Chapter XLVII: The Harper's Ransom

Towards the evening of the next day the MacGregors, on their homeward march, found themselves in the country of the Camerons, at the head of Loch Arkeig, a long and narrow sheet of water, lying between rugged mountains, and stretching far away towards Glen Mhor n'Albyn, or the great valley of Caledonia, which runs diagonally across the kingdom from the German Sea to the Atlantic. They bivouacked at the head of the loch, lighted a fire, and having no enemies in the neighbourhood, prepared to pass the night pleasantly, wrapped in their plaids, on the soft blooming heather; but first Rob Roy placed two sentinels on the drove road that led to and from their halting-place, that perfect security might not be neglected.

The summer night was clear and warm, and every star shone brightly amid the blue ether; all was stillness and deep silence, save where a mountain stream, a tributary of Loch Arkeig, swept down, now over falls and stony rapids, or among bold impending rocks spotted with lichens and tufted with broom, and now among pale hazel groves and black clumps of red-stemmed pine.

The MacGregors had scarcely been here two hours, and, weary with their march and lulled by the hum of the hurrying stream, most of them were fast asleep, when Rob heard his sentinels in violent altercation with a stranger; and as the Gaelic language is deficient neither in expletives nor maledictions, they were plentifully used on this occasion. On sending Greumoch to ascertain the cause of all this, he soon returned, with his drawn dirk gleaming in one hand, while by the other he dragged forward a harper, in whom, by the firelight, Rob immediately recognized Gillian Ross the Islesman, who had acted as their guide to Glensheil.

He was a man well up in years; his hair and flowing beard were snowy white; but his cheek was ruddy, and his eyes had a merry twinkle which showed that as a son of song he had led a jovial life and a roving one, though among turbulent clans, in a wild country and in perilous times.

His kilt and plaid were of the Ross tartan, which is gaily striped with red, green, and blue; and his clairsach or little Scottish harp was slung on his back by a belt, and covered with a case of tarpaulin or tarred canvas--probably a piece of a boat-sail. He carried a blackthorn stick, and as his occupation was a peaceful one, he had no weapon save a dirk, which, like the mouth-piece of his sporan, was gaily adorned with silver. "A spy, a spy!" cried the MacGregors, starting up and crowding about him with ominous expressions in their weatherbeaten faces.

"What is the meaning of this, thou son of the son of Alpine?" he boldly demanded of Rob, in his figurative Gaelic; "the children of the Gael should not draw their swords on each other, and still less on a son of song."

"Yet, son of song," replied Rob, drily, "you played those Rosses and Munroes, and the men of Morar Chattu, into battle against us near Dounan Diarmed* in Glenshiel--the tomb of one whom Ossian loved. Eh, what say you to that?"

* A warrior of Fingal, whose grave lies near the manse of Glensheil. Morar Chattu is the Celtic name of the Earls of Sutherland.

"There have been cold steel and hot blood between our people," began the harper in a gentler tone.

"True; but that was in the times of old; and now the righteous cause of our king should make even the false Whigs true, and every clan unite in one."

"Even the Grahames with the Clan Alpine?" said the harper, with a cunning smile.

"Yes--even the Grahames with the Clan Alpine!" repeated Rob, stamping his foot on the heather. "I could find in my heart forgiveness for them all, would they but join the king."

"When that day comes, the lamb shall share the lair of the lion, and the cushat-dove shall seek the nest of gled and iolar," replied the harper, still smiling.

"Whence come you, and where is your home?"

"The Isle of the Pigmies, in the west--far away amid the sea," replied the harper with a sigh; "and would, MacGregor, I were there now, where its black rocks are covered with sheets of snowy foam, where the wild sea-birds wheel and scream above the breakers, and where the level sunshine and the rolling sea go far together into its gloomy caves and weedy chasms."

The harper referred to one of the Western Isles, a little solitary place, where stand the ruins of a chapel, and where it was believed a dwarfish race were buried of old; "for many strangers digging deep into the earth have found, and do yet find," says Buchanan, "little round skulls and the bones of small human bodies, that do not in the least differ from the ancient reports concerning pigmies."

"I am grieved, harper, that you should die so far from your kindred and their burial-place," said Rob, gravely.

"_Die!_ wherefore should I die?" asked the harper, starting, while his countenance fell.

"Oogh ay!" exclaimed several MacGregors, who were yawning and crowding round; "just let the bodach be hanged at once, and then we shall go to sleep again."

"Or would you prefer to be drowned?" said Greumoch; "Loch Arkeig is close by, and the water there is warm and deep."

"Neither is my wish," said the harper, fiercely; "I am a guiltless man, and demand my freedom!"

"Why were you in the ranks of the king's rebels at Glensheil?" asked Rob, sternly.

"I was _not_ in their ranks!"

"You played them into battle."

"But I fought not--nor was I even girded with a sword."

"By my father's soul, that mattered little! A minstrel--a harper--should not play the traitor like a glaiket gilly."

"I went but to sing of the fight, that the story of it might go down to future times, even as the battles of our forefathers have come down by the songs of the bards to us. I went but as Ian Lom went with Montrose to Inverlochy. Had he fought there and fallen, who would have told us how he,

The bard of their battles, ascended the height
Where dark Inverlochy o'ershadowed the fight,
And saw the clan Donnell resistless in might!"

"Have you so committed to song our victory at Glensheil?" asked MacGregor, with a sharp glance; but the harper hung his head. "Ha! then what sought you _here_ to-night?"

"Was it to spy upon us?" added several MacGregors, with scowling brows; "answer, Islesman, while your skin is whole!"

"By the Black Stones of Iona, I swear that I knew not you were in the land of Lochiel!" said the harper, earnestly; "and beware how you spill my blood, for my mother was one of the Camerons, the sons of the Soldier of Ovi. I was peacefully pursuing my way to the fair of Kill-chuimin."

"It may be so," said Rob Roy; "for that fair is almost at hand. Tie him to a tree; in the morning, I will speak with him again."

The harper submitted in silence, and was bound to a tree, when a plaid was thrown over him and his harp, as a protection from the dew; and Greumoch, with a true Highland grin or grimace, gave him a dram, saying, "As it is the last you are likely to get, drain the quaich."

By dawn the MacGregors were all afoot again; they wiped and rubbed their weapons to preserve them from rust; shook the crystal dew from their kilts and plaids; then the pipes struck up a quick step, and they proceeded on their homeward way, taking with them the harper, concerning whom Rob Roy had given no instructions, for he was loth to punish him, though deeming that he deserved to be so.

For two days he conveyed him thus a prisoner, telling him that if he was actually going to the fair of Kill-chuimin (or the burial-place of the Cumins, as the Highlanders called Port Augustus) his time would not be lost, as their way lay so far together.

Towards the evening of the second day, they halted on a wild moorland waste, called Blair na Carrahan, or the moor of the circles, for there amid the vast expanse of purple heather were several large Druidical rings, wherein, it was confidently affirmed, the fairies always danced on the Eve of St. John; but more especially around a large obelisk which stood in the centre of one, and was covered with Runic figures.

When they halted in this desolate place, the harper became alarmed, and begged so earnestly to be released, that Rob said,--

"You must ransom yourself----"

"Ransom!--do you speak of ransom to one who has not in the world a coin the size of a herring scale?"

"Ransom yourself by a song or a story, I was about to say. If either meet with the general approval of my kinsmen, you shall be free--free as the winds that shake the harebells and the broom on the braes of Balquhidder; but fail us in song or story, and by the Grey Stone in Glenfruin, you shall hang--hang like the false cullion I deem you!"

Gillian Ross made a double Highland bow; the cord was taken from his wrists, and slung with a noose of very unpleasant aspect over the Druid monolith, for thereon he was to hang, if he failed to win the general applause.

The poor harper eyed it wistfully, and then seated himself on the green grass in the centre of the fairy circle, around which the MacGregors were lounging, with their arms beside them. He uncased his harp; and after running his fingers rapidly through the strings, suddenly seemed to change his intention to sing, and said he would tell them a story. A murmur of assent responded.

On that vast purple moorland, bounded in the distance by the countless dark-blue mountain peaks of Argyle, a picturesque group they formed, those weather-beaten clansmen, in their garish tartans, with their polished weapons, their round targets, and bare legs stretched upon the heather. Then there was also the green fairy circle, in the centre of which rose the grey old obelisk, and at its base reclined the bearded harper on his harp. The sun as he set beyond the western peaks crimsoned like a sheet of wine the heather of the Blair na Carrahan, and tipped with ruddy light the harper's silver beard and the glittering strings of his harp, as he told the following story, which we render here, not in his poetical and somewhat inflated Gaelic, but in our own way.