,” said Lord Menteith, “and let it rest in the uncertainty in which your augury has placed it. I shall dine not the less merrily among plaids, and dirks, and kilts to-day.”
“It may be so,” said Allan; “and, it may be, you do well to enjoy these moments, which to me are poisoned by auguries of future evil. But I,” he continued—“I repeat to you, that this weapon—that is, such a weapon as this,” touching the hilt of the dirk which he wore, “carries your fate.” “In the meanwhile,” said Lord Menteith, “you, Allan, have frightened the blood from the cheeks of Annot Lyle—let us leave this discourse, my friend, and go to see what we both understand,—the progress of our military preparations.”
They joined Angus M’Aulay and his English guests, and, in the military discussions which immediately took place, Allan showed a clearness of mind, strength of judgment, and precision of thought, totally inconsistent with the mystical light in which his character has been hitherto exhibited.
Whoever saw that morning, the Castle of Darnlinvarach, beheld a busy and a gallant sight.
The various Chiefs, arriving with their different retinues, which, notwithstanding their numbers, formed no more than their usual equipage and body-guard upon occasions of solemnity, saluted the lord of the castle and each other with overflowing kindness, or with haughty and distant politeness, according to the circumstances of friendship or hostility in which their clans had recently stood to each other. Each Chief, however small his comparative importance, showed the full disposition to exact from the rest the deference due to a separate and independent prince; while the stronger and more powerful, divided among themselves by recent contentions or ancient feuds, were constrained in policy to use great deference to the feelings of their less powerful brethren, in order, in case of need, to attach as many well-wishers as might be to their own interest and standard. Thus the meeting of Chiefs resembled not a little those ancient Diets of the Empire, where the smallest FREY-GRAF, who possessed a castle perched upon a barren crag, with a few hundred acres around it, claimed the state and honours of a sovereign prince, and a seat according to his rank among the dignitaries of the Empire.
The followers of the different leaders were separately arranged and accommodated, as room and circumstances best permitted, each retaining however his henchman, who waited, close as the shadow, upon his person, to execute whatever might be required by his patron. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 76 | The followers of the different leaders were separately arranged and accommodated, as room and circumstances best permitted, each retaining however his henchman, who waited, close as the shadow, upon his person, to execute whatever might be required by his patron.
The exterior of the castle afforded a singular scene. The Highlanders, from different islands, glens, and straths, eyed each other at a distance with looks of emulation, inquisitive curiosity, or hostile malevolence; but the most astounding part of the assembly, at least to a Lowland ear, was the rival performance of the bagpipers. These warlike minstrels, who had the highest opinion, each, of the superiority of his own tribe, joined to the most overweening idea of the importance connected with his profession, at first, performed their various pibrochs in front each of his own clan. At length, however, as the black-cocks towards the end of the season, when, in sportsman’s language, they are said to flock or crowd, attracted together by the sound of each others’ triumphant crow, even so did the pipers, swelling their plaids and tartans in the same triumphant manner in which the birds ruffle up their feathers, begin to approach each other within such distance as might give to their brethren a sample of their skill. Walking within a short interval, and eyeing each other with looks in which self-importance and defiance might be traced, they strutted, puffed, and plied their screaming instruments, each playing his own favourite tune with such a din, that if an Italian musician had lain buried within ten miles of them, he must have risen from the dead to run out of hearing. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 77 | The Chieftains meanwhile had assembled in close conclave in the great hall of the castle. Among them were the persons of the greatest consequence in the Highlands, some of them attracted by zeal for the royal cause, and many by aversion to that severe and general domination which the Marquis of Argyle, since his rising to such influence in the state, had exercised over his Highland neighbours. That statesman, indeed, though possessed of considerable abilities, and great power, had failings, which rendered him unpopular among the Highland chiefs. The devotion which he professed was of a morose and fanatical character; his ambition appeared to be insatiable, and inferior chiefs complained of his want of bounty and liberality. Add to this, that although a Highlander, and of a family distinguished for valour before and since, Gillespie Grumach [GRUMACH—ill-favored.] (which, from an obliquity in his eyes, was the personal distinction he bore in the Highlands, where titles of rank are unknown) was suspected of being a better man in the cabinet than in the field. He and his tribe were particularly obnoxious to the M’Donalds and the M’Leans, two numerous septs, who, though disunited by ancient feuds, agreed in an intense dislike to the Campbells, or, as they were called, the Children of Diarmid.
For some time the assembled Chiefs remained silent, until some one should open the business of the meeting. At length one of the most powerful of them commenced the diet by saying,—“We have been summoned hither, M’Aulay, to consult of weighty matters concerning the King’s affairs, and those of the state; and we crave to know by whom they are to be explained to us?” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 78 | M’Aulay, whose strength did not lie in oratory, intimated his wish that Lord Menteith should open the business of the council. With great modesty, and at the same time with spirit, that young lord said, “he wished what he was about to propose had come from some person of better known and more established character. Since, however, it lay with him to be spokesman, he had to state to the Chiefs assembled, that those who wished to throw off the base yoke which fanaticism had endeavoured to wreath round their necks, had not a moment to lose. ‘The Covenanters,’” he said, “after having twice made war upon their sovereign, and having extorted from him every request, reasonable or unreasonable, which they thought proper to demand—after their Chiefs had been loaded with dignities and favours—after having publicly declared, when his Majesty, after a gracious visit to the land of his nativity, was upon his return to England, that he returned a contented king from a contented people,—after all this, and without even the pretext for a national grievance, the same men have, upon doubts and suspicions, equally dishonourable to the King, and groundless in themselves, detached a strong army to assist his rebels in England, in a quarrel with which Scotland had no more to do than she has with the wars in Germany. It was well,” he said, “that the eagerness with which this treasonable purpose was pursued, had blinded the junta who now usurped the government of Scotland to the risk which they were about to incur. The army which they had dispatched to England under old Leven comprehended their veteran soldiers, the strength of those armies which had been levied in Scotland during the two former wars—”
Here Captain Dalgetty endeavoured to rise, for the purpose of explaining how many veteran officers, trained in the German wars, were, to his certain knowledge, in the army of the Earl of Leven. But Allan M’Aulay holding him down in his seat with one hand, pressed the fore-finger of the other upon his own lips, and, though with some difficulty, prevented his interference. Captain Dalgetty looked upon him with a very scornful and indignant air, by which the other’s gravity was in no way moved, and Lord Menteith proceeded without farther interruption. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 79 |
“The moment,” he said, “was most favourable for all true-hearted and loyal Scotchmen to show, that the reproach their country had lately undergone arose from the selfish ambition of a few turbulent and seditious men, joined to the absurd fanaticism which, disseminated from five hundred pulpits, had spread like a land-flood over the Lowlands of Scotland. He had letters from the Marquis of Huntly in the north, which he should show to the Chiefs separately. That nobleman, equally loyal and powerful was determined to exert his utmost energy in the common cause, and the powerful Earl of Seaforth was prepared to join the same standard. From the Earl of Airly, and the Ogilvies in Angusshire, he had had communications equally decided; and there was no doubt that these, who, with the Hays, Leiths, Burnets, and other loyal gentlemen, would be soon on horseback, would form a body far more than sufficient to overawe the northern Covenanters, who had already experienced their valour in the well-known rout which was popularly termed the Trot of Turiff. South of Forth and Tay,” he said, “the King had many friends, who, oppressed by enforced oaths, compulsatory levies, heavy taxes, unjustly imposed and unequally levied, by the tyranny of the Committee of Estates, and the inquisitorial insolence of the Presbyterian divines, waited but the waving of the royal banner to take up arms. Douglas, Traquair, Roxburgh, Hume, all friendly to the royal cause, would counterbalance,” he said, “the covenanting interest in the south; and two gentlemen, of name and quality, here present, from the north of England, would answer for the zeal of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Northumberland. Against so many gallant gentlemen the southern Covenanters could but arm raw levies; the Whigamores of the western shires, and the ploughmen and mechanics of the Low-country. For the West Highlands, he knew no interest which the Covenanters possessed there, except that of one individual, as well known as he was odious. But was there a single man, who, on casting his eye round this hall, and recognising the power, the gallantry, and the dignity of the chiefs assembled, could entertain a moment’s doubt of their success against the utmost force which Gillespie Grumach could collect against them? He had only farther to add, that considerable funds, both of money and ammunition, had been provided for the army”—(Here Dalgetty pricked up his ears)—“that officers of ability and experience in the foreign wars, one of whom was now present,” (the Captain drew himself up, and looked round,) “had engaged to train such levies as might require to be disciplined;—and that a numerous body of auxiliary forces from Ireland, having been detached from the Earl of Antrim, from Ulster, had successfully accomplished their descent upon the main land, and, with the assistance of Clanranald’s people, having taken and fortified the Castle of Mingarry, in spite of Argyle’s attempts to intercept them, were in full march to this place of rendezvous. It only remained,” he said, “that the noble Chiefs assembled, laying aside every lesser consideration, should unite, heart and hand, in the common cause; send the fiery cross through their clans, in order to collect their utmost force, and form their junction with such celerity as to leave the enemy no time, either for preparation, or recovery from the panic which would spread at the first sound of their pibroch. He himself,” he said, “though neither among the richest nor the most powerful of the Scottish nobility, felt that he had to support the dignity of an ancient and honourable house, the independence of an ancient and honourable nation, and to that cause he was determined to devote both life and fortune. If those who were more powerful were equally prompt, he trusted they would deserve the thanks of their King, and the gratitude of posterity.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 80 | Loud applause followed this speech of Lord Menteith, and testified the general acquiescence of all present in the sentiments which he had expressed; but when the shout had died away, the assembled Chiefs continued to gaze upon each other as if something yet remained to be settled. After some whispers among themselves, an aged man, whom his grey hairs rendered respectable, although he was not of the highest order of Chiefs, replied to what had been said.
“Thane of Menteith,” he said, “you have well spoken; nor is there one of us in whose bosom the same sentiments do not burn like fire. But it is not strength alone that wins the fight; it is the head of the commander, as well as the arm of the soldier, that brings victory. I ask of you who is to raise and sustain the banner under which we are invited to rise and muster ourselves? Will it be expected that we should risk our children, and the flower of our kinsmen, ere we know to whose guidance they are to be intrusted? This were leading those to slaughter, whom, by the laws of God and man, it is our duty to protect. Where is the royal commission, under which the lieges are to be convocated in arms? Simple and rude as we may be deemed, we know something of the established rules of war, as well as of the laws of our country; nor will we arm ourselves against the general peace of Scotland, unless by the express commands of the King, and under a leader fit to command such men as are here assembled.”
“Where would you find such a leader,” said another Chief, starting up, “saving the representative of the Lord of the Isles, entitled by birth and hereditary descent to lead forth the array of every clan of the Highlands; and where is that dignity lodged, save in the house of Vich Alister More?”
“I acknowledge,” said another Chief, eagerly interrupting the speaker, “the truth in what has been first said, but not the inference. If Vich Alister More desires to be held representative of the Lord of the Isles, let him first show his blood is redder than mine.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 81 | “I acknowledge,” said another Chief, eagerly interrupting the speaker, “the truth in what has been first said, but not the inference. If Vich Alister More desires to be held representative of the Lord of the Isles, let him first show his blood is redder than mine.”
“That is soon tried,” said Vich Alister More, laying his hand upon the basket hilt of his claymore. Lord Menteith threw himself between them, entreating and imploring each to remember that the interests of Scotland, the liberty of their country, and the cause of their King, ought to be superior in their eyes to any personal disputes respecting descent, rank, and precedence. Several of the Highland Chiefs, who had no desire to admit the claims of either chieftain, interfered to the same purpose, and none with more emphasis than the celebrated Evan Dhu.
“I have come from my lakes,” he said, “as a stream descends from the hills, not to turn again, but to accomplish my course. It is not by looking back to our own pretensions that we shall serve Scotland or King Charles. My voice shall be for that general whom the King shall name, who will doubtless possess those qualities which are necessary to command men like us. High-born he must be, or we shall lose our rank in obeying him—wise and skilful, or we shall endanger the safety of our people—bravest among the brave, or we shall peril our own honour—temperate, firm, and manly, to keep us united. Such is the man that must command us. Are you prepared, Thane of Menteith, to say where such a general is to be found?”
“There is but ONE,” said Allan M’Aulay; “and here,” he said, laying his hand upon the shoulder of Anderson, who stood behind Lord Menteith, “here he stands!”
The general surprise of the meeting was expressed by an impatient murmur; when Anderson, throwing back the cloak in which his face was muffled, and stepping forward, spoke thus:—“I did not long intend to be a silent spectator of this interesting scene, although my hasty friend has obliged me to disclose myself somewhat sooner than was my intention. Whether I deserve the honour reposed in me by this parchment will best appear from what I shall be able to do for the King’s service. It is a commission under the great seal, to James Graham, Earl of Montrose, to command those forces which are to be assembled for the service of his Majesty in this kingdom.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 82 | A loud shout of approbation burst from the assembly. There was, in fact, no other person to whom, in point of rank, these proud mountaineers would have been disposed to submit. His inveterate and hereditary hostility to the Marquis of Argyle insured his engaging in the war with sufficient energy, while his well-known military talents, and his tried valour, afforded every hope of his bringing it to a favourable conclusion.
No sooner had the general acclamation of joyful surprise subsided, than silence was eagerly demanded for reading the royal commission; and the bonnets, which hitherto each Chief had worn, probably because unwilling to be the first to uncover, were now at once vailed in honour of the royal warrant. It was couched in the most full and ample terms, authorizing the Earl of Montrose to assemble the subjects in arms, for the putting down the present rebellion, which divers traitors and seditious persons had levied against the King, to the manifest forfaulture, as it stated, of their allegiance, and to the breach of the pacification between the two kingdoms. It enjoined all subordinate authorities to be obedient and assisting to Montrose in his enterprise; gave him the power of making ordinances and proclamations, punishing misdemeanours, pardoning criminals, placing and displacing governors and commanders. In fine, it was as large and full a commission as any with which a prince could intrust a subject. As soon as it was finished, a shout burst from the assembled Chiefs, in testimony of their ready submission to the will of their sovereign. Not contented with generally thanking them for a reception so favourable, Montrose hastened to address himself to individuals, The most important Chiefs had already been long personally known to him, but even to those of inferior consequence he now introduced himself and by the acquaintance he displayed with their peculiar designations, and the circumstances and history of their clans, he showed how long he must have studied the character of the mountaineers, and prepared himself for such a situation as he now held. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 83 | While he was engaged in these acts of courtesy, his graceful manner, expressive features, and dignity of deportment, made a singular contrast with the coarseness and meanness of his dress. Montrose possessed that sort of form and face, in which the beholder, at the first glance, sees nothing extraordinary, but of which the interest becomes more impressive the longer we gaze upon them. His stature was very little above the middle size, but in person he was uncommonly well-built, and capable both of exerting great force, and enduring much fatigue. In fact, he enjoyed a constitution of iron, without which he could not have sustained the trials of his extraordinary campaigns, through all of which he subjected himself to the hardships of the meanest soldier. He was perfect in all exercises, whether peaceful or martial, and possessed, of course, that graceful ease of deportment proper to those to whom habit has rendered all postures easy.
His long brown hair, according to the custom of men of quality among the Royalists, was parted on the top of his head, and trained to hang down on each side in curled locks, one of which, descending two or three inches lower than the others, intimated Montrose’s compliance with that fashion against which it pleased Mr. Prynne, the puritan, to write a treatise, entitled, THE UNLOVELINESS OF LOVE-LOCKS. The features which these tresses enclosed, were of that kind which derive their interest from the character of the man, rather than from the regularity of their form. But a high nose, a full, decided, well-opened, quick grey eye, and a sanguine complexion, made amends for some coarseness and irregularity in the subordinate parts of the face; so that, altogether, Montrose might be termed rather a handsome, than a hard-featured man. But those who saw him when his soul looked through those eyes with all the energy and fire of genius—those who heard him speak with the authority of talent, and the eloquence of nature, were impressed with an opinion even of his external form, more enthusiastically favourable than the portraits which still survive would entitle us to ascribe to it. Such, at least, was the impression he made upon the assembled Chiefs of the mountaineers, over whom, as upon all persons in their state of society, personal appearance has no small influence. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 84 | In the discussions which followed his discovering himself, Montrose explained the various risks which he had run in his present undertaking. His first attempt had been to assemble a body of loyalists in the north of England, who, in obedience to the orders of the Marquis of Newcastle, he expected would have marched into Scotland; but the disinclination of the English to cross the Border, and the delay of the Earl of Antrim, who was to have landed in the Solway Frith with his Irish army, prevented his executing this design. Other plans having in like manner failed, he stated that he found himself under the necessity of assuming a disguise to render his passage secure through the Lowlands, in which he had been kindly assisted by his kinsman of Menteith. By what means Allan M’Aulay had come to know him, he could not pretend to explain. Those who knew Allan’s prophetic pretensions, smiled mysteriously; but he himself only replied, that “the Earl of Montrose need not be surprised if he was known to thousands, of whom he himself could retain no memory.”
“By the honour of a cavalier,” said Captain Dalgetty, finding at length an opportunity to thrust in his word, “I am proud and happy in having an opportunity of drawing a sword under your lordship’s command; and I do forgive all grudge, malecontent, and malice of my heart, to Mr. Allan M’Aulay, for having thrust me down to the lowest seat of the board yestreen. Certes, he hath this day spoken so like a man having full command of his senses, that I had resolved in my secret purpose that he was no way entitled to claim the privilege of insanity. But since I was only postponed to a noble earl, my future commander-in-chief, I do, before you all, recognise the justice of the preference, and heartily salute Allan as one who is to be his BON-CAMARADO.”
Having made this speech, which was little understood or attended to, without putting off his military glove, he seized on Allan’s hand, and began to shake it with violence, which Allan, with a gripe like a smith’s vice, returned with such force, as to drive the iron splents of the gauntlet into the hand of the wearer.
Captain Dalgetty might have construed this into a new affront, had not his attention, as he stood blowing and shaking the injured member, been suddenly called by Montrose himself.
“Hear this news,” he said, “Captain Dalgetty—I should say Major Dalgetty,—the Irish, who are to profit by your military experience, are now within a few leagues of us.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 85 | “Hear this news,” he said, “Captain Dalgetty—I should say Major Dalgetty,—the Irish, who are to profit by your military experience, are now within a few leagues of us.”
“Our deer-stalkers,” said Angus M’Aulay, “who were abroad to bring in venison for this honourable party, have heard of a band of strangers, speaking neither Saxon nor pure Gaelic, and with difficulty making themselves understood by the people of the country, who are marching this way in arms, under the leading, it is said, of Alaster M’Donald, who is commonly called Young Colkitto.”
“These must be our men,” said Montrose; “we must hasten to send messengers forward, both to act as guides and to relieve their wants.”
“The last,” said Angus M’Aulay, “will be no easy matter; for I am informed, that, excepting muskets and a very little ammunition, they want everything that soldiers should have; and they are particularly deficient in money, in shoes, and in raiment.”
“There is at least no use in saying so,” said Montrose, “in so loud a tone. The puritan weavers of Glasgow shall provide them plenty of broad-cloth, when we make a descent from the Highlands; and if the ministers could formerly preach the old women of the Scottish boroughs out of their webs of napery, to make tents to the fellows on Dunse Law, [The Covenanters encamped on Dunse Law, during the troubles of 1639.] I will try whether I have not a little interest both to make these godly dames renew their patriotic gift, and the prick-eared knaves, their husbands, open their purses.”
“And respecting arms,” said Captain Dalgetty, “if your lordship will permit an old cavalier to speak his mind, so that the one-third have muskets, my darling weapon would be the pike for the remainder, whether for resisting a charge of horse, or for breaking the infantry. A common smith will make a hundred pike-heads in a day; here is plenty of wood for shafts; and I will uphold, that, according to the best usages of war, a strong battalion of pikes, drawn up in the fashion of the Lion of the North, the immortal Gustavus, would beat the Macedonian phalanx, of which I used to read in the Mareschal-College, when I studied in the ancient town of Bon-accord; and further, I will venture to predicate—”
The Captain’s lecture upon tactics was here suddenly interrupted by Allan M’Aulay, who said, hastily,—“Room for an unexpected and unwelcome guest!” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 86 | The Captain’s lecture upon tactics was here suddenly interrupted by Allan M’Aulay, who said, hastily,—“Room for an unexpected and unwelcome guest!”
At the same moment, the door of the hall opened, and a grey-haired man, of a very stately appearance, presented himself to the assembly. There was much dignity, and even authority, in his manner. His stature was above the common size, and his looks such as were used to command. He cast a severe, and almost stern glance upon the assembly of Chiefs. Those of the higher rank among them returned it with scornful indifference; but some of the western gentlemen of inferior power, looked as if they wished themselves elsewhere.
“To which of this assembly,” said the stranger, “am I to address myself as leader? or have you not fixed upon the person who is to hold an office at least as perilous as it is honourable?”
“Address yourself to me, Sir Duncan Campbell,” said Montrose, stepping forward.
“To you!” said Sir Duncan Campbell, with some scorn.
“Yes,—to me,” repeated Montrose,—“to the Earl of Montrose, if you have forgot him.”
“I should now, at least,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “have had some difficulty in recognising him in the disguise of a groom.—and yet I might have guessed that no evil influence inferior to your lordship’s, distinguished as one who troubles Israel, could have collected together this rash assembly of misguided persons.”
“I will answer unto you,” said Montrose, “in the manner of your own Puritans. I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house. But let us leave an altercation, which is of little consequence but to ourselves, and hear the tidings you have brought from your Chief of Argyle; for I must conclude that it is in his name that you have come to this meeting.”
“It is in the name of the Marquis of Argyle,” said Sir Duncan Campbell,—“in the name of the Scottish Convention of Estates, that I demand to know the meaning of this singular convocation. If it is designed to disturb the peace of the country, it were but acting like neighbours, and men of honour, to give us some intimation to stand upon our guard.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 87 | “It is a singular, and new state of affairs in Scotland,” said Montrose, turning from Sir Duncan Campbell to the assembly, “when Scottish men of rank and family cannot meet in the house of a common friend without an inquisitorial visit and demand, on the part of our rulers, to know the subject of our conference. Methinks our ancestors were accustomed to hold Highland huntings, or other purposes of meeting, without asking the leave either of the great M’Callum More himself, or any of his emissaries or dependents.”
“The times have been such in Scotland,” answered one of the Western Chiefs, “and such they will again be, when the intruders on our ancient possessions are again reduced to be Lairds of Lochow instead of overspreading us like a band of devouring locusts.”
“Am I to understand, then,” said Sir Duncan, “that it is against my name alone that these preparations are directed? or are the race of Diarmid only to be sufferers in common with the whole of the peaceful and orderly inhabitants of Scotland?”
“I would ask,” said a wild-looking Chief, starting hastily up, “one question of the Knight of Ardenvohr, ere he proceeds farther in his daring catechism.—Has he brought more than one life to this castle, that he ventures to intrude among us for the purposes of insult?”
“Gentlemen,” said Montrose, “let me implore your patience; a messenger who comes among us for the purpose of embassy, is entitled to freedom of speech and safe-conduct. And since Sir Duncan Campbell is so pressing, I care not if I inform him, for his guidance, that he is in an assembly of the King’s loyal subjects, convoked by me, in his Majesty’s name and authority, and as empowered by his Majesty’s royal commission.”
“We are to have, then, I presume,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “a civil war in all its forms? I have been too long a soldier to view its approach with anxiety; but it would have been for my Lord of Montrose’s honour, if, in this matter, he had consulted his own ambition less, and the peace of the country more.”
“Those consulted their own ambition and self-interest, Sir Duncan,” answered Montrose, “who brought the country to the pass in which it now stands, and rendered necessary the sharp remedies which we are now reluctantly about to use.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 88 | “Those consulted their own ambition and self-interest, Sir Duncan,” answered Montrose, “who brought the country to the pass in which it now stands, and rendered necessary the sharp remedies which we are now reluctantly about to use.”
“And what rank among these self-seekers,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “we shall assign to a noble Earl, so violently attached to the Covenant, that he was the first, in 1639, to cross the Tyne, wading middle deep at the head of his regiment, to charge the royal forces? It was the same, I think, who imposed the Covenant upon the burgesses and colleges of Aberdeen, at the point of sword and pike.”
“I understand your sneer, Sir Duncan,” said Montrose, temperately; “and I can only add, that if sincere repentance can make amends for youthful error, and for yielding to the artful representation of ambitious hypocrites, I shall be pardoned for the crimes with which you taunt me. I will at least endeavour to deserve forgiveness, for I am here, with my sword in my hand, willing to spend the best blood of my body to make amends for my error; and mortal man can do no more.”
“Well, my lord,” said Sir Duncan, “I shall be sorry to carry back this language to the Marquis of Argyle. I had it in farther charge from the Marquis, that, to prevent the bloody feuds which must necessarily follow a Highland war, his lordship will be contented if terms of truce could be arranged to the north of the Highland line, as there is ground enough in Scotland to fight upon, without neighbours destroying each other’s families and inheritances.”
“It is a peaceful proposal,” said Montrose, smiling, “such as it should be, coming from one whose personal actions have always been more peaceful than his measures. Yet, if the terms of such a truce could be equally fixed, and if we can obtain security, for that, Sir Duncan, is indispensable,—that your Marquis will observe these terms with strict fidelity, I, for my part, should be content to leave peace behind us, since we must needs carry war before us. But, Sir Duncan, you are too old and experienced a soldier for us to permit you to remain in our leaguer, and witness our proceedings; we shall therefore, when you have refreshed yourself, recommend your speedy return to Inverary, and we shall send with you a gentleman on our part to adjust the terms of the Highland armistice, in case the Marquis shall be found serious in proposing such a measure.” Sir Duncan Campbell assented by a bow. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 89 | “My Lord of Menteith,” continued Montrose, “will you have the goodness to attend Sir Duncan Campbell of Ardenvohr, while we determine who shall return with him to his Chief? M’Aulay will permit us to request that he be entertained with suitable hospitality.”
“I will give orders for that,” said Allan M’Aulay, rising and coming forward. “I love Sir Duncan Campbell; we have been joint sufferers in former days, and I do not forget it now.”
“My Lord of Menteith,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “I am grieved to see you, at your early age, engaged in such desperate and rebellious courses.”
“I am young,” answered Menteith, “yet old enough to distinguish between right and wrong, between loyalty and rebellion; and the sooner a good course is begun, the longer and the better have I a chance of running it.”
“And you too, my friend, Allan M’Aulay,” said Sir Duncan, taking his hand, “must we also call each other enemies, that have been so often allied against a common foe?” Then turning round to the meeting, he said, “Farewell, gentlemen; there are so many of you to whom I wish well, that your rejection of all terms of mediation gives me deep affliction. May Heaven,” he said, looking upwards, “judge between our motives, and those of the movers of this civil commotion!”
“Amen,” said Montrose; “to that tribunal we all submit us.”
Sir Duncan Campbell left the hall, accompanied by Allan M’Aulay and Lord Menteith. “There goes a true-bred Campbell,” said Montrose, as the envoy departed, “for they are ever fair and false.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” said Evan Dhu; “hereditary enemy as I am to their name, I have ever found the Knight of Ardenvohr brave in war, honest in peace, and true in council.”
“Of his own disposition,” said Montrose, “such he is undoubtedly; but he now acts as the organ or mouth-piece of his Chief, the Marquis, the falsest man that ever drew breath. And, M’Aulay,” he continued in a whisper to his host, “lest he should make some impression upon the inexperience of Menteith, or the singular disposition of your brother, you had better send music into their chamber, to prevent his inveigling them into any private conference.”
“The devil a musician have I,” answered M’Aulay, “excepting the piper, who has nearly broke his wind by an ambitious contention for superiority with three of his own craft; but I can send Annot Lyle and her harp.” And he left the apartment to give orders accordingly. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 90 | “The devil a musician have I,” answered M’Aulay, “excepting the piper, who has nearly broke his wind by an ambitious contention for superiority with three of his own craft; but I can send Annot Lyle and her harp.” And he left the apartment to give orders accordingly.
Meanwhile a warm discussion took place, who should undertake the perilous task of returning with Sir Duncan to Inverary. To the higher dignitaries, accustomed to consider themselves upon an equality even with M’Callum More, this was an office not to be proposed; unto others who could not plead the same excuse, it was altogether unacceptable. One would have thought Inverary had been the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the inferior chiefs showed such reluctance to approach it. After a considerable hesitation, the plain reason was at length spoken out, namely, that whatever Highlander should undertake an office so distasteful to M’Callum More, he would be sure to treasure the offence in his remembrance, and one day or other to make him bitterly repent of it.
In this dilemma, Montrose, who considered the proposed armistice as a mere stratagem on the part of Argyle, although he had not ventured bluntly to reject it in presence of those whom it concerned so nearly, resolved to impose the danger and dignity upon Captain Dalgetty, who had neither clan nor estate in the Highlands upon which the wrath of Argyle could wreak itself.
“But I have a neck though,” said Dalgetty, bluntly; “and what if he chooses to avenge himself upon that? I have known a case where an honourable ambassador has been hanged as a spy before now. Neither did the Romans use ambassadors much more mercifully at the siege of Capua, although I read that they only cut off their hands and noses, put out their eyes, and suffered them to depart in peace.”
“By my honour Captain Dalgetty,” said Montrose, “should the Marquis, contrary to the rules of war, dare to practise any atrocity against you, you may depend upon my taking such signal vengeance that all Scotland shall ring of it.”
“That will do but little for Dalgetty,” returned the Captain; “but corragio! as the Spaniard says. With the Land of Promise full in view, the Moor of Drumthwacket, MEA PAUPERA REGNA, as we said at Mareschal-College, I will not refuse your Excellency’s commission, being conscious it becomes a cavalier of honour to obey his commander’s orders, in defiance both of gibbet and sword.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 91 | “Gallantly resolved,” said Montrose; “and if you will come apart with me, I will furnish you with the conditions to be laid before M’Callum More, upon which we are willing to grant him a truce for his Highland dominions.”
With these we need not trouble our readers. They were of an evasive nature, calculated to meet a proposal which Montrose considered to have been made only for the purpose of gaining time. When he had put Captain Dalgetty in complete possession of his instructions, and when that worthy, making his military obeisance, was near the door of his apartment, Montrose made him a sign to return.
“I presume,” said he, “I need not remind an officer who has served under the great Gustavus, that a little more is required of a person sent with a flag of truce than mere discharge of his instructions, and that his general will expect from him, on his return, some account of the state of the enemy’s affairs, as far as they come under his observation. In short, Captain Dalgetty, you must be UN PEU CLAIR-VOYANT.”
“Ah ha! your Excellency,” said the Captain, twisting his hard features into an inimitable expression of cunning and intelligence, “if they do not put my head in a poke, which I have known practised upon honourable soldados who have been suspected to come upon such errands as the present, your Excellency may rely on a preceese narration of whatever Dugald Dalgetty shall hear or see, were it even how many turns of tune there are in M’Callum More’s pibroch, or how many checks in the sett of his plaid and trews.”
“Enough,” answered Montrose; “farewell, Captain Dalgetty: and as they say that a lady’s mind is always expressed in her postscript, so I would have you think that the most important part of your commission lies in what I have last said to you.”
Dalgetty once more grinned intelligence, and withdrew to victual his charger and himself, for the fatigues of his approaching mission.
At the door of the stable, for Gustavus always claimed his first care,—he met Angus M’Aulay and Sir Miles Musgrave, who had been looking at his horse; and, after praising his points and carriage, both united in strongly dissuading the Captain from taking an animal of such value with him upon his present very fatiguing journey. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 92 | Angus painted in the most alarming colours the roads, or rather wild tracks, by which it would be necessary for him to travel into Argyleshire, and the wretched huts or bothies where he would be condemned to pass the night, and where no forage could be procured for his horse, unless he could eat the stumps of old heather. In short, he pronounced it absolutely impossible, that, after undertaking such a pilgrimage, the animal could be in any case for military service. The Englishman strongly confirmed all that Angus had said, and gave himself, body and soul, to the devil, if he thought it was not an act little short of absolute murder to carry a horse worth a farthing into such a waste and inhospitable desert. Captain Dalgetty for an instant looked steadily, first at one of the gentlemen and next at the other, and then asked them, as if in a state of indecision, what they would advise him to do with Gustavus under such circumstances.
“By the hand of my father, my dear friend,” answered M’Aulay, “if you leave the beast in my keeping, you may rely on his being fed and sorted according to his worth and quality, and that upon your happy return, you will find him as sleek as an onion boiled in butter.”
“Or,” said Sir Miles Musgrave, “if this worthy cavalier chooses to part with his charger for a reasonable sum, I have some part of the silver candlesticks still dancing the heys in my purse, which I shall be very willing to transfer to his.”
“In brief, mine honourable friends,” said Captain Dalgetty, again eyeing them both with an air of comic penetration, “I find it would not be altogether unacceptable to either of you, to have some token to remember the old soldier by, in case it shall please M’Callum More to hang him up at the gate of his own castle. And doubtless it would be no small satisfaction to me, in such an event, that a noble and loyal cavalier like Sir Miles Musgrave, or a worthy and hospitable chieftain like our excellent landlord, should act as my executor.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 93 | Both hastened to protest that they had no such object, and insisted again upon the impassable character of the Highland paths. Angus M’Aulay mumbled over a number of hard Gaellic names, descriptive of the difficult passes, precipices, corries, and beals, through which he said the road lay to Inverary, when old Donald, who had now entered, sanctioned his master’s account of these difficulties, by holding up his hands, and elevating his eyes, and shaking his head, at every gruttural which M’Aulay pronounced. But all this did not move the inflexible Captain.
“My worthy friends,” said he, “Gustavus is not new to the dangers of travelling, and the mountains of Bohemia; and (no disparagement to the beals and corries Mr. Angus is pleased to mention, and of which Sir Miles, who never saw them, confirms the horrors,) these mountains may compete with the vilest roads in Europe. In fact, my horse hath a most excellent and social quality; for although he cannot pledge in my cup, yet we share our loaf between us, and it will be hard if he suffers famine where cakes or bannocks are to be found. And, to cut this matter short, I beseech you, my good friends, to observe the state of Sir Duncan Campbell’s palfrey, which stands in that stall before us, fat and fair; and, in return for your anxiety an my account, I give you my honest asseveration, that while we travel the same road, both that palfrey and his rider shall lack for food before either Gustavus or I.”
Having said this he filled a large measure with corn, and walked up with it to his charger, who, by his low whinnying neigh, his pricked ears, and his pawing, showed how close the alliance was betwixt him and his rider. Nor did he taste his corn until he had returned his master’s caresses, by licking his hands and face. After this interchange of greeting, the steed began to his provender with an eager dispatch, which showed old military habits; and the master, after looking on the animal with great complacency for about five minutes, said,—“Much good may it do your honest heart, Gustavus;—now must I go and lay in provant myself for the campaign.”
He then departed, having first saluted the Englishman and Angus M’Aulay, who remained looking at each other for some time in silence, and then burst out into a fit of laughter.
“That fellow,” said Sir Miles Musgrave, “is formed to go through the world.”
“I shall think so too,” said M’Aulay, “if he can slip through M’Callum More’s fingers as easily as he has done through ours.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 94 | “That fellow,” said Sir Miles Musgrave, “is formed to go through the world.”
“I shall think so too,” said M’Aulay, “if he can slip through M’Callum More’s fingers as easily as he has done through ours.”
“Do you think,” said the Englishman, “that the Marquis will not respect, in Captain Dalgetty’s person, the laws of civilized war?”
“No more than I would respect a Lowland proclamation,” said Angus M’Aulay.—“But come along, it is time I were returning to my guests.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 95 | “Do you think,” said the Englishman, “that the Marquis will not respect, in Captain Dalgetty’s person, the laws of civilized war?”
“No more than I would respect a Lowland proclamation,” said Angus M’Aulay.—“But come along, it is time I were returning to my guests.”
“It grieved him to the very heart,” he said, “to see that friends and neighbours, who should stand shoulder to shoulder, were likely to be engaged hand to hand in a cause which so little concerned them. What signifies it,” he said, “to the Highland Chiefs, whether King or Parliament got uppermost? Were it not better to let them settle their own differences without interference, while the Chiefs, in the meantime, took the opportunity of establishing their own authority in a manner not to be called in question hereafter by either King or Parliament?” He reminded Allan M’Aulay that the measures taken in the last reign to settle the peace, as was alleged, of the Highlands, were in fact levelled at the patriarchal power of the Chieftains; and he mentioned the celebrated settlement of the Fife Undertakers, as they were called, in the Lewis, as part of a deliberate plan, formed to introduce strangers among the Celtic tribes, to destroy by degrees their ancient customs and mode of government, and to despoil them of the inheritance of their fathers. [In the reign of James VI., an attempt of rather an extraordinary kind was made to civilize the extreme northern part of the Hebridean Archipelago. That monarch granted the property of the Island of Lewis, as if it had been an unknown and savage country, to a number of Lowland gentlemen, called undertakers, chiefly natives of the shire of Fife, that they might colonize and settle there. The enterprise was at first successful, but the natives of the island, MacLeods and MacKenzies, rose on the Lowland adventurers, and put most of them to the sword.] “And yet,” he continued, addressing Allan, “it is for the purpose of giving despotic authority to the monarch by whom these designs have been nursed, that so many Highland Chiefs are upon the point of quarrelling with, and drawing the sword against, their neighbours, allies, and ancient confederates.” “It is to my brother,” said Allan, “it is to the eldest son of my father’s house, that the Knight of Ardenvohr must address these remonstrances. I am, indeed, the brother of Angus; but in being so, I am only the first of his clansmen, and bound to show an example to the others by my cheerful and ready obedience to his commands.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 96 | “The cause also,” said Lord Menteith, interposing, “is far more general than Sir Duncan Campbell seems to suppose it. It is neither limited to Saxon nor to Gael, to mountain nor to strath, to Highlands nor to Lowlands. The question is, if we will continue to be governed by the unlimited authority assumed by a set of persons in no respect superior to ourselves, instead of returning to the natural government of the Prince against whom they have rebelled. And respecting the interest of the Highlands in particular,” he added, “I crave Sir Duncan Campbell’s pardon for my plainness; but it seems very clear to me, that the only effect produced by the present usurpation, will be the aggrandisement of one overgrown clan at the expense of every independent Chief in the Highlands.”
“I will not reply to you, my lord,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “because I know your prejudices, and from whom they are borrowed; yet you will pardon my saying, that being at the head of a rival branch of the House of Graham, I have both read of and known an Earl of Menteith, who would have disdained to have been tutored in politics, or to have been commanded in war, by an Earl of Montrose.”
“You will find it in vain, Sir Duncan,” said Lord Menteith, haughtily, “to set my vanity in arms against my principles. The King gave my ancestors their title and rank; and these shall never prevent my acting, in the royal cause, under any one who is better qualified than myself to be a commander-in-chief. Least of all, shall any miserable jealousy prevent me from placing my hand and sword under the guidance of the bravest, the most loyal, the most heroic spirit among our Scottish nobility.”
“Pity,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “that you cannot add to this panegyric the farther epithets of the most steady, and the most consistent. But I have no purpose of debating these points with you, my lord,” waving his hand, as if to avoid farther discussion; “the die is cast with you; allow me only to express my sorrow for the disastrous fate to which Angus M’Aulay’s natural rashness, and your lordship’s influence, are dragging my gallant friend Allan here, with his father’s clan, and many a brave man besides.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 97 | “The die is cast for us all, Sir Duncan,” replied Allan, looking gloomy, and arguing on his own hypochondriac feelings; “the iron hand of destiny branded our fate upon our forehead long ere we could form a wish, or raise a finger in our own behalf. Were this otherwise, by what means does the Seer ascertain the future from those shadowy presages which haunt his waking and his sleeping eye? Nought can be foreseen but that which is certain to happen.”
Sir Duncan Campbell was about to reply, and the darkest and most contested point of metaphysics might have been brought into discussion betwixt two Highland disputants, when the door opened, and Annot Lyle, with her clairshach in her hand, entered the apartment. The freedom of a Highland maiden was in her step and in her eye; for, bred up in the closest intimacy with the Laird of M’Aulay and his brother, with Lord Menteith, and other young men who frequented Darnlinvarach, she possessed none of that timidity which a female, educated chiefly among her own sex, would either have felt, or thought necessary to assume, on an occasion like the present.
Her dress partook of the antique, for new fashions seldom penetrated into the Highlands, nor would they easily have found their way to a castle inhabited chiefly by men, whose sole occupation was war and the chase. Yet Annot’s garments were not only becoming, but even rich. Her open jacket, with a high collar, was composed of blue cloth, richly embroidered, and had silver clasps to fasten, when it pleased the wearer. Its sleeves, which were wide, came no lower than the elbow, and terminated in a golden fringe; under this upper coat, if it can be so termed, she wore an under dress of blue satin, also richly embroidered, but which was several shades lighter in colour than the upper garment. The petticoat was formed of tartan silk, in the sett, or pattern, of which the colour of blue greatly predominated, so as to remove the tawdry effect too frequently produced in tartan, by the mixture and strong opposition of colours. An antique silver chain hung round her neck, and supported the WREST, or key, with which she turned her instrument. A small ruff rose above her collar, and was secured by a brooch of some value, an old keepsake from Lord Menteith. Her profusion of light hair almost hid her laughing eyes, while, with a smile and a blush, she mentioned that she had M’Aulay’s directions to ask them if they chose music. Sir Duncan Campbell gazed with considerable surprise and interest at the lovely apparition, which thus interrupted his debate with Allan M’Aulay. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 98 | “Can this,” he said to him in a whisper, “a creature so beautiful and so elegant, be a domestic musician of your brother’s establishment?”
“By no means,” answered Allan, hastily, yet with some hesitation; “she is a—a—near relation of our family—and treated,” he added, more firmly, “as an adopted daughter of our father’s house.”
As he spoke thus, he arose from his seat, and with that air of courtesy which every Highlander can assume when it suits him to practise it, he resigned it to Annot, and offered to her, at the same time, whatever refreshments the table afforded, with an assiduity which was probably designed to give Sir Duncan an impression of her rank and consequence. If such was Allan’s purpose, however, it was unnecessary. Sir Duncan kept his eyes fixed upon Annot with an expression of much deeper interest than could have arisen from any impression that she was a person of consequence. Annot even felt embarrassed under the old knight’s steady gaze; and it was not without considerable hesitation, that, tuning her instrument, and receiving an assenting look from Lord Menteith and Allan, she executed the following ballad, which our friend, Mr. Secundus M’Pherson, whose goodness we had before to acknowledge, has thus translated into the English tongue:
THE ORPHAN MAID. November’s hail-cloud drifts away,November’s sunbeam wan Looks coldly on the castle grey, When forth comes Lady Anne. The orphan by the oak was set, Her arms, her feet, were bare, The hail-drops had not melted yet, Amid her raven hair. “And, Dame,” she said, “by all the ties That child and mother know, Aid one who never knew these joys, Relieve an orphan’s woe.” The Lady said, “An orphan’s state Is hard and sad to bear; Yet worse the widow’d mother’s fate, Who mourns both lord and heir. “Twelve times the rolling year has sped, Since, when from vengeance wild Of fierce Strathallan’s Chief I fled, Forth’s eddies whelm’d my child.” “Twelve times the year its course has born,” The wandering maid replied, “Since fishers on St. Bridget’s morn Drew nets on Campsie side. “St. Bridget sent no scaly spoil;— An infant, wellnigh dead, They saved, and rear’d in want and toil, To beg from you her bread.” That orphan maid the lady kiss’d— “My husband’s looks you bear; St. Bridget and her morn be bless’d! You are his widow’s heir.” They’ve robed that maid, so poor and pale, In silk and sandals rare; And pearls, for drops of frozen hail, Are glistening in her hair. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 99 | The admirers of pure Celtic antiquity, notwithstanding the elegance of the above translation, may be desirous to see a literal version from the original Gaelic, which we therefore subjoin; and have only to add, that the original is deposited with Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham.
LITERAL TRANSLATION. The hail-blast had drifted away upon the wings of the gale of autumn. The sun looked from between the clouds, pale as the wounded hero who rears his head feebly on the heath when the roar of battle hath passed over him. Finele, the Lady of the Castle, came forth to see her maidens pass to the herds with their leglins [Milk-pails]. There sat an orphan maiden beneath the old oak-tree of appointment. The withered leaves fell around her, and her heart was more withered than they. The parent of the ice [poetically taken from the frost] still congealed the hail-drops in her hair; they were like the specks of white ashes on the twisted boughs of the blackened and half-consumed oak that blazes in the hall. And the maiden said, “Give me comfort, Lady, I am an orphan child.” And the Lady replied, “How can I give that which I have not? I am the widow of a slain lord,—the mother of a perished child. When I fled in my fear from the vengeance of my husband’s foes, our bark was overwhelmed in the tide, and my infant perished. This was on St. Bridget’s morn, near the strong Lyns of Campsie. May ill luck light upon the day.” And the maiden answered, “It was on St. Bridget’s morn, and twelve harvests before this time, that the fishermen of Campsie drew in their nets neither grilse nor salmon, but an infant half dead, who hath since lived in misery, and must die, unless she is now aided.” And the Lady answered, “Blessed be Saint Bridget and her morn, for these are the dark eyes and the falcon look of my slain lord; and thine shall be the inheritance of his widow.” And she called for her waiting attendants, and she bade them clothe that maiden in silk, and in samite; and the pearls which they wove among her black tresses, were whiter than the frozen hail-drops. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 100 | While the song proceeded, Lord Menteith observed, with some surprise, that it appeared to produce a much deeper effect upon the mind of Sir Duncan Campbell, than he could possibly have anticipated from his age and character. He well knew that the Highlanders of that period possessed a much greater sensibility both for tale and song than was found among their Lowland neighbours; but even this, he thought, hardly accounted for the embarrassment with which the old man withdrew his eyes from the songstress, as if unwilling to suffer them to rest on an object so interesting. Still less was it to be expected, that features which expressed pride, stern common sense, and the austere habit of authority, should have been so much agitated by so trivial a circumstance. As the Chief’s brow became clouded, he drooped his large shaggy grey eyebrows until they almost concealed his eyes, on the lids of which something like a tear might be seen to glisten. He remained silent and fixed in the same posture for a minute or two, after the last note had ceased to vibrate. He then raised his head, and having looked at Annot Lyle, as if purposing to speak to her, he as suddenly changed that purpose, and was about to address Allan, when the door opened, and the Lord of the Castle made his appearance.
Angus M’Aulay was charged with a message which he seemed to find some difficulty in communicating; for it was not till after he had framed his speech several different ways, and blundered them all, that he succeeded in letting Sir Duncan Campbell know, that the cavalier who was to accompany him was waiting in readiness, and that all was prepared for his return to Inverary. Sir Duncan Campbell rose up very indignantly; the affront which this message implied immediately driving out of his recollection the sensibility which had been awakened by the music.
“I little expected this,” he said, looking indignantly at Angus M’Aulay. “I little thought that there was a Chief in the West Highlands, who, at the pleasure of a Saxon, would have bid the Knight of Ardenvohr leave his castle, when the sun was declining from the meridian, and ere the second cup had been filled. But farewell, sir, the food of a churl does not satisfy the appetite; when I next revisit Darnlinvarach, it shall be with a naked sword in one hand, and a firebrand in the other.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 101 | “And if you so come,” said Angus, “I pledge myself to meet you fairly, though you brought five hundred Campbells at your back, and to afford you and them such entertainment, that you shall not again complain of the hospitality of Darnlinvarach.”
“Threatened men,” said Sir Duncan, “live long. Your turn for gasconading, Laird of M’Aulay, is too well known, that men of honour should regard your vaunts. To you, my lord, and to Allan, who have supplied the place of my churlish host, I leave my thanks.—And to you, pretty mistress,” he said, addressing Annot Lyle, “this little token, for having opened a fountain which hath been dry for many a year.” So saying, he left the apartment, and commanded his attendants to be summoned. Angus M’Aulay, equally embarrassed and incensed at the charge of inhospitality, which was the greatest possible affront to a Highlander, did not follow Sir Duncan to the court-yard, where, mounting his palfrey, which was in readiness, followed by six mounted attendants, and accompanied by the noble Captain Dalgetty, who had also awaited him, holding Gustavus ready for action, though he did not draw his girths and mount till Sir Duncan appeared, the whole cavalcade left the castle.
The journey was long and toilsome, but without any of the extreme privations which the Laird of M’Aulay had prophesied. In truth, Sir Duncan was very cautious to avoid those nearer and more secret paths, by means of which the county of Argyle was accessible from the eastward; for his relation and chief, the Marquis, was used to boast, that he would not for a hundred thousand crowns any mortal should know the passes by which an armed force could penetrate into his country.
Sir Duncan Campbell, therefore, rather shunned the Highlands, and falling into the Low-country, made for the nearest seaport in the vicinity, where he had several half-decked galleys, or birlings, as they were called, at his command. In one of these they embarked, with Gustavus in company, who was so seasoned to adventure, that land and sea seemed as indifferent to him as to his master.
The wind being favourable, they pursued their way rapidly with sails and oars; and early the next morning it was announced to Captain Dalgetty, then in a small cabin beneath the hall-deck, that the galley was under the walls of Sir Duncan Campbell’s castle. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 102 | The wind being favourable, they pursued their way rapidly with sails and oars; and early the next morning it was announced to Captain Dalgetty, then in a small cabin beneath the hall-deck, that the galley was under the walls of Sir Duncan Campbell’s castle.
Ardenvohr, accordingly, rose high above him, when he came upon the deck of the galley. It was a gloomy square tower, of considerable size and great height, situated upon a headland projecting into the salt-water lake, or arm of the sea, which they had entered on the preceding evening. A wall, with flanking towers at each angle, surrounded the castle to landward; but, towards the lake, it was built so near the brink of the precipice as only to leave room for a battery of seven guns, designed to protect the fortress from any insult from that side, although situated too high to be of any effectual use according to the modern system of warfare.
The eastern sun, rising behind the old tower, flung its shadow far on the lake, darkening the deck of the galley, on which Captain Dalgetty now walked, waiting with some impatience the signal to land. Sir Duncan Campbell, as he was informed by his attendants, was already within the walls of the castle; but no one encouraged the Captain’s proposal of following him ashore, until, as they stated, they should receive the direct permission or order of the Knight of Ardenvohr. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 103 | In a short time afterwards the mandate arrived, while a boat, with a piper in the bow, bearing the Knight of Ardenvohr’s crest in silver upon his left arm, and playing with all his might the family march, entitled “The Campbells are coming,” approached to conduct the envoy of Montrose to the castle of Ardenvohr. The distance between the galley and the beach was so short as scarce to require the assistance of the eight sturdy rowers, in bonnets, short coats, and trews, whose efforts sent the boat to the little creek in which they usually landed, before one could have conceived that it had left the side of the birling. Two of the boatmen, in spite of Dalgetty’s resistance, horsed the Captain on the back of a third Highlander, and, wading through the surf with him, landed him high and dry upon the beach beneath the castle rock. In the face of this rock there appeared something like the entrance of a low-browed cavern, towards which the assistants were preparing to hurry our friend Dalgetty, when, shaking himself loose from them with some difficulty, he insisted upon seeing Gustavus safely landed before he proceeded one step farther. The Highlanders could not comprehend what he meant, until one who had picked up a little English, or rather Lowland Scotch, exclaimed, “Houts! it’s a’ about her horse, ta useless baste.” Farther remonstrance on the part of Captain Dalgetty was interrupted by the appearance of Sir Duncan Campbell himself, from the mouth of the cavern which we have described, for the purpose of inviting Captain Dalgetty to accept of the hospitality of Ardenvohr, pledging his honour, at the same time, that Gustavus should be treated as became the hero from whom he derived his name, not to mention the important person to whom he now belonged. Notwithstanding this satisfactory guarantee, Captain Dalgetty would still have hesitated, such was his anxiety to witness the fate of his companion Gustavus, had not two Highlanders seized him by the arms, two more pushed him on behind, while a fifth exclaimed, “Hout awa wi’ the daft Sassenach! does she no hear the Laird bidding her up to her ain castle, wi’ her special voice, and isna that very mickle honour for the like o’ her?”
Thus impelled, Captain Dalgetty could only for a short space keep a reverted eye towards the galley in which he had left the partner of his military toils. In a few minutes afterwards he found himself involved in the total darkness of a staircase, which, entering from the low-browed cavern we have mentioned, winded upwards through the entrails of the living rock. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 104 | “The cursed Highland salvages!” muttered the Captain, half aloud; “what is to become of me, if Gustavus, the namesake of the invincible Lion of the Protestant League, should be lamed among their untenty hands!”
“Have no fear of that,” said the voice of Sir Duncan, who was nearer to him than he imagined; “my men are accustomed to handle horses, both in embarking and dressing them, and you will soon see Gustavus as safe as when you last dismounted from his back.”
Captain Dalgetty knew the world too well to offer any farther remonstrance, whatever uneasiness he might suppress within his own bosom. A step or two higher up the stair showed light and a door, and an iron-grated wicket led him out upon a gallery cut in the open face of the rock, extending a space of about six or eight yards, until he reached a second door, where the path re-entered the rock, and which was also defended by an iron portcullis. “An admirable traverse,” observed the Captain; “and if commanded by a field-piece, or even a few muskets, quite sufficient to ensure the place against a storming party.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 105 | Sir Duncan Campbell made no answer at the time; but, the moment afterwards, when they had entered the second cavern, he struck with the stick which he had in his hand, first on the one side, and then on the other of the wicket, and the sullen ringing sound which replied to the blows, made Captain Dalgetty sensible that there was a gun placed on each side, for the purpose of raking the gallery through which they had passed, although the embrasures, through which they might be fired on occasion, were masked on the outside with sods and loose stones. Having ascended the second staircase, they found themselves again on an open platform and gallery, exposed to a fire both of musketry and wall-guns, if, being come with hostile intent, they had ventured farther. A third flight of steps, cut in the rock like the former, but not caverned over, led them finally into the battery at the foot of the tower. This last stair also was narrow and steep, and, not to mention the fire which might be directed on it from above, one or two resolute men, with pikes and battle-axes, could have made the pass good against hundreds; for the staircase would not admit two persons abreast, and was not secured by any sort of balustrade, or railing, from the sheer and abrupt precipice, on the foot of which the tide now rolled with a voice of thunder. So that, under the jealous precautions used to secure this ancient Celtic fortress, a person of weak nerves, and a brain liable to become dizzy, might have found it something difficult to have achieved the entrance to the castle, even supposing no resistance had been offered.
Captain Dalgetty, too old a soldier to feel such tremors, had no sooner arrived in the court-yard, than he protested to God, the defences of Sir Duncan’s castle reminded him more of the notable fortress of Spandau, situated in the March of Brandenburg, than of any place whilk it had been his fortune to defend in the course of his travels. Nevertheless, he criticised considerably the mode of placing the guns on the battery we have noticed, observing, that “where cannon were perched, like to scarts or sea-gulls on the top of a rock, he had ever observed that they astonished more by their noise than they dismayed by the skaith or damage which they occasioned.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 106 | Sir Duncan, without replying, conducted the soldier into the tower; the defences of which were a portcullis and ironclenched oaken door, the thickness of the wall being the space between them. He had no sooner arrived in a hall hung with tapestry, than the Captain prosecuted his military criticism. It was indeed suspended by the sight of an excellent breakfast, of which he partook with great avidity; but no sooner had he secured this meal, than he made the tour of the apartment, examining the ground around the Castle very carefully from each window in the room. He then returned to his chair, and throwing himself back into it at his length, stretched out one manly leg, and tapping his jack-boot with the riding-rod which he carried in his hand, after the manner of a half-bred man who affects ease in the society of his betters, he delivered his unasked opinion as follows:—“This house of yours, now, Sir Duncan, is a very pretty defensible sort of a tenement, and yet it is hardly such as a cavaliero of honour would expect to maintain his credit by holding out for many days. For, Sir Duncan, if it pleases you to notice, your house is overcrowed, and slighted, or commanded, as we military men say, by yonder round hillock to the landward, whereon an enemy might stell such a battery of cannon as would make ye glad to beat a chamade within forty-eight hours, unless it pleased the Lord extraordinarily to show mercy.”
“There is no road,” replied Sir Duncan, somewhat shortly, “by which cannon can be brought against Ardenvohr. The swamps and morasses around my house would scarce carry your horse and yourself, excepting by such paths as could be rendered impassable within a few hours.”
“Sir Duncan,” said the Captain, “it is your pleasure to suppose so; and yet we martial men say, that where there is a sea-coast there is always a naked side, seeing that cannon and munition, where they cannot be transported by land, may be right easily brought by sea near to the place where they are to be put in action. Neither is a castle, however secure in its situation, to be accounted altogether invincible, or, as they say, impregnable; for I protest t’ye, Sir Duncan, that I have known twenty-five men, by the mere surprise and audacity of the attack, win, at point of pike, as strong a hold as this of Ardenvohr, and put to the sword, captivate, or hold to the ransom, the defenders, being ten times their own number.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 107 | Notwithstanding Sir Duncan Campbell’s knowledge of the world, and his power of concealing his internal emotion, he appeared piqued and hurt at these reflections, which the Captain made with the most unconscious gravity, having merely selected the subject of conversation as one upon which he thought himself capable of shining, and, as they say, of laying down the law, without exactly recollecting that the topic might not be equally agreeable to his landlord.
“To cut this matter short,” said Sir Duncan, with an expression of voice and countenance somewhat agitated, “it is unnecessary for you to tell me, Captain Dalgetty, that a castle may be stormed if it is not valorously defended, or surprised if it is not heedfully watched. I trust this poor house of mine will not be found in any of these predicaments, should even Captain Dalgetty himself choose to beleaguer it.”
“For all that, Sir Duncan,” answered the persevering commander, “I would premonish you, as a friend, to trace out a sconce upon that round hill, with a good graffe, or ditch, whilk may be easily accomplished by compelling the labour of the boors in the vicinity; it being the custom of the valorous Gustavus Adolphus to fight as much by the spade and shovel, as by sword, pike, and musket. Also, I would advise you to fortify the said sconce, not only by a foussie, or graffe, but also by certain stackets, or palisades.”—(Here Sir Duncan, becoming impatient, left the apartment, the Captain following him to the door, and raising his voice as he retreated, until he was fairly out of hearing.)—“The whilk stackets, or palisades, should be artificially framed with re-entering angles and loop-holes, or crenelles, for musketry, whereof it shall arise that the foeman—The Highland brute! the old Highland brute! They are as proud as peacocks, and as obstinate as tups—and here he has missed an opportunity of making his house as pretty an irregular fortification as an invading army ever broke their teeth upon.—But I see,” he continued, looking own from the window upon the bottom of the precipice, “they have got Gustavus safe ashore—Proper fellow! I would know that toss of his head among a whole squadron. I must go to see what they are to make of him.”
He had no sooner reached, however, the court to the seaward, and put himself in the act of descending the staircase, than two Highland sentinels, advancing their Lochaber axes, gave him to understand that this was a service of danger.
“Diavolo!” said the soldier, “and I have got no pass-word. I could not speak a syllable of their salvage gibberish, an it were to save me from the provost-marshal.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 108 | “Diavolo!” said the soldier, “and I have got no pass-word. I could not speak a syllable of their salvage gibberish, an it were to save me from the provost-marshal.”
“I will be your surety, Captain Dalgetty,” said Sir Duncan, who had again approached him without his observing from whence; “and we will go together, and see how your favourite charger is accommodated.”
He conducted him accordingly down the staircase to the beach, and from thence by a short turn behind a large rock, which concealed the stables and other offices belonging to the castle, Captain Dalgetty became sensible, at the same time, that the side of the castle to the land was rendered totally inaccessible by a ravine, partly natural and partly scarped with great care and labour, so as to be only passed by a drawbridge. Still, however, the Captain insisted, not withstanding the triumphant air with which Sir Duncan pointed out his defences, that a sconce should be erected on Drumsnab, the round eminence to the east of the castle, in respect the house might be annoyed from thence by burning bullets full of fire, shot out of cannon, according to the curious invention of Stephen Bathian, King of Poland, whereby that prince utterly ruined the great Muscovite city of Moscow. This invention, Captain Dalgetty owned, he had not yet witnessed, but observed, “that it would give him particular delectation to witness the same put to the proof against Ardenvohr, or any other castle of similar strength;” observing, “that so curious an experiment could not but afford the greatest delight to all admirers of the military art.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 109 | Sir Duncan Campbell diverted this conversation by carrying the soldier into his stables, and suffering him to arrange Gustavus according to his own will and pleasure. After this duty had been carefully performed, Captain Dalgetty proposed to return to the castle, observing, it was his intention to spend the time betwixt this and dinner, which, he presumed, would come upon the parade about noon, in burnishing his armour, which having sustained some injury from the sea-air, might, he was afraid, seem discreditable in the eyes of M’Callum More. Yet, while they were returning to the castle, he failed not to warn Sir Duncan Campbell against the great injury he might sustain by any sudden onfall of an enemy, whereby his horses, cattle, and granaries, might be cut off and consumed, to his great prejudice; wherefore he again strongly conjured him to construct a sconce upon the round hill called Drumsnab, and offered his own friendly services in lining out the same. To this disinterested advice Sir Duncan only replied by ushering his guest to his apartment, and informing him that the tolling of the castle bell would make him aware when dinner was ready.
The gallant Ritt-master would willingly have employed his leisure in studying the exterior of Sir Duncan’s castle, and verifying his own military ideas upon the nature of its defences. But a stout sentinel, who mounted guard with a Lochaber-axe at the door of his apartment, gave him to understand, by very significant signs, that he was in a sort of honourable captivity.
It is strange, thought the Ritt-master to himself, how well these salvages understand the rules and practique of war. Who should have pre-supposed their acquaintance with the maxim of the great and godlike Gustavus Adolphus, that a flag of truce should be half a messenger half a spy?—And, having finished burnishing his arms, he sate down patiently to compute how much half a dollar per diem would amount to at the end of a six-months’ campaign; and, when he had settled that problem, proceeded to the more abstruse calculations necessary for drawing up a brigade of two thousand men on the principle of extracting the square root. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 110 | From his musings, he was roused by the joyful sound of the dinner bell, on which the Highlander, lately his guard, became his gentleman-usher, and marshalled him to the hall, where a table with four covers bore ample proofs of Highland hospitality. Sir Duncan entered, conducting his lady, a tall, faded, melancholy female, dressed in deep mourning. They were followed by a Presbyterian clergyman, in his Geneva cloak, and wearing a black silk skull-cap, covering his short hair so closely, that it could scarce be seen at all, so that the unrestricted ears had an undue predominance in the general aspect. This ungraceful fashion was universal at the time, and partly led to the nicknames of roundheads, prick-eared curs, and so forth, which the insolence of the cavaliers liberally bestowed on their political enemies.
Sir Duncan presented his military guest to his lady, who received his technical salutation with a stiff and silent reverence, in which it could scarce be judged whether pride or melancholy had the greater share. The churchman, to whom he was next presented, eyed him with a glance of mingled dislike and curiosity.
The Captain, well accustomed to worse looks from more dangerous persons, cared very little either for those of the lady or of the divine, but bent his whole soul upon assaulting a huge piece of beef, which smoked at the nether end of the table. But the onslaught, as he would have termed it, was delayed, until the conclusion of a very long grace, betwixt every section of which Dalgetty handled his knife and fork, as he might have done his musket or pike when going upon action, and as often resigned them unwillingly when the prolix chaplain commenced another clause of his benediction. Sir Duncan listened with decency, though he was supposed rather to have joined the Covenanters out of devotion to his chief, than real respect for the cause either of liberty or of Presbytery. His lady alone attended to the blessing, with symptoms of deep acquiescence.
The meal was performed almost in Carthusian silence; for it was none of Captain Dalgetty’s habits to employ his mouth in talking, while it could be more profitably occupied. Sir Duncan was absolutely silent, and the lady and churchman only occasionally exchanged a few words, spoken low, and indistinctly.
But, when the dishes were removed, and their place supplied by liquors of various sorts, Captain Dalgetty no longer had, himself, the same weighty reasons for silence, and began to tire of that of the rest of the company. He commenced a new attack upon his landlord, upon the former ground. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 111 | “Touching that round monticle, or hill, or eminence, termed Drumsnab, I would be proud to hold some dialogue with you, Sir Duncan, on the nature of the sconce to be there constructed; and whether the angles thereof should be acute or obtuse—anent whilk I have heard the great Velt-Mareschal Bannier hold a learned argument with General Tiefenbach during a still-stand of arms.”
“Captain Dalgetty,” answered Sir Duncan very dryly, “it is not our Highland usage to debate military points with strangers. This castle is like to hold out against a stronger enemy than any force which the unfortunate gentlemen we left at Darnlinvarach are able to bring against it.”
A deep sigh from the lady accompanied the conclusion of her husband’s speech, which seemed to remind her of some painful circumstance.
“He who gave,” said the clergyman, addressing her in a solemn tone, “hath taken away. May you, honourable lady, be long enabled to say, Blessed be his name!”
To this exhortation, which seemed intended for her sole behoof, the lady answered by an inclination of her head, more humble than Captain Dalgetty had yet observed her make. Supposing he should now find her in a more conversible humour, he proceeded to accost her.
“It is indubitably very natural that your ladyship should be downcast at the mention of military preparations, whilk I have observed to spread perturbation among women of all nations, and almost all conditions. Nevertheless, Penthesilea, in ancient times, and also Joan of Arc, and others, were of a different kidney. And, as I have learned while I served the Spaniard, the Duke of Alva in former times had the leaguer-lasses who followed his camp marshalled into TERTIAS (whilk me call regiments), and officered and commanded by those of their own feminine gender, and regulated by a commander-in chief, called in German Hureweibler, or, as we would say vernacularly, Captain of the Queans. True it is, they were persons not to be named as parallel to your ladyship, being such QUAE QUAESTUM CORPORIBUS FACIEBANT, as we said of Jean Drochiels at Mareschal-College; the same whom the French term CURTISANNES, and we in Scottish—”
“The lady will spare you the trouble of further exposition, Captain Dalgetty,” said his host, somewhat sternly; to which the clergyman added, “that such discourse better befitted a watch-tower guarded by profane soldiery than the board of an honourable person, and the presence of a lady of quality.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 112 | “The lady will spare you the trouble of further exposition, Captain Dalgetty,” said his host, somewhat sternly; to which the clergyman added, “that such discourse better befitted a watch-tower guarded by profane soldiery than the board of an honourable person, and the presence of a lady of quality.”
“Craving your pardon, Dominie, or Doctor, AUT QUOCUNQUE ALIO NOMINE GAUDES, for I would have you to know I have studied polite letters,” said the unabashed envoy, filling a great cup of wine, “I see no ground for your reproof, seeing I did not speak of those TURPES PERSONAE, as if their occupation or character was a proper subject of conversation for this lady’s presence, but simply PAR ACCIDENS, as illustrating the matter in hand, namely, their natural courage and audacity, much enhanced, doubtless, by the desperate circumstances of their condition.”
“Captain Dalgetty,” said Sir Duncan Campbell, “to break short this discourse, I must acquaint you, that I have some business to dispatch to-night, in order to enable me to ride with you to-morrow towards Inverary; and therefore—”
“To ride with this person to-morrow!” exclaimed his lady; “such cannot be your purpose, Sir Duncan, unless you have forgotten that the morrow is a sad anniversary, and dedicated to as sad a solemnity.”
“I had not forgotten,” answered Sir Duncan; “how is it possible I can ever forget? but the necessity of the times requires I should send this officer onward to Inverary, without loss of time.”
“Yet, surely, not that you should accompany him in person?” enquired the lady.
“It were better I did,” said Sir Duncan; “yet I can write to the Marquis, and follow on the subsequent day.—Captain Dalgetty, I will dispatch a letter for you, explaining to the Marquis of Argyle your character and commission, with which you will please to prepare to travel to Inverary early to-morrow morning.”
“Sir Duncan Campbell,” said Dalgetty, “I am doubtless at your discretionary disposal in this matter; not the less, I pray you to remember the blot which will fall upon your own escutcheon, if you do in any way suffer me, being a commissionate flag of truce, to be circumvented in this matter, whether CLAM, VI, VEL PRECARIO; I do not say by your assent to any wrong done to me, but even through absence of any due care on your part to prevent the same.”
“You are under the safeguard of my honour, sir,” answered Sir Duncan Campbell, “and that is more than a sufficient security. And now,” continued he, rising, “I must set the example of retiring.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 113 | “You are under the safeguard of my honour, sir,” answered Sir Duncan Campbell, “and that is more than a sufficient security. And now,” continued he, rising, “I must set the example of retiring.”
Dalgetty saw himself under the necessity of following the hint, though the hour was early; but, like a skilful general, he availed himself of every instant of delay which circumstances permitted. “Trusting to your honourable parole,” said he, filling his cup, “I drink to you, Sir Duncan, and to the continuance of your honourable-house.” A sigh from Sir Duncan was the only reply. “Also, madam,” said the soldier, replenishing the quaigh with all possible dispatch, “I drink to your honourable health, and fulfilment of all your virtuous desires—and, reverend sir” (not forgetting to fit the action to the words), “I fill this cup to the drowning of all unkindness betwixt you and Captain Dalgetty—I should say Major—and, in respect the flagon contains but one cup more, I drink to the health of all honourable cavaliers and brave soldados—and, the flask being empty, I am ready, Sir Duncan, to attend your functionary or sentinel to my place of private repose.”
He received a formal permission to retire, and an assurance, that as the wine seemed to be to his taste, another measure of the same vintage should attend him presently, in order to soothe the hours of his solitude. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 114 | He received a formal permission to retire, and an assurance, that as the wine seemed to be to his taste, another measure of the same vintage should attend him presently, in order to soothe the hours of his solitude.
No sooner had the Captain reached the apartment than this promise was fulfilled; and, in a short time afterwards, the added comforts of a pasty of red-deer venison rendered him very tolerant both of confinement and want of society. The same domestic, a sort of chamberlain, who placed this good cheer in his apartment, delivered to Dalgetty a packet, sealed and tied up with a silken thread, according to the custom of the time, addressed with many forms of respect to the High and Mighty Prince, Archibald, Marquis of Argyle, Lord of Lorne, and so forth. The chamberlain at the same time apprized the Ritt-master, that he must take horse at an early hour for Inverary, where the packet of Sir Duncan would be at once his introduction and his passport. Not forgetting that it was his object to collect information as well as to act as an envoy, and desirous, for his own sake, to ascertain Sir Duncan’s reasons for sending him onward without his personal attendance, the Ritt-master enquired the domestic, with all the precaution that his experience suggested, what were the reasons which detained Sir Duncan at home on the succeeding day. The man, who was from the Lowlands, replied, “that it was the habit of Sir Duncan and his lady to observe as a day of solemn fast and humiliation the anniversary on which their castle had been taken by surprise, and their children, to the number of four, destroyed cruelly by a band of Highland freebooters during Sir Duncan’s absence upon an expedition which the Marquis of Argyle had undertaken against the Macleans of the Isle of Mull.”
“Truly,” said the soldier, “your lord and lady have some cause for fast and humiliation. Nevertheless, I will venture to pronounce, that if he had taken the advice of any experienced soldier, having skill in the practiques of defending places of advantage, he would have built a sconce upon the small hill which is to the left of the draw-brigg. And this I can easily prove to you, mine honest friend; for, holding that pasty to be the castle—What’s your name, friend?”
“Lorimer, sir,” replied the man.
“Here is to your health, honest Lorimer.—I say, Lorimer—holding that pasty to be the main body or citadel of the place to be defended, and taking the marrow-bone for the sconce to be erected—” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 115 | “Lorimer, sir,” replied the man.
“Here is to your health, honest Lorimer.—I say, Lorimer—holding that pasty to be the main body or citadel of the place to be defended, and taking the marrow-bone for the sconce to be erected—”
“I am sorry, sir,” said Lorimer, interrupting him, “that I cannot stay to hear the rest of your demonstration; but the bell will presently ring. As worthy Mr. Graneangowl, the Marquis’s own chaplain, does family worship, and only seven of our household out of sixty persons understand the Scottish tongue, it would misbecome any one of them to be absent, and greatly prejudice me in the opinion of my lady. There are pipes and tobacco, sir, if you please to drink a whiff of smoke, and if you want anything else, it shall be forthcoming two hours hence, when prayers are over.” So saying, he left the apartment.
No sooner was he gone, than the heavy toll of the castle-bell summoned its inhabitants together; and was answered by the shrill clamour of the females, mixed with the deeper tones of the men, as, talking Earse at the top of their throats, they hurried from different quarters by a long but narrow gallery, which served as a communication to many rooms, and, among others, to that in which Captain Dalgetty was stationed. There they go as if they were beating to the roll-call, thought the soldier to himself; if they all attend the parade, I will look out, take a mouthful of fresh air, and make mine own observations on the practicabilities of this place.
Accordingly, when all was quiet, he opened his chamber door, and prepared to leave it, when he saw his friend with the axe advancing towards him from the distant end of the gallery, half whistling, a Gaelic tune. To have shown any want of confidence, would have been at once impolitic, and unbecoming his military character; so the Captain, putting the best face upon his situation he could, whistled a Swedish retreat, in a tone still louder than the notes of his sentinel; and retreating pace by pace, with an air of indifference, as if his only purpose had been to breathe a little fresh air, he shut the door in the face of his guard, when the fellow had approached within a few paces of him. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 116 | It is very well, thought the Ritt-master to himself; he annuls my parole by putting guards upon me, for, as we used to say at Mareschal-College, FIDES ET FIDUCIA SUNT RELATIVA [See Note I]; and if he does not trust my word, I do not see how I am bound to keep it, if any motive should occur for my desiring to depart from it. Surely the moral obligation of the parole is relaxed, in as far as physical force is substituted instead thereof.
Thus comforting himself in the metaphysical immunities which he deduced from the vigilance of his sentinel, Ritt-master Dalgetty retired to his apartment, where, amid the theoretical calculations of tactics, and the occasional more practical attacks on the flask and pasty, he consumed the evening until it was time to go to repose. He was summoned by Lorimer at break of day, who gave him to understand, that, when he had broken his fast, for which he produced ample materials, his guide and horse were in attendance for his journey to Inverary. After complying with the hospitable hint of the chamberlain, the soldier proceeded to take horse. In passing through the apartments, he observed that domestics were busily employed in hanging the great hall with black cloth, a ceremony which, he said, he had seen practised when the immortal Gustavus Adolphus lay in state in the Castle of Wolgast, and which, therefore, he opined, was a testimonial of the strictest and deepest mourning. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 117 | When Dalgetty mounted his steed, he found himself attended, or perhaps guarded, by five or six Campbells, well armed, commanded by one, who, from the target at his shoulder, and the short cock’s feather in his bonnet, as well as from the state which he took upon himself, claimed the rank of a Dunniewassel, or clansman of superior rank; and indeed, from his dignity of deportment, could not stand in a more distant degree of relationship to Sir Duncan, than that of tenth or twelfth cousin at farthest. But it was impossible to extract positive information on this or any other subject, inasmuch as neither this commander nor any of his party spoke English. The Captain rode, and his military attendants walked; but such was their activity, and so numerous the impediments which the nature of the road presented to the equestrian mode of travelling, that far from being retarded by the slowness of their pace, his difficulty was rather in keeping up with his guides. He observed that they occasionally watched him with a sharp eye, as if they were jealous of some effort to escape; and once, as he lingered behind at crossing a brook, one of the gillies began to blow the match of his piece, giving him to understand that he would run some risk in case of an attempt to part company. Dalgetty did not augur much good from the close watch thus maintained upon his person; but there was no remedy, for an attempt to escape from his attendants in an impervious and unknown country, would have been little short of insanity. He therefore plodded patiently on through a waste and savage wilderness, treading paths which were only known to the shepherds and cattle-drivers, and passing with much more of discomfort than satisfaction many of those sublime combinations of mountainous scenery which now draw visitors from every corner of England, to feast their eyes upon Highland grandeur, and mortify their palates upon Highland fare.
At length they arrived on the southern verge of that noble lake upon which Inverary is situated; and a bugle, which the Dunniewassel winded till rock and greenwood rang, served as a signal to a well-manned galley, which, starting from a creek where it lay concealed, received the party on board, including Gustavus; which sagacious quadruped, an experienced traveller both by water and land, walked in and out of the boat with the discretion of a Christian. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 118 | Embarked on the bosom of Loch Fine, Captain Dalgetty might have admired one of the grandest scenes which nature affords. He might have noticed the rival rivers Aray and Shiray, which pay tribute to the lake, each issuing from its own dark and wooded retreat. He might have marked, on the soft and gentle slope that ascends from the shores, the noble old Gothic castle, with its varied outline, embattled walls, towers, and outer and inner courts, which, so far as the picturesque is concerned, presented an aspect much more striking than the present massive and uniform mansion. He might have admired those dark woods which for many a mile surrounded this strong and princely dwelling, and his eye might have dwelt on the picturesque peak of Duniquoich, starting abruptly from the lake, and raising its scathed brow into the mists of middle sky, while a solitary watch-tower, perched on its top like an eagle’s nest, gave dignity to the scene by awakening a sense of possible danger. All these, and every other accompaniment of this noble scene, Captain Dalgetty might have marked, if he had been so minded. But, to confess the truth, the gallant Captain, who had eaten nothing since daybreak, was chiefly interested by the smoke which ascended from the castle chimneys, and the expectations which this seemed to warrant of his encountering an abundant stock of provant, as he was wont to call supplies of this nature.
The boat soon approached the rugged pier, which abutted into the loch from the little town of Inverary, then a rude assemblage of huts, with a very few stone mansions interspersed, stretching upwards from the banks of Loch Fine to the principal gate of the castle, before which a scene presented itself that might easily have quelled a less stout heart, and turned a more delicate stomach, than those of Ritt-master Dugald Dalgetty, titular of Drumthwacket. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 119 | The village of Inverary, now a neat country town, then partook of the rudeness of the seventeenth century, in the miserable appearance of the houses, and the irregularity of the unpaved street. But a stronger and more terrible characteristic of the period appeared in the market-place, which was a space of irregular width, half way betwixt the harbour, or pier, and the frowning castle-gate, which terminated with its gloomy archway, portcullis, and flankers, the upper end of the vista. Midway this space was erected a rude gibbet, on which hung five dead bodies, two of which from their dress seemed to have been Lowlanders, and the other three corpses were muffled in their Highland plaids. Two or three women sate under the gallows, who seemed to be mourning, and singing the coronach of the deceased in a low voice. But the spectacle was apparently of too ordinary occurrence to have much interest for the inhabitants at large, who, while they thronged to look at the military figure, the horse of an unusual size, and the burnished panoply of Captain Dalgetty, seemed to bestow no attention whatever on the piteous spectacle which their own market-place afforded.
The envoy of Montrose was not quite so indifferent; and, hearing a word or two of English escape from a Highlander of decent appearance, he immediately halted Gustavus and addressed him, “The Provost-Marshal has been busy here, my friend. May I crave of you what these delinquents have been justified for?”
He looked towards the gibbet as he spoke; and the Gael, comprehending his meaning rather by his action than his words, immediately replied, “Three gentlemen caterans,—God sain them,” (crossing himself)—“twa Sassenach bits o’ bodies, that wadna do something that M’Callum More bade them;” and turning from Dalgetty with an air of indifference, away he walked, staying no farther question.
Dalgetty shrugged his shoulders and proceeded, for Sir Duncan Campbell’s tenth or twelfth cousin had already shown some signs of impatience.
At the gate of the castle another terrible spectacle of feudal power awaited him. Within a stockade or palisade, which seemed lately to have been added to the defences of the gate, and which was protected by two pieces of light artillery, was a small enclosure, where stood a huge block, on which lay an axe. Both were smeared with recent blood, and a quantity of saw-dust strewed around, partly retained and partly obliterated the marks of a very late execution. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 120 | As Dalgetty looked on this new object of terror, his principal guide suddenly twitched him by the skirt of his jerkin, and having thus attracted his attention, winked and pointed with his finger to a pole fixed on the stockade, which supported a human head, being that, doubtless, of the late sufferer. There was a leer on the Highlander’s face, as he pointed to this ghastly spectacle, which seemed to his fellow-traveller ominous of nothing good.
Dalgetty dismounted from his horse at the gateway, and Gustavus was taken from him without his being permitted to attend him to the stable, according to his custom.
This gave the soldier a pang which the apparatus of death had not conveyed.—“Poor Gustavus!” said he to himself, “if anything but good happens to me, I had better have left him at Darnlinvarach than brought him here among these Highland salvages, who scarce know the head of a horse from his tail. But duty must part a man from his nearest and dearest—“When the cannons are roaring, lads, and the colours are flying,The lads that seek honour must never fear dying; Then, stout cavaliers, let us toil our brave trade in,And fight for the Gospel and the bold King of Sweden.”
Thus silencing his apprehensions with the but-end of a military ballad, he followed his guide into a sort of guard-room filled with armed Highlanders. It was intimated to him that he must remain here until his arrival was communicated to the Marquis. To make this communication the more intelligible, the doughty Captain gave to the Dunniewassel Sir Duncan Campbell’s packet, desiring, as well as he could, by signs, that it should be delivered into the Marquis’s own hand. His guide nodded, and withdrew.
The Captain was left about half an hour in this place, to endure with indifference, or return with scorn, the inquisitive, and, at the same time, the inimical glances of the armed Gael, to whom his exterior and equipage were as much subject of curiosity, as his person and country seemed matter of dislike. All this he bore with military nonchalance, until, at the expiration of the above period, a person dressed in black velvet, and wearing a gold chain like a modern magistrate of Edinburgh, but who was, in fact, steward of the household to the Marquis of Argyle, entered the apartment, and invited, with solemn gravity, the Captain to follow him to his master’s presence. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 121 | The suite of apartments through which he passed, were filled with attendants or visitors of various descriptions, disposed, perhaps, with some ostentation, in order to impress the envoy of Montrose with an idea of the superior power and magnificence belonging to the rival house of Argyle. One ante-room was filled with lacqueys, arrayed in brown and yellow, the colours of the family, who, ranged in double file, gazed in silence upon Captain Dalgetty as he passed betwixt their ranks. Another was occupied by Highland gentlemen and chiefs of small branches, who were amusing themselves with chess, backgammon, and other games, which they scarce intermitted to gaze with curiosity upon the stranger. A third was filled with Lowland gentlemen and officers, who seemed also in attendance; and, lastly, the presence-chamber of the Marquis himself showed him attended by a levee which marked his high importance.
This apartment, the folding doors of which were opened for the reception of Captain Dalgetty, was a long gallery, decorated with tapestry and family portraits, and having a vaulted ceiling of open wood-work, the extreme projections of the beams being richly carved and gilded. The gallery was lighted by long lanceolated Gothic casements, divided by heavy shafts, and filled with painted glass, where the sunbeams glimmered dimly through boars’-heads, and galleys, and batons, and swords, armorial bearings of the powerful house of Argyle, and emblems of the high hereditary offices of Justiciary of Scotland, and Master of the Royal Household, which they long enjoyed. At the upper end of this magnificent gallery stood the Marquis himself, the centre of a splendid circle of Highland and Lowland gentlemen, all richly dressed, among whom were two or three of the clergy, called in, perhaps, to be witnesses of his lordship’s zeal for the Covenant. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 122 | The Marquis himself was dressed in the fashion of the period, which Vandyke has so often painted, but his habit was sober and uniform in colour, and rather rich than gay. His dark complexion, furrowed forehead, and downcast look, gave him the appearance of one frequently engaged in the consideration of important affairs, and who has acquired, by long habit, an air of gravity and mystery, which he cannot shake off even where there is nothing to be concealed. The cast with his eyes, which had procured him in the Highlands the nickname of Gillespie Grumach (or the grim), was less perceptible when he looked downward, which perhaps was one cause of his having adopted that habit. In person, he was tall and thin, but not without that dignity of deportment and manners, which became his high rank. Something there was cold in his address, and sinister in his look, although he spoke and behaved with the usual grace of a man of such quality. He was adored by his own clan, whose advancement he had greatly studied, although he was in proportion disliked by the Highlanders of other septs, some of whom he had already stripped of their possessions, while others conceived themselves in danger from his future schemes, and all dreaded the height to which he was elevated. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 123 | We have already noticed, that in displaying himself amidst his councillors, his officers of the household, and his train of vassals, allies, and dependents, the Marquis of Argyle probably wished to make an impression on the nervous system of Captain Dugald Dalgetty. But that doughty person had fought his way, in one department or another, through the greater part of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, a period when a brave and successful soldier was a companion for princes. The King of Sweden, and, after his example, even the haughty Princes of the Empire, had found themselves fain, frequently to compound with their dignity, and silence, when they could not satisfy the pecuniary claims of their soldiers, by admitting them to unusual privileges and familiarity. Captain Dugald Dalgetty had it to boast, that he had sate with princes at feasts made for monarchs, and therefore was not a person to be brow-beat even by the dignity which surrounded M’Callum More. Indeed, he was naturally by no means the most modest man in the world, but, on the contrary, had so good an opinion of himself, that into whatever company he chanced to be thrown, he was always proportionally elevated in his own conceit; so that he felt as much at ease in the most exalted society as among his own ordinary companions. In this high opinion of his own rank, he was greatly fortified by his ideas of the military profession, which, in his phrase, made a valiant cavalier a camarade to an emperor.
When introduced, therefore, into the Marquis’s presence-chamber, he advanced to the upper end with an air of more confidence than grace, and would have gone close up to Argyle’s person before speaking, had not the latter waved his hand, as a signal to him to stop short. Captain Dalgetty did so accordingly, and having made his military congee with easy confidence, he thus accosted the Marquis: “Give you good morrow, my lord—or rather I should say, good even; BESO A USTED LOS MANOS, as the Spaniard says.”
“Who are you, sir, and what is your business?” demanded the Marquis, in a tone which was intended to interrupt the offensive familiarity of the soldier.
“That is a fair interrogative, my lord,” answered Dalgetty, “which I shall forthwith answer as becomes a cavalier, and that PEREMPTORIE, as we used to say at Mareschal-College.”
“See who or what he is, Neal,” said the Marquis sternly, to a gentleman who stood near him. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 124 | “That is a fair interrogative, my lord,” answered Dalgetty, “which I shall forthwith answer as becomes a cavalier, and that PEREMPTORIE, as we used to say at Mareschal-College.”
“See who or what he is, Neal,” said the Marquis sternly, to a gentleman who stood near him.
“I will save the honourable gentleman the labour of investigation,” continued the Captain. “I am Dugald Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket, that should be, late Ritt-master in various services, and now Major of I know not what or whose regiment of Irishes; and I am come with a flag of truce from a high and powerful lord, James Earl of Montrose, and other noble persons now in arms for his Majesty. And so, God save King Charles!”
“Do you know where you are, and the danger of dallying with us, sir,” again demanded the Marquis, “that you reply to me as if I were a child or a fool? The Earl of Montrose is with the English malignants; and I suspect you are one of those Irish runagates, who are come into this country to burn and slay, as they did under Sir Phelim O’Neale.”
“My lord,” replied Captain Dalgetty, “I am no renegade, though a Major of Irishes, for which I might refer your lordship to the invincible Gustavus Adolphus the Lion of the North, to Bannier, to Oxenstiern, to the warlike Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Tilly, Wallenstein, Piccolomini, and other great captains, both dead and living; and touching the noble Earl of Montrose, I pray your lordship to peruse these my full powers for treating with you in the name of that right honourable commander.”
The Marquis looked slightingly at the signed and sealed paper which Captain Dalgetty handed to him, and, throwing it with contempt upon a table, asked those around him what he deserved who came as the avowed envoy and agent of malignant traitors, in arms against the state?
“A high gallows and a short shrift,” was the ready answer of one of the bystanders. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 125 | “A high gallows and a short shrift,” was the ready answer of one of the bystanders.
“I will crave of that honourable cavalier who hath last spoken,” said Dalgetty, “to be less hasty in forming his conclusions, and also of your lordship to be cautelous in adopting the same, in respect such threats are to be held out only to base bisognos, and not to men of spirit and action, who are bound to peril themselves as freely in services of this nature, as upon sieges, battles, or onslaughts of any sort. And albeit I have not with me a trumpet, or a white flag, in respect our army is not yet equipped with its full appointments, yet the honourable cavaliers and your lordship must concede unto me, that the sanctity of an envoy who cometh on matter of truth or parle, consisteth not in the fanfare of a trumpet, whilk is but a sound, or in the flap of a white flag, whilk is but an old rag in itself, but in the confidence reposed by the party sending, and the party sent, in the honour of those to whom the message is to be carried, and their full reliance that they will respect the JUS GENTIUM, as weel as the law of arms, in the person of the commissionate.”
“You are not come hither to lecture us upon the law of arms, sir,” said the Marquis, “which neither does nor can apply to rebels and insurgents; but to suffer the penalty of your insolence and folly for bringing a traitorous message to the Lord Justice General of Scotland, whose duty calls upon him to punish such an offence with death.”
“Gentlemen,” said the Captain, who began much to dislike the turn which his mission seemed about to take, “I pray you to remember, that the Earl of Montrose will hold you and your possessions liable for whatever injury my person, or my horse, shall sustain by these unseemly proceedings, and that he will be justified in executing retributive vengeance on your persons and possessions.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 126 | This menace was received with a scornful laugh, while one of the Campbells replied, “It is a far cry to Lochow;” proverbial expression of the tribe, meaning that their ancient hereditary domains lay beyond the reach of an invading enemy. “But, gentlemen,” further urged the unfortunate Captain, who was unwilling to be condemned, without at least the benefit of a full hearing, “although it is not for me to say how far it may be to Lochow, in respect I am a stranger to these parts, yet, what is more to the purpose, I trust you will admit that I have the guarantee of an honourable gentleman of your own name, Sir Duncan Campbell of Ardenvohr, for my safety on this mission; and I pray you to observe, that in breaking the truce towards me, you will highly prejudicate his honour and fair fame.”
This seemed to be new information to many of the gentlemen, for they spoke aside with each other, and the Marquis’s face, notwithstanding his power of suppressing all external signs of his passions, showed impatience and vexation.
“Does Sir Duncan of Ardenvohr pledge his honour for this person’s safety, my lord?” said one of the company, addressing the Marquis.
“I do not believe it,” answered the Marquis; “but I have not yet had time to read his letter.”
“We will pray your lordship to do so,” said another of the Campbells; “our name must not suffer discredit through the means of such a fellow as this.”
“A dead fly,” said a clergyman, “maketh the ointment of the apothecary to stink.”
“Reverend sir,” said Captain Dalgetty, “in respect of the use to be derived, I forgive you the unsavouriness of your comparison; and also remit to the gentleman in the red bonnet, the disparaging epithet of FELLOW, which he has discourteously applied to me, who am no way to be distinguished by the same, unless in so far as I have been called fellow-soldier by the great Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, and other choice commanders, both in Germany and the Low Countries. But, touching Sir Duncan Campbell’s guarantee of my safety, I will gage my life upon his making my words good thereanent, when he comes hither to-morrow.”
“If Sir Duncan be soon expected, my Lord,” said one of the intercessors, “it would be a pity to anticipate matters with this poor man.”
“Besides that,” said another, “your lordship—I speak with reverence—should, at least, consult the Knight of Ardenvohr’s letter, and learn the terms on which this Major Dalgetty, as he calls himself, has been sent hither by him.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 127 | “Besides that,” said another, “your lordship—I speak with reverence—should, at least, consult the Knight of Ardenvohr’s letter, and learn the terms on which this Major Dalgetty, as he calls himself, has been sent hither by him.”
They closed around the Marquis, and conversed together in a low tone, both in Gaelic and English. The patriarchal power of the Chiefs was very great, and that of the Marquis of Argyle, armed with all his grants of hereditary jurisdiction, was particularly absolute. But there interferes some check of one kind or other even in the most despotic government. That which mitigated the power of the Celtic Chiefs, was the necessity which they lay under of conciliating the kinsmen who, under them, led out the lower orders to battle, and who formed a sort of council of the tribe in time of peace. The Marquis on this occasion thought himself under the necessity of attending to the remonstrances of this senate, or more properly COUROULTAI, of the name of Campbell, and, slipping out of the circle, gave orders for the prisoner to be removed to a place of security.
“Prisoner!” exclaimed Dalgetty, exerting himself with such force as wellnigh to shake off two Highlanders, who for some minutes past had waited the signal to seize him, and kept for that purpose close at his back. Indeed the soldier had so nearly attained his liberty, that the Marquis of Argyle changed colour, and stepped back two paces, laying, however, his hand on his sword, while several of his clan, with ready devotion, threw themselves betwixt him and the apprehended vengeance of the prisoner. But the Highland guards were too strong to be shaken off, and the unlucky Captain, after having had his offensive weapons taken from him, was dragged off and conducted through several gloomy passages to a small side-door grated with iron, within which was another of wood. These were opened by a grim old Highlander with a long white beard, and displayed a very steep and narrow flight of steps leading downward. The Captain’s guards pushed him down two or three steps, then, unloosing his arms, left him to grope his way to the bottom as he could; a task which became difficult and even dangerous, when the two doors being successively locked left the prisoner in total darkness. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 128 | The Captain, finding himself deprived of light in the manner we have described, and placed in a very uncertain situation, proceeded to descend the narrow and broken stair with all the caution in his power, hoping that he might find at the bottom some place to repose himself. But with all his care he could not finally avoid making a false step, which brought him down the four or five last steps too hastily to preserve his equilibrium. At the bottom he stumbled over a bundle of something soft, which stirred and uttered a groan, so deranging the Captain’s descent, that he floundered forward, and finally fell upon his hands and knees on the floor of a damp and stone-paved dungeon.
When Dalgetty had recovered, his first demand was to know over whom he had stumbled.
“He was a man a month since,” answered a hollow and broken voice.
“And what is he now, then,” said Dalgetty, “that he thinks it fitting to lie upon the lowest step of the stairs, and clew’d up like a hurchin, that honourable cavaliers, who chance to be in trouble, may break their noses over him?”
“What is he now?” replied the same voice; “he is a wretched trunk, from which the boughs have one by one been lopped away, and which cares little how soon it is torn up and hewed into billets for the furnace.”
“Friend,” said Dalgetty, “I am sorry for you; but PATIENZA, as the Spaniard says. If you had but been as quiet as a log, as you call yourself, I should have saved some excoriations on my hands and knees.”
“You are a soldier,” replied his fellow-prisoner; “do you complain on account of a fall for which a boy would not bemoan himself?”
“A soldier?” said the Captain; “and how do you know, in this cursed dark cavern, that I am a soldier?”
“I heard your armour clash as you fell,” replied the prisoner, “and now I see it glimmer. When you have remained as long as I in this darkness, your eyes will distinguish the smallest eft that crawls on the floor.”
“I had rather the devil picked them out!” said Dalgetty; “if this be the case, I shall wish for a short turn of the rope, a soldier’s prayer, and a leap from a ladder. But what sort of provant have you got here—what food, I mean, brother in affliction?”
“Bread and water once a day,” replied the voice.
“Prithee, friend, let me taste your loaf,” said Dalgetty; “I hope we shall play good comrades while we dwell together in this abominable pit.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 129 | “Bread and water once a day,” replied the voice.
“Prithee, friend, let me taste your loaf,” said Dalgetty; “I hope we shall play good comrades while we dwell together in this abominable pit.”
“The loaf and jar of water,” answered the other prisoner, “stand in the corner, two steps to your right hand. Take them, and welcome. With earthly food I have wellnigh done.”
Dalgetty did not wait for a second invitation, but, groping out the provisions, began to munch at the stale black oaten loaf with as much heartiness as we have seen him play his part at better viands.
“This bread,” he said, muttering (with his mouth full at the same time), “is not very savoury; nevertheless, it is not much worse than that which we ate at the famous leaguer at Werben, where the valorous Gustavus foiled all the efforts of the celebrated Tilly, that terrible old hero, who had driven two kings out of the field—namely, Ferdinand of Bohemia and Christian of Denmark. And anent this water, which is none of the most sweet, I drink in the same to your speedy deliverance, comrade, not forgetting mine own, and devoutly wishing it were Rhenish wine, or humming Lubeck beer, at the least, were it but in honour of the pledge.”
While Dalgetty ran on in this way, his teeth kept time with his tongue, and he speedily finished the provisions which the benevolence or indifference of his companion in misfortune had abandoned to his voracity. When this task was accomplished, he wrapped himself in his cloak, and seating himself in a corner of the dungeon in which he could obtain a support on each side (for he had always been an admirer of elbow-chairs, he remarked, even from his youth upward), he began to question his fellow-captive.
“Mine honest friend,” said he, “you and I, being comrades at bed and board, should be better acquainted. I am Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, and so forth, Major in a regiment of loyal Irishes, and Envoy Extraordinary of a High and Mighty Lord, James Earl of Montrose.—Pray, what may your name be?”
“It will avail you little to know,” replied his more taciturn companion.
“Let me judge of that matter,” answered the soldier.
“Well, then—Ranald MacEagh is my name—that is, Ranald Son of the Mist.”
“Son of the Mist!” ejaculated Dalgetty. “Son of utter darkness, say I. But, Ranald, since that is your name, how came you in possession of the provost’s court of guard? what the devil brought you here, that is to say?”
“My misfortunes and my crimes,” answered Ranald. “Know ye the Knight of Ardenvohr?”
“I do know that honourable person,” replied Dalgetty. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 130 | “My misfortunes and my crimes,” answered Ranald. “Know ye the Knight of Ardenvohr?”
“I do know that honourable person,” replied Dalgetty.
“But know ye where he now is?” replied Ranald.
“Fasting this day at Ardenvohr,” answered the Envoy, “that he may feast to-morrow at Inverary; in which last purpose if he chance to fail, my lease of human service will be something precarious.”
“Then let him know, one claims his intercession, who is his worst foe and his best friend,” answered Ranald.
“Truly I shall desire to carry a less questionable message,” answered Dalgetty, “Sir Duncan is not a person to play at reading riddles with.”
“Craven Saxon,” said the prisoner, “tell him I am the raven that, fifteen years since, stooped on his tower of strength and the pledges he had left there—I am the hunter that found out the wolfs den on the rock, and destroyed his offspring—I am the leader of the band which surprised Ardenvohr yesterday was fifteen years, and gave his four children to the sword.”
“Truly, my honest friend,” said Dalgetty, “if that is your best recommendation to Sir Duncan’s favour, I would pretermit my pleading thereupon, in respect I have observed that even the animal creation are incensed against those who intromit with their offspring forcibly, much more any rational and Christian creatures, who have had violence done upon their small family. But I pray you in courtesy to tell me, whether you assailed the castle from the hillock called Drumsnab, whilk I uphold to be the true point of attack, unless it were to be protected by a sconce.”
“We ascended the cliff by ladders of withies or saplings,” said the prisoner, “drawn up by an accomplice and clansman, who had served six months in the castle to enjoy that one night of unlimited vengeance. The owl whooped around us as we hung betwixt heaven and earth; the tide roared against the foot of the rock, and dashed asunder our skiff, yet no man’s heart failed him. In the morning there was blood and ashes, where there had been peace and joy at the sunset.”
“It was a pretty camisade, I doubt not, Ranald MacEagh, a very sufficient onslaught, and not unworthily discharged. Nevertheless, I would have pressed the house from that little hillock called Drumsnab. But yours is a pretty irregular Scythian fashion of warfare, Ranald, much resembling that of Turks, Tartars, and other Asiatic people.—But the reason, my friend, the cause of this war—the TETERRIMA CAUSA, as I may say? Deliver me that, Ranald.”
“We had been pushed at by the M’Aulays, and other western tribes,” said Ranald, “till our possessions became unsafe for us.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 131 | “We had been pushed at by the M’Aulays, and other western tribes,” said Ranald, “till our possessions became unsafe for us.”
“Ah ha!” said Dalgetty; “I have faint remembrance of having heard of that matter. Did you not put bread and cheese into a man’s mouth, when he had never a stomach whereunto to transmit the same?”
“You have heard, then,” said Ranald, “the tale of our revenge on the haughty forester?”
“I bethink me that I have,” said Dalgetty, “and that not of an old date. It was a merry jest that, of cramming the bread into the dead man’s mouth, but somewhat too wild and salvage for civilized acceptation, besides wasting the good victuals. I have seen when at a siege or a leaguer, Ranald, a living soldier would have been the better, Ranald, for that crust of bread, whilk you threw away on a dead pow.”
“We were attacked by Sir Duncan,” continued MacEagh, “and my brother was slain—his head was withering on the battlements which we scaled—I vowed revenge, and it is a vow I have never broken.”
“It may be so,” said Dalgetty; “and every thorough-bred soldier will confess that revenge is a sweet morsel; but in what manner this story will interest Sir Duncan in your justification, unless it should move him to intercede with the Marquis to change the manner thereof from hanging, or simple suspension, to breaking your limbs on the roue or wheel, with the coulter of a plough, or otherwise putting you to death by torture, surpasses my comprehension. Were I you, Ranald, I would be for miskenning Sir Duncan, keeping my own secret, and departing quietly by suffocation, like your ancestors before you.”
“Yet hearken, stranger,” said the Highlander. “Sir Duncan of Ardenvohr had four children. Three died under our dirks, but the fourth survives; and more would he give to dandle on his knee the fourth child which remains, than to rack these old bones, which care little for the utmost indulgence of his wrath. One word, if I list to speak it, could turn his day of humiliation and fasting into a day of thankfulness and rejoicing, and breaking of bread. O, I know it by my own heart? Dearer to me is the child Kenneth, who chaseth the butterfly on the banks of the Aven, than ten sons who are mouldering in earth, or are preyed on by the fowls of the air.”
“I presume, Ranald,” continued Dalgetty, “that the three pretty fellows whom I saw yonder in the market-place, strung up by the head like rizzer’d haddocks, claimed some interest in you?” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 132 | “I presume, Ranald,” continued Dalgetty, “that the three pretty fellows whom I saw yonder in the market-place, strung up by the head like rizzer’d haddocks, claimed some interest in you?”
There was a brief pause ere the Highlander replied, in a tone of strong emotion,—“They were my sons, stranger—they were my sons!—blood of my blood—bone of my bone!—fleet of foot—unerring in aim—unvanquished by foemen till the sons of Diarmid overcame them by numbers! Why do I wish to survive them? The old trunk will less feel the rending up of its roots, than it has felt the lopping off of its graceful boughs. But Kenneth must be trained to revenge—the young eagle must learn from the old how to stoop on his foes. I will purchase for his sake my life and my freedom, by discovering my secret to the Knight of Ardenvohr.”
“You may attain your end more easily,” said a third voice, mingling in the conference, “by entrusting it to me.”
All Highlanders are superstitious. “The Enemy of Mankind is among us!” said Ranald MacEagh, springing to his feet. His chains clattered as he rose, while he drew himself as far as they permitted from the quarter whence the voice appeared to proceed. His fear in some degree communicated itself to Captain Dalgetty, who began to repeat, in a sort of polyglot gibberish, all the exorcisms he had ever heard of, without being able to remember more than a word or two of each.
“IN NOMINE DOMINI, as we said at Mareschal-College—SANTISSMA MADRE DI DIOS, as the Spaniard has it—ALLE GUTEN GEISTER LOBEN DEN HERRN, saith the blessed Psalmist, in Dr. Luther’s translation—”
“A truce with your exorcisms,” said the voice they had heard before; “though I come strangely among you, I am mortal like yourselves, and my assistance may avail you in your present streight, if you are not too proud to be counselled.”
While the stranger thus spoke, he withdrew the shade of a dark lantern, by whose feeble light Dalgetty could only discern that the speaker who had thus mysteriously united himself to their company, and mixed in their conversation, was a tall man, dressed in a livery cloak of the Marquis. His first glance was to his feet, but he saw neither the cloven foot which Scottish legends assign to the foul fiend, nor the horse’s hoof by which he is distinguished in Germany. His first enquiry was, how the stranger had come among them? |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 133 | “For,” said he, “the creak of these rusty bars would have been heard had the door been made patent; and if you passed through the keyhole, truly, sir, put what face you will on it, you are not fit to be enrolled in a regiment of living men.”
“I reserve my secret,” answered the stranger, “until you shall merit the discovery by communicating to me some of yours. It may be that I shall be moved to let you out where I myself came in.”
“It cannot be through the keyhole, then,” said Captain Dalgetty, “for my corslet would stick in the passage, were it possible that my head-piece could get through. As for secrets, I have none of my own, and but few appertaining to others. But impart to us what secrets you desire to know; or, as Professor Snufflegreek used to say at the Mareschal-College, Aberdeen, speak that I may know thee.”
“It is not with you I have first to do,” replied the stranger, turning his light full on the mild and wasted features, and the large limbs of the Highlander, Ranald MacEagh, who, close drawn up against the walls of the dungeon, seemed yet uncertain whether his guest was a living being.
“I have brought you something, my friend,” said the stranger, in a more soothing tone, “to mend your fare; if you are to die to-morrow, it is no reason wherefore you should not live to-night.”
“None at all—no reason in the creation,” replied the ready Captain Dalgetty, who forthwith began to unpack the contents of a small basket which the stranger had brought under his cloak, while the Highlander, either in suspicion or disdain, paid no attention to the good cheer.
“Here’s to thee, my friend,” said the Captain, who, having already dispatched a huge piece of roasted kid, was now taking a pull at the wine-flask. “What is thy name, my good friend?”
“Murdoch Campbell, sir,” answered the servant, “a lackey of the Marquis of Argyle, and occasionally acting as under-warden.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 134 | “Murdoch Campbell, sir,” answered the servant, “a lackey of the Marquis of Argyle, and occasionally acting as under-warden.”
“Then here is to thee once more, Murdoch,” said Dalgetty, “drinking to you by your proper name for the better luck sake. This wine I take to be Calcavella. Well, honest Murdoch, I take it on me to say, thou deservest to be upper-warden, since thou showest thyself twenty times better acquainted with the way of victualling honest gentlemen that are under misfortune, than thy principal. Bread and water? out upon him! It was enough, Murdoch, to destroy the credit of the Marquis’s dungeon. But I see you would converse with my friend, Ranald MacEagh here. Never mind my presence; I’ll get me into this corner with the basket, and I will warrant my jaws make noise enough to prevent my ears from hearing you.”
Notwithstanding this promise, however, the veteran listened with all the attention he could to gather their discourse, or, as he described it himself, “laid his ears back in his neck, like Gustavus, when he heard the key turn in the girnell-kist.” He could, therefore, owing to the narrowness of the dungeon, easily overhear the following dialogue.
“Are you aware, Son of the Mist,” said the Campbell, “that you will never leave this place excepting for the gibbet?”
“Those who are dearest to me,” answered MacEagh, “have trode that path before me.”
“Then you would do nothing,” asked the visitor, “to shun following them?”
The prisoner writhed himself in his chains before returning an answer.
“I would do much,” at length he said; “not for my own life, but for the sake of the pledge in the glen of Strath-Aven.”
“And what would you do to turn away the bitterness of the hour?” again demanded Murdoch; “I care not for what cause ye mean to shun it.”
“I would do what a man might do, and still call himself a man.”
“Do you call yourself a man,” said the interrogator, “who have done the deeds of a wolf?”
“I do,” answered the outlaw; “I am a man like my forefathers—while wrapt in the mantle of peace, we were lambs—it was rent from us, and ye now call us wolves. Give us the huts ye have burned, our children whom ye have murdered, our widows whom ye have starved—collect from the gibbet and the pole the mangled carcasses, and whitened skulls of our kinsmen—bid them live and bless us, and we will be your vassals and brothers—till then, let death, and blood, and mutual wrong, draw a dark veil of division between us.”
“You will then do nothing for your liberty,” said the Campbell. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 135 | “You will then do nothing for your liberty,” said the Campbell.
“Anything—but call myself the friend of your tribe,” answered MacEagh.
“We scorn the friendship of banditti and caterans,” retorted Murdoch, “and would not stoop to accept it.—What I demand to know from you, in exchange for your liberty, is, where the daughter and heiress of the Knight of Ardenvohr is now to be found?”
“That you may wed her to some beggarly kinsman of your great master,” said Ranald, “after the fashion of the Children of Diarmid! Does not the valley of Glenorquhy, to this very hour, cry shame on the violence offered to a helpless infant whom her kinsmen were conveying to the court of the Sovereign? Were not her escort compelled to hide her beneath a cauldron, round which they fought till not one remained to tell the tale? and was not the girl brought to this fatal castle, and afterwards wedded to the brother of M’Callum More, and all for the sake of her broad lands?” [Such a story is told of the heiress of the clan of Calder, who was made prisoner in the manner described, and afterwards wedded to Sir Duncan Campbell, from which union the Campbells of Cawdor have their descent.]
“And if the tale be true,” said Murdoch, “she had a preferment beyond what the King of Scots would have conferred on her. But this is far from the purpose. The daughter of Sir Duncan of Ardenvohr is of our own blood, not a stranger; and who has so good a right to know her fate as M’Callum More, the chief of her clan?”
“It is on his part, then, that you demand it!” said the outlaw. The domestic of the Marquis assented.
“And you will practise no evil against the maiden?—I have done her wrong enough already.”
“No evil, upon the word of a Christian man,” replied Murdoch.
“And my guerdon is to be life and liberty?” said the Child of the Mist.
“Such is our paction,” replied the Campbell.
“Then know, that the child whom I saved our of compassion at the spoiling of her father’s tower of strength, was bred as an adopted daughter of our tribe, until we were worsted at the pass of Ballenduthil, by the fiend incarnate and mortal enemy of our tribe, Allan M’Aulay of the Bloody hand, and by the horsemen of Lennox, under the heir of Menteith.”
“Fell she into the power of Allan of the Bloody hand,” said Murdoch, “and she a reputed daughter of thy tribe? Then her blood has gilded the dirk, and thou hast said nothing to rescue thine own forfeited life.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 136 | “Fell she into the power of Allan of the Bloody hand,” said Murdoch, “and she a reputed daughter of thy tribe? Then her blood has gilded the dirk, and thou hast said nothing to rescue thine own forfeited life.”
“If my life rest on hers,” answered the outlaw, “it is secure, for she still survives; but it has a more insecure reliance—the frail promise of a son of Diarmid.”
“That promise shall not fail you,” said the Campbell, “if you can assure me that she survives, and where she is to be found.”
“In the Castle of Darlinvarach,” said Ranald MacEagh, “under the name of Annot Lyle. I have often heard of her from my kinsmen, who have again approached their native woods, and it is not long since mine old eyes beheld her.”
“You!” said Murdoch, in astonishment, “you, a chief among the Children of the Mist, and ventured so near your mortal foe?”
“Son of Diarmid, I did more,” replied the outlaw; “I was in the hall of the castle, disguised as a harper from the wild shores of Skianach. My purpose was to have plunged my dirk in the body of the M’Aulay with the Bloody hand, before whom our race trembles, and to have taken thereafter what fate God should send me. But I saw Annot Lyle, even when my hand was on the hilt of my dagger. She touched her clairshach [Harp] to a song of the Children of the Mist, which she had learned when her dwelling was amongst us. The woods in which we had dwelt pleasantly, rustled their green leaves in the song, and our streams were there with the sound of all their waters. My hand forsook the dagger; the fountains of mine eyes were opened, and the hour of revenge passed away.—And now, Son of Diarmid, have I not paid the ransom of my head?”
“Ay,” replied Murdoch, “if your tale be true; but what proof can you assign for it?”
“Bear witness, heaven and earth,” exclaimed the outlaw, “he already looks how he may step over his word!”
“Not so,” replied Murdoch; “every promise shall be kept to you when I am assured you have told me the truth.—But I must speak a few words with your companion in captivity.”
“Fair and false—ever fair and false,” muttered the prisoner, as he threw himself once more on the floor of his dungeon. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 137 | “Fair and false—ever fair and false,” muttered the prisoner, as he threw himself once more on the floor of his dungeon.
Meanwhile, Captain Dalgetty, who had attended to every word of this dialogue, was making his own remarks on it in private. “What the HENKER can this sly fellow have to say to me? I have no child, either of my own, so far as I know, or of any other person, to tell him a tale about. But let him come on—he will have some manoeuvring ere he turn the flank of the old soldier.”
Accordingly, as if he had stood pike in hand to defend a breach, he waited with caution, but without fear, the commencement of the attack.
“You are a citizen of the world, Captain Dalgetty,” said Murdoch Campbell, “and cannot be ignorant of our old Scotch proverb, GIF-GAF, [In old English, KA ME KA THEE, i.e. mutually serving each other.] which goes through all nations and all services.”
“Then I should know something of it,” said Dalgetty; “for, except the Turks, there are few powers in Europe whom I have not served; and I have sometimes thought of taking a turn either with Bethlem Gabor, or with the Janizaries.”
“A man of your experience and unprejudiced ideas, then, will understand me at once,” said Murdoch, “when I say, I mean that your freedom shall depend on your true and up right answer to a few trifling questions respecting the gentlemen you have left; their state of preparation; the number of their men, and nature of their appointments; and as much as you chance to know about their plan of operations.”
“Just to satisfy your curiosity,” said Dalgetty, “and without any farther purpose?”
“None in the world,” replied Murdoch; “what interest should a poor devil like me take in their operations?”
“Make your interrogations, then,” said the Captain, “and I will answer them PREREMTORIE.”
“How many Irish may be on their march to join James Graham the delinquent?”
“Probably ten thousand,” said Captain Dalgetty.
“Ten thousand!” replied Murdoch angrily; “we know that scarce two thousand landed at Ardnamurchan.”
“Then you know more about them than I do,” answered Captain Dalgetty, with great composure. “I never saw them mustered yet, or even under arms.”
“And how many men of the clans may be expected?” demanded Murdoch.
“As many as they can make,” replied the Captain.
“You are answering from the purpose, sir,” said Murdoch “speak plainly, will there be five thousand men?”
“There and thereabouts,” answered Dalgetty. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 138 | “And how many men of the clans may be expected?” demanded Murdoch.
“As many as they can make,” replied the Captain.
“You are answering from the purpose, sir,” said Murdoch “speak plainly, will there be five thousand men?”
“There and thereabouts,” answered Dalgetty.
“You are playing with your life, sir, if you trifle with me,” replied the catechist; “one whistle of mine, and in less than ten minutes your head hangs on the drawbridge.”
“But to speak candidly, Mr. Murdoch,” replied the Captain “do you think it is a reasonable thing to ask me after the secrets of our army, and I engaged to serve for the whole campaign? If I taught you how to defeat Montrose, what becomes of my pay, arrears, and chance of booty?”
“I tell you,” said Campbell, “that if you be stubborn, your campaign shall begin and end in a march to the block at the castle-gate, which stands ready for such land-laufers; but if you answer my questions faithfully, I will receive you into my—into the service of M’Callum More.”
“Does the service afford good pay?” said Captain Dalgetty.
“He will double yours, if you will return to Montrose and act under his direction.”
“I wish I had seen you, sir, before taking on with him,” said Dalgetty, appearing to meditate.
“On the contrary, I can afford you more advantageous terms now,” said the Campbell; “always supposing that you are faithful.”
“Faithful, that is, to you, and a traitor to Montrose,” answered the Captain.
“Faithful to the cause of religion and good order,” answered Murdoch, “which sanctifies any deception you may employ to serve it.”
“And the Marquis of Argyle—should I incline to enter his service, is he a kind master?” demanded Dalgetty.
“Never man kinder,” quoth Campbell.
“And bountiful to his officers?” pursued the Captain.
“The most open hand in Scotland,” replied Murdoch.
“True and faithful to his engagements?” continued Dalgetty.
“As honourable a nobleman as breathes,” said the clansman.
“I never heard so much good of him before,” said Dalgetty; “you must know the Marquis well,—or rather you must be the Marquis himself!—Lord of Argyle,” he added, throwing himself suddenly on the disguised nobleman, “I arrest you in the name of King Charles, as a traitor. If you venture to call for assistance, I will wrench round your neck.”
The attack which Dalgetty made upon Argyle’s person was so sudden and unexpected, that he easily prostrated him on the floor of the dungeon, and held him down with one hand, while his right, grasping the Marquis’s throat, was ready to strangle him on the slightest attempt to call for assistance. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 139 | “Lord of Argyle,” he said, “it is now my turn to lay down the terms of capitulation. If you list to show me the private way by which you entered the dungeon, you shall escape, on condition of being my LOCUM TENENS, as we said at the Mareschal-College, until your warder visits his prisoners. But if not, I will first strangle you—I learned the art from a Polonian heyduck, who had been a slave in the Ottoman seraglio—and then seek out a mode of retreat.”
“Villain! you would not murder me for my kindness,” murmured Argyle.
“Not for your kindness, my lord,” replied Dalgetty: “but first, to teach your lordship the JUS GENTIUM towards cavaliers who come to you under safe-conduct; and secondly, to warn you of the danger of proposing dishonourable terms to any worthy soldado, in order to tempt him to become false to his standard during the term of his service.”
“Spare my life,” said Argyle, “and I will do as you require.”
Dalgetty maintained his gripe upon the Marquis’s throat, compressing it a little while he asked questions, and relaxing it so far as to give him the power of answering them.
“Where is the secret door into the dungeon?” he demanded.
“Hold up the lantern to the corner on your right hand, you will discern the iron which covers the spring,” replied the Marquis.
“So far so good.—Where does the passage lead to?”
“To my private apartment behind the tapestry,” answered the prostrate nobleman.
“From thence how shall I reach the gateway?”
“Through the grand gallery, the anteroom, the lackeys’ waiting hall, the grand guardroom—”
“All crowded with soldiers, factionaries, and attendants?—that will never do for me, my lord;—have you no secret passage to the gate, as you have to your dungeons? I have seen such in Germany.”
“There is a passage through the chapel,” said the Marquis, “opening from my apartment.”
“And what is the pass-word at the gate?”
“The sword of Levi,” replied the Marquis; “but if you will receive my pledge of honour, I will go with you, escort you through every guard, and set you at full liberty with a passport.”
“I might trust you, my lord, were your throat not already black with the grasp of my fingers—as it is, BESO LOS MANOS A USTED, as the Spaniard says. Yet you may grant me a passport;—are there writing materials in your apartment?”
“Surely; and blank passports ready to be signed. I will attend you there,” said the Marquis, “instantly.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 140 | “Surely; and blank passports ready to be signed. I will attend you there,” said the Marquis, “instantly.”
“It were too much honour for the like of me,” said Dalgetty; “your lordship shall remain under charge of mine honest friend Ranald MacEagh; therefore, prithee let me drag you within reach of his chain.—Honest Ranald, you see how matters stand with us. I shall find the means, I doubt not, of setting you at freedom. Meantime, do as you see me do; clap your hand thus on the weasand of this high and mighty prince, under his ruff, and if he offer to struggle or cry out, fail not, my worthy Ranald, to squeeze doughtily; and if it be AD DELIQUIUM, Ranald, that is, till he swoon, there is no great matter, seeing he designed your gullet and mine to still harder usage.”
“If he offer at speech or struggle,” said Ranald, “he dies by my hand.”
“That is right, Ranald—very spirited:—A thorough-going friend that understands a hint is worth a million!”
Thus resigning the charge of the Marquis to his new confederate, Dalgetty pressed the spring, by which the secret door flew open, though so well were its hinges polished and oiled, that it made not the slightest noise in revolving. The opposite side of the door was secured by very strong bolts and bars, beside which hung one or two keys, designed apparently to undo fetterlocks. A narrow staircase, ascending up through the thickness of the castle-wall, landed, as the Marquis had truly informed him, behind the tapestry of his private apartment. Such communications were frequent in old feudal castles, as they gave the lord of the fortress, like a second Dionysius, the means of hearing the conversation of his prisoners, or, if he pleased, of visiting them in disguise, an experiment which had terminated so unpleasantly on the present occasion for Gillespie Grumach. Having examined previously whether there was any one in the apartment, and finding the coast clear, the Captain entered, and hastily possessing himself of a blank passport, several of which lay on the table, and of writing materials, securing, at the same time, the Marquis’s dagger, and a silk cord from the hangings, he again descended into the cavern, where, listening a moment at the door, he could hear the half-stifled voice of the Marquis making great proffers to MacEagh, on condition he would suffer him to give an alarm.
“Not for a forest of deer—not for a thousand head of cattle,” answered the freebooter; “not for all the lands that ever called a son of Diarmid master, will I break the troth I have plighted to him of the iron-garment!” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 141 | “Not for a forest of deer—not for a thousand head of cattle,” answered the freebooter; “not for all the lands that ever called a son of Diarmid master, will I break the troth I have plighted to him of the iron-garment!”
“He of the iron-garment,” said Dalgetty, entering, “is bounden unto you, MacEagh, and this noble lord shall be bounden also; but first he must fill up this passport with the names of Major Dugald Dalgetty and his guide, or he is like to have a passport to another world.”
The Marquis subscribed, and wrote, by the light of the dark lantern, as the soldier prescribed to him.
“And now, Ranald,” said Dalgetty, “strip thy upper garment—thy plaid I mean, Ranald, and in it will I muffle the M’Callum More, and make of him, for the time, a Child of the Mist;—Nay, I must bring it over your head, my lord, so as to secure us against your mistimed clamour.—So, now he is sufficiently muffled;—hold down your hands, or, by Heaven, I will stab you to the heart with your own dagger!—nay, you shall be bound with nothing less than silk, as your quality deserves.—So, now he is secure till some one comes to relieve him. If he ordered us a late dinner, Ranald, he is like to be the sufferer;—at what hour, my good Ranald, did the jailor usually appear?”
“Never till the sun was beneath the western wave,” said MacEagh. “Then, my friend, we shall have three hours good,” said the cautious Captain. “In the meantime, let us labour for your liberation.”
To examine Ranald’s chain was the next occupation. It was undone by means of one of the keys which hung behind the private door, probably deposited there, that the Marquis might, if he pleased, dismiss a prisoner, or remove him elsewhere without the necessity of summoning the warden. The outlaw stretched his benumbed arms, and bounded from the floor of the dungeon in all the ecstasy of recovered freedom.
“Take the livery-coat of that noble prisoner,” said Captain Dalgetty; “put it on, and follow close at my heels.”
The outlaw obeyed. They ascended the private stair, having first secured the door behind them, and thus safely reached the apartment of the Marquis. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 142 | “Take the livery-coat of that noble prisoner,” said Captain Dalgetty; “put it on, and follow close at my heels.”
The outlaw obeyed. They ascended the private stair, having first secured the door behind them, and thus safely reached the apartment of the Marquis.
[The precarious state of the feudal nobles introduced a great deal of espionage into their castles. Sir Robert Carey mentions his having put on the cloak of one of his own wardens to obtain a confession from the mouth of Geordie Bourne, his prisoner, whom he caused presently to be hanged in return for the frankness of his communication. The fine old Border castle of Naworth contains a private stair from the apartment of the Lord William Howard, by which he could visit the dungeon, as is alleged in the preceding chapter to have been practised by the Marquis of Argyle.]
“Look out for the private way through the chapel, Ranald,” said the Captain, “while I give a hasty regard to these matters.”
Thus speaking, he seized with one hand a bundle of Argyle’s most private papers, and with the other a purse of gold, both of which lay in a drawer of a rich cabinet, which stood invitingly open. Neither did he neglect to possess himself of a sword and pistols, with powder-flask and balls, which hung in the apartment. “Intelligence and booty,” said the veteran, as he pouched the spoils, “each honourable cavalier should look to, the one on his general’s behalf, and the other on his own. This sword is an Andrew Ferrara, and the pistols better than mine own. But a fair exchange is no robbery. Soldados are not to be endangered, and endangered gratuitously, my Lord of Argyle.—But soft, soft, Ranald; wise Man of the Mist, whither art thou bound?”
It was indeed full time to stop MacEagh’s proceedings; for, not finding the private passage readily, and impatient, it would seem, of farther delay, he had caught down a sword and target, and was about to enter the great gallery, with the purpose, doubtless, of fighting his way through all opposition.
“Hold, while you live,” whispered Dalgetty, laying hold on him. “We must be perdue, if possible. So bar we this door, that it may be thought M’Callum More would be private—and now let me make a reconnaissance for the private passage.”
By looking behind the tapestry in various places, the Captain at length discovered a private door, and behind that a winding passage, terminated by another door, which doubtless entered the chapel. But what was his disagreeable surprise to hear, on the other side of this second door, the sonorous voice of a divine in the act of preaching. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 143 | “This made the villain,” he said, “recommend this to us as a private passage. I am strongly tempted to return and cut his throat.”
He then opened very gently the door, which led into a latticed gallery used by the Marquis himself, the curtains of which were drawn, perhaps with the purpose of having it supposed that he was engaged in attendance upon divine worship, when, in fact, he was absent upon his secular affairs. There was no other person in the seat; for the family of the Marquis,—such was the high state maintained in those days,—sate during service in another gallery, placed somewhat lower than that of the great man himself. This being the case, Captain Dalgetty ventured to ensconce himself in the gallery, of which he carefully secured the door.
Never (although the expression be a bold one) was a sermon listened to with more impatience, and less edification, on the part of one, at least, of the audience. The Captain heard SIXTEENTHLY-SEVENTEENTHLY-EIGHTEENTHLY and TO CONCLUDE, with a sort of feeling like protracted despair. But no man can lecture (for the service was called a lecture) for ever; and the discourse was at length closed, the clergyman not failing to make a profound bow towards the latticed gallery, little suspecting whom he honoured by that reverence. To judge from the haste with which they dispersed, the domestics of the Marquis were scarce more pleased with their late occupation than the anxious Captain Dalgetty; indeed, many of them being Highlandmen, had the excuse of not understanding a single word which the clergyman spoke, although they gave their attendance on his doctrine by the special order of M’Callum More, and would have done so had the preacher been a Turkish Imaum. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 144 | But although the congregation dispersed thus rapidly, the divine remained behind in the chapel, and, walking up and down its Gothic precincts, seemed either to be meditating on what he had just been delivering, or preparing a fresh discourse for the next opportunity. Bold as he was, Dalgetty hesitated what he ought to do. Time, however, pressed, and every moment increased the chance of their escape being discovered by the jailor visiting the dungeon perhaps before his wonted time, and discovering the exchange which had been made there. At length, whispering Ranald, who watched all his motions, to follow him and preserve his countenance, Captain Dalgetty, with a very composed air, descended a flight of steps which led from the gallery into the body of the chapel. A less experienced adventurer would have endeavoured to pass the worthy clergyman rapidly, in hopes to escape unnoticed. But the Captain, who foresaw the manifest danger of failing in such an attempt, walked gravely to meet the divine upon his walk in the midst of the chancel, and, pulling off his cap, was about to pass him after a formal reverence. But what was his surprise to view in the preacher the very same person with whom he had dined in the castle of Ardenvohr! Yet he speedily recovered his composure; and ere the clergyman could speak, was the first to address him. “I could not,” he said, “leave this mansion without bequeathing to you, my very reverend sir, my humble thanks for the homily with which you have this evening favoured us.”
“I did not observe, sir,” said the clergyman, “that you were in the chapel.”
“It pleased the honourable Marquis,” said Dalgetty, modestly, “to grace me with a seat in his own gallery.” The divine bowed low at this intimation, knowing that such an honour was only vouchsafed to persons of very high rank. “It has been my fate, sir,” said the Captain, “in the sort of wandering life which I have led, to have heard different preachers of different religions—as for example, Lutheran, Evangelical, Reformed, Calvinistical, and so forth, but never have I listened to such a homily as yours.”
“Call it a lecture, worthy sir,” said the divine, “such is the phrase of our church.”
“Lecture or homily,” said Dalgetty, “it was, as the High Germans say, GANZ FORTRE FLICH; and I could not leave this place without testifying unto you what inward emotions I have undergone during your edifying prelection; and how I am touched to the quick, that I should yesterday, during the refection, have seemed to infringe on the respect due to such a person as yourself.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 145 | “Alas! my worthy sir,” said the clergyman, “we meet in this world as in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, not knowing against whom we may chance to encounter. In truth, it is no matter of marvel, if we sometimes jostle those, to whom, if known, we would yield all respect. Surely, sir, I would rather have taken you for a profane malignant than for such a devout person as you prove, who reverences the great Master even in the meanest of his servants.”
“It is always my custom to do so, learned sir,” answered Dalgetty; “for in the service of the immortal Gustavus—but I detain you from your meditations,”—his desire to speak of the King of Sweden being for once overpowered by the necessity of his circumstances.
“By no means, my worthy sir,” said the clergyman. “What was, I pray you, the order of that great Prince, whose memory is so dear to every Protestant bosom?”
“Sir, the drums beat to prayers morning and evening, as regularly as for parade; and if a soldier passed without saluting the chaplain, he had an hour’s ride on the wooden mare for his pains. Sir, I wish you a very good evening—I am obliged to depart the castle under M’Callum More’s passport.”
“Stay one instant, sir,” said the preacher; “is there nothing I can do to testify my respect for the pupil of the great Gustavus, and so admirable a judge of preaching?”
“Nothing, sir,” said the Captain, “but to shew me the nearest way to the gate—and if you would have the kindness,” he added, with great effrontery, “to let a servant bring my horse with him, the dark grey gelding—call him Gustavus, and he will prick up his ears—for I know not where the castle-stables are situated, and my guide,” he added, looking at Ranald, “speaks no English.”
“I hasten to accommodate you,” said the clergyman; “your way lies through that cloistered passage.”
“Now, Heaven’s blessing upon your vanity!” said the Captain to himself. “I was afraid I would have had to march off without Gustavus.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 146 | “I hasten to accommodate you,” said the clergyman; “your way lies through that cloistered passage.”
“Now, Heaven’s blessing upon your vanity!” said the Captain to himself. “I was afraid I would have had to march off without Gustavus.”
In fact, so effectually did the chaplain exert himself in behalf of so excellent a judge of composition, that while Dalgetty was parleying with the sentinels at the drawbridge, showing his passport, and giving the watchword, a servant brought him his horse, ready saddled for the journey. In another place, the Captain’s sudden appearance at large after having been publicly sent to prison, might have excited suspicion and enquiry; but the officers and domestics of the Marquis were accustomed to the mysterious policy of their master, and never supposed aught else than that he had been liberated and intrusted with some private commission by their master. In this belief, and having received the parole, they gave him free passage.
Dalgetty rode slowly through the town of Inverary, the outlaw attending upon him like a foot-page at his horse’s shoulder. As they passed the gibbet, the old man looked on the bodies and wrung his hands. The look and gesture was momentary, but expressive of indescribable anguish. Instantly recovering himself, Ranald, in passing, whispered somewhat to one of the females, who, like Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, seemed engaged in watching and mourning the victims of feudal injustice and cruelty. The woman started at his voice, but immediately collected herself and returned for answer a slight inclination of the head. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 147 | Dalgetty continued his way out of the town, uncertain whether he should try to seize or hire a boat and cross the lake, or plunge into the woods, and there conceal himself from pursuit. In the former event he was liable to be instantly pursued by the galleys of the Marquis, which lay ready for sailing, their long yard-arms pointing to the wind, and what hope could he have in an ordinary Highland fishing-boat to escape from them? If he made the latter choice, his chance either of supporting or concealing himself in those waste and unknown wildernesses, was in the highest degree precarious. The town lay now behind him, yet what hand to turn to for safety he was unable to determine, and began to be sensible, that in escaping from the dungeon at Inverary, desperate as the matter seemed, he had only accomplished the easiest part of a difficult task. If retaken, his fate was now certain; for the personal injury he had offered to a man so powerful and so vindictive, could be atoned for only by instant death. While he pondered these distressing reflections, and looked around with a countenance which plainly expressed indecision, Ranald MacEagh suddenly asked him, “which way he intended to journey?”
“And that, honest comrade,” answered Dalgetty, “is precisely the question which I cannot answer you. Truly I begin to hold the opinion, Ranald, that we had better have stuck by the brown loaf and water-pitcher until Sir Duncan arrived, who, for his own honour, must have made some fight for me.”
“Saxon,” answered MacEagh, “do not regret having exchanged the foul breath of yonder dungeon for the free air of heaven. Above all, repent not that you have served a Son of the Mist. Put yourself under my guidance, and I will warrant your safety with my head.”
“Can you guide me safe through these mountains, and back to the army of Montrose?” said Dalgetty.
“I can,” answered MacEagh; “there lives not a man to whom the mountain passes, the caverns, the glens, the thickets, and the corries are known, as they are to the Children of the Mist. While others crawl on the level ground, by the sides of lakes and streams, ours are the steep hollows of the inaccessible mountains, the birth-place of the desert springs. Not all the bloodhounds of Argyle can trace the fastnesses through which I can guide you.”
“Say’st thou so, honest Ranald?” replied Dalgetty; “then have on with thee; for of a surety I shall never save the ship by my own pilotage.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 148 | “Say’st thou so, honest Ranald?” replied Dalgetty; “then have on with thee; for of a surety I shall never save the ship by my own pilotage.”
The outlaw accordingly led the way into the wood, by which the castle is surrounded for several miles, walking with so much dispatch as kept Gustavus at a round trot, and taking such a number of cross cuts and turns, that Captain Dalgetty speedily lost all idea where he might be, and all knowledge of the points of the compass. At length, the path, which had gradually become more difficult, altogether ended among thickets and underwood. The roaring of a torrent was heard in the neighbourhood, the ground became in some places broken, in others boggy, and everywhere unfit for riding.
“What the foul fiend,” said Dalgetty, “is to be done here? I must part with Gustavus, I fear.”
“Take no care for your horse,” said the outlaw; “he shall soon be restored to you.”
As he spoke, he whistled in a low tune, and a lad, half-dressed in tartan, half naked, having only his own shaggy hair, tied with a thong of leather, to protect his head and face from sun and weather, lean, and half-starved in aspect, his wild grey eyes appearing to fill up ten times the proportion usually allotted to them in the human face, crept out, as a wild beast might have done, from a thicket of brambles and briars.
“Give your horse to the gillie,” said Ranald MacEagh; “your life depends upon it.”
“Och! och!” exclaimed the despairing veteran; “Eheu! as we used to say at Mareschal-College, must I leave Gustavus in such grooming!”
“Are you frantic, to lose time thus!” said his guide; “do we stand on friends’ ground, that you should part with your horse as if he were your brother? I tell you, you shall have him again; but if you never saw the animal, is not life better than the best colt ever mare foaled?”
“And that is true too, mine honest friend,” sighed Dalgetty; “yet if you knew but the value of Gustavus, and the things we two have done and suffered together—See, he turns back to look at me!—Be kind to him, my good breechless friend, and I will requite you well.” So saying, and withal sniffling a little to swallow his grief, he turned from the heart-rending spectacle in order to follow his guide. |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 149 | To follow his guide was no easy matter, and soon required more agility than Captain Dalgetty could master. The very first plunge after he had parted from his charger, carried him, with little assistance from a few overhanging boughs, or projecting roots of trees, eight foot sheer down into the course of a torrent, up which the Son of the Mist led the way. Huge stones, over which they scrambled,—thickets of them and brambles, through which they had to drag themselves,—rocks which were to be climbed on the one side with much labour and pain, for the purpose of an equally precarious descent upon the other; all these, and many such interruptions, were surmounted by the light-footed and half-naked mountaineer with an ease and velocity which excited the surprise and envy of Captain Dalgetty, who, encumbered by his head-piece, corslet, and other armour, not to mention his ponderous jack-boots, found himself at length so much exhausted by fatigue, and the difficulties of the road, that he sate down upon a stone in order to recover his breath, while he explained to Ranald MacEagh the difference betwixt travelling EXPEDITUS and IMPEDITUS, as these two military phrases were understood at Mareschal-College, Aberdeen. The sole answer of the mountaineer was to lay his hand on the soldier’s arm, and point backward in the direction of the wind. Dalgetty could spy nothing, for evening was closing fast, and they were at the bottom of a dark ravine. But at length he could distinctly hear at a distance the sullen toll of a large bell.
“That,” said he, “must be the alarm—the storm-clock, as the Germans call it.”
“It strikes the hour of your death,” answered Ranald, “unless you can accompany me a little farther. For every toll of that bell a brave man has yielded up his soul.” |
A_Legend_Of_Montrose_-_Sir_Walter_Scott | 8 | 150 | “That,” said he, “must be the alarm—the storm-clock, as the Germans call it.”
“It strikes the hour of your death,” answered Ranald, “unless you can accompany me a little farther. For every toll of that bell a brave man has yielded up his soul.”
“Truly, Ranald, my trusty friend,” said Dalgetty, “I will not deny that the case may be soon my own; for I am so forfoughen (being, as I explained to you, IMPEDITUS, for had I been EXPEDITUS, I mind not pedestrian exercise the flourish of a fife), that I think I had better ensconce myself in one of these bushes, and even lie quiet there to abide what fortune God shall send me. I entreat you, mine honest friend Ranald, to shift for yourself, and leave me to my fortune, as the Lion of the North, the immortal Gustavus Adolphus, my never-to-be-forgotten master (whom you must surely have heard of, Ranald, though you may have heard of no one else), said to Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburgh, when he was mortally wounded on the plains of Lutzen. Neither despair altogether of my safety, Ranald, seeing I have been in as great pinches as this in Germany—more especially, I remember me, that at the fatal battle of Nerlingen—after which I changed service—”
“If you would save your father’s son’s breath to help his child out of trouble, instead of wasting it upon the tales of Seannachies,” said Ranald, who now grew impatient of the Captain’s loquacity, “or if your feet could travel as fast as your tongue, you might yet lay your head on an unbloody pillow to-night.”
“Something there is like military skill in that,” replied the Captain, “although wantonly and irreverently spoken to an officer of rank. But I hold it good to pardon such freedoms on a march, in respect of the Saturnalian license indulged in such cases to the troops of all nations. And now, resume thine office, friend Ranald, in respect I am well-breathed; or, to be more plain, I PRAE, SEQUAR, as we used to say at Mareschal-College.” |
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