Chapter IV: The Holy Steel

The inhabitants of the little hamlet were soon assembled in and around the hut of the widow of Ian Bane.

The latter had been a brave man, sacrificed in their feud with the Grahames, after the battle of Killycrankie, where he had served under Viscount Dundee. He was long remembered on the Braes of Balquhidder, as an expert swordsman, a hardy deer-stalker, and a careful drover of cattle for the English and Lowland markets, where he had wont to march after his herds, with his sword at his side, and a target slung on his back, as was then the custom of the Highlanders to go to fair and market.

A few lines will describe the residence of his widow.

It was a somewhat spacious hovel, built without mortar, of turf and stone, taken from the river's bed, or from the adjacent moorland. It had a little window on each side, and these were wont to be opened alternately, according to the part from which the wind blew, to give light and air, opened by simply taking out the _wisp_ of fern which was stuffed into the aperture in lieu of glass and shutters.

A fire of turf and bog-fir blazed on the centre of the clay floor; and here, in this poor dwelling, the widow lived, amid smoke sufficient to suffocate her (had she not been used to it from her infancy), together with her slaughtered boy, her Fairhaired Colin, and a brood of hens, whose roost was among the rafters; a cow, two large dogs, and a sheep or so in winter, though sheep were little cared for in the Highlands then.

A few deer hams, and quantities of fishing gear, hung from the rafters, amid which the smoke curled towards an old herring cask, that was inserted in the thatched roof to form a chimney.

Fresh fir-cones and bogwood were cast upon the fire by order of Rob Roy; and now the ruddy blaze lit up a wild and striking scene. Near the centre of the hut, on a rudely-formed deal table, lay the dead body of poor Colin Bane MacGregor, the golden hair from whence he took his sobriquet all matted with purple blood; but a white sheet was now spread over the mangled form, which lay stiff and at full length in rigid angularity, with a platter of salt upon its breast, and sprigs of rosemary strewed crosswise over it.

At the feet of the dead, on her knees, knelt the sorrowing mother, with her grizzled hair dishevelled, and her face buried in her tremulous fingers, through which the tears were streaming, as she rocked her body to and fro.

Fully armed, three Highlanders of formidable aspect and stately bearing stood at the head of the corpse. These were Rob Roy, Callam MacAleister (his foster-brother and henchman), with Greumoch MacGregor, one of his most active and resolute followers. Each leant upon a brass-mounted and long-barrelled Spanish musket.

Grouped round were a band of hardy and weather-beaten men, in rough Highland dresses of home-spun and home-dyed tartan, all hushed into silence, with their keen grey eyes bent darkly on the corpse, or on each other, and with their brows knit as their hearts glowed for vengeance on the unknown perpetrator of this outrage; for as yet no information could be gathered from the half-drowned Oina.

Outside the door were the women of the clachan with their heads muffled in plaids, kerchiefs, and curchies, wailing as only the Celts of Scotland and Ireland wail, in a weird, wild cadence, muttering vengeance too, and suggesting to each other who might be the author of this new item to the terrible catalogue of wrongs that had been perpetrated on the MacGregors since the battle of Glenfruin had been fought, about a hundred years before.

And all this was seen by the red light of the bogwood fire, in the wavering gleams of which, as they played upon the winding-sheet, the corpse seemed always as if about to start and arise.

"Ochon, ochon, ochrie!" wailed thu mother of Colin, as she swayed herself to and fro; "the drops of the blessed dew that God sends on earth are resting on the cold cheek of my fair son this night; and they are not more pure than he was; but I knew he was doomed never to see the leaves of autumn fall!"

"How?" asked several, bending forward to listen.

"He drew the black-lot, when the cake was broken in Greumoch's bonnet on Beltane eve."

"Never say so, widow," said MacGregor; "think only that the lad died as became his father's son, boldly defending his own; God rest him!"

Here all bowed their heads, and many made the sign of the cross.

"A slash with an axe has slain him," resumed Rob Roy; "a sword would never cut so deep; but the brave boy has defended himself, for his skene is yet grasped in his better hand, so let it go to the grave with him."

Mutterings of grim approval went through the group.

"To you, Red Rob, I look for vengeance--for vengeance on the murderers!" cried the mother wildly, as she stretched her hands towards the chieftain.

"And vengeance you shall have, Jean; by the faith of our fathers, you shall!" replied Rob Roy. "I have little doubt that the same hand which slew Fair Colin, cast Callam's daughter into the river; but time will show."

"We have the cattle to recover too," said several; "let us to the hills--to the hills! The creagh (spoil) cannot be far off yet."

"What! are the cattle carried off?" asked Rob, with a darkening frown.

"The cattle I bought at Fil-ina-chessaig--that blessed 21st of March, at the fair of Callender--ay, every hoof and horn," said Greumoch.

"Well, the blackest mail we ever levied will I lay on these caterans, and the reddest blood we have shed shall be theirs, Jean! But there are other wounds here," continued Rob, as he turned down the winding-sheet; "look at the poor child's hand: it has been _bitten_!"

"Bitten as if by a wolf!" screamed the mother, with growing horror.

"Nay, bitten by a man who has lost every alternate tooth in his lower jaw, and by that mark shall we know him!"

"Where? among the Buchanans or Cclquhouns?" demanded several, while the excitement grew apace.

"Among neither," exclaimed a harsh and croaking voice.

"Why--why?" asked the crowd.

"For 'tis Duncan nan Creagh who did this; Duncan Mhor, from Kintail na Bogh."

"Who spoke?" said Rob Roy, peering through the smoke which obscured the atmosphere of the hut.

"I, Phail Crubach," replied a decrepit old man, for whom all now made way, with a strangely mingled bearing of respect and aversion; for this visitor was supposed to have the double gift of prophecy and the second sight.

Phail Crubach, or lame Paul MacGregor, was the keeper of a Holy Well near the church of Balquhidder. He had been educated in youth at the Scottish College of Douay; but on becoming partly insane, he returned to his native place, and became the custodian of a spring which St. Fillan had blessed in the times of old. Near this well he lived in a hut, which was an object of terror to the peasantry, as it was almost entirely lined and patched with fragments of old coffins from the adjacent churchyard.

At the door of this strange dwelling (on which was a rusty coffin-plate as an ornament) he usually sat and watched the well and the narrow highway, ready to afford any wayfarer a draught from the spring, for which he received a small remuneration, either in coin or food--such as meal, cheese, butter, and a bit of venison, which any man might then have for the shooting thereof.

He was clad in a coat and breeches of deerskin; he was wasted in form, wan in visage, and had red hazel eyes, that glared brightly through the long masses of white hair that overhung his wrinkled forehead.

Supporting himself on a knotty stick, which had a cross on its upper end, he hobbled forward through the shrinking crowd.

"How know you, Paul, that Duncan Mhor MacRae, from Kintail-of-the-cows, did this?" asked Rob Hoy.

"Even by the words you have spoken, had I not better evidence," replied the strange old man.

"Explain yourself, Paul; we have no time for trifling now," said Rob, softly.

"Duncan nan Creagh lost each alternate tooth in his lower jaw when fighting with Colin's father, at the fair of Callender, in the year that the field of Rin Ruari was stricken. They came to dirk and claymore about the price of a Clydesdale cow, and Ian Bane smote Duncan on the mouth with the hilt of his sword, and forced him to swallow a mouthful of his own teeth; and a bitter mouthful he found them."

"Dioul! well?"

"Since then he has been well-nigh a toothless man; but if you would overtake the creagh, lose no time, for I saw the spoil and the spoilers not two hours since."

"You saw them?" exclaimed all, bending forward.

"Yes, I," said Paul, brandishing his pilgrim-staff; "and not quite two hours ago."

"Where?" asked Red MacGregor.

"Crossing the Dochart, and taking the road towards Glenfalloch."

"Which--the military road?"

"No; Duncan nan Creagh knows better than to do that," said Paul, shaking his white locks; "they took the old Fingalian drove-road, right across the mountains towards the north-west."

"'Tis well, kinsman," said Rob Roy, sternly and gravely; "now, men of Clan Alpine, swear with me on the bare dirk, by the soul of Ciar Mhor, to revenge the murder of this boy, our kinsman's son, and then away to the hills--even the hills of Kintail, if need be!"

On this being said, every man unsheathed the long Highland dirk which hung at his right side, and passed round the dead body by the course of the sun, from east to west; for it was the custom in the Highlands to approach the grave thus, prior to laying the dead within it; thus to conduct the bride to the altar and to her home: it is a remnant of fire-worship, and, singularly enough, the wine-decanters and the whisky-bottle are to this hour sent round the dinner-table in Scotland, _deisalways_, from left to right, the last remnant of a superstition that is old as the days of the Druids.

Then Rob Roy, MacAleister, Greumoch, even old Paul Crubach, and every man present, laid his left hand on the cold head of the fair-haired Colin, and holding his bare dirk aloft, with outstretched arm, swore solemnly, by the souls of their fathers who slept on Inchcailloch, by their own souls, and by the memory of every wrong endured by the Clan of MacGregor since the field of Glenfruin was won by their swords, never to seek rest or repose, altar or shelter, till they had tracked out the spoilers, and avenged to the utmost the murder of the widow's only son.

Then each man pressed the bare blade to his lips, and this--the most solemn oath of the Scottish Highlanders--was named swearing on _the Holy Steel_; and he who broke that terrible vow, or wilfully failed in the task to which he had dedicated body and soul, was liable to be slain, even by his nearest kinsman, as a mansworn coward. The usual length of these Highland dirks is about sixteen inches in the blade; so that a stab may be given three inches _beyond_ the elbow, and their hilts are always covered with twisted knot-work, perhaps the last remnant of serpent-worship in Europe.

"Now be it dirk and claymore!" exclaimed Rob Roy. "Do men still think to outrage us because we are a broken and a landless clan? If so, we shall teach them who outlawed the race of Alpine, that if it is lawful to kill a MacGregor, it is also lawful to slay a MacRae, or a Colquhoun, like a faulty hound; so let us to the hills at once, and track the creagh! Meet me at the door of my own house in ten minutes, every man who holds dear the cry for vengeance on our enemies."

"We cannot overtake them to-night," said Greumoch; "for the Colquhouns of Luss have sunk the ferry-boat, or stolen it to Rossdhu; so let us cross the Loch-hean to-morrow."

"Dioul! this counsel is not like yours, Greumoch,"

"By dawn the ford of the Dochart will be passable," replied the clansman.

"To-night; I say to-night!" exclaimed Rob, passionately.

"To-night!" reiterated all present, brandishing their swords; "to-night be it, or never!"

"We will take the ford as we find it," said Callam MacAleister; "if they passed it, so may _we_."

"Never let us put off till to-morrow that which we can do or begin to do to-day," said Rob Roy. "_Yesterday_ passes into eternity fast enough; and, Greumoch, it is a bitter reflection to a man, that yesterday was a _lost_ day--a day that never can be overtaken. All men's hands are against us; but I have sworn, by the Grey Stone of MacGregor, that vengeance shall yet be ours!"

"_Ard choille_, and away!" shouted Greumoch, waving his bonnet, yielding to the general impulse.

Within a few minutes he, with MacAleister, Alaster Roy MacGregor, and sixteen other picked men of the hamlet, mustered at the door of Rob Roy's mansion. Each had on his belted plaid, which means the kilt, with the loose end of the web fastened by a brooch to the left shoulder as a mantle. Each had slung on his back a round target of bull's hide, stretched over fir-boards, and thickly studded with brass knobs; and each was fully armed, with a basket-hilted sword, a long dirk, and claw-butted pistols. Their bullets were carried in pouches, and their powder in horns, slung under the right arm.

The bright moon that lit up the little street of the Highland hamlet, glittered on their weapons, and shone on their weather-beaten faces, which expressed dark anger, eagerness, and determination to overtake the perpetrators of the late outrage.

They spoke little, but, after the manner of their countrymen, hummed or whistled in a surly fashion, the sure precursor of a squabble among Highlanders; and busied themselves with the flints and priming of their pistols, or the thongs which tied their cuarans or home-made shoes, the sole and upper of which are in one piece, and worn like the Roman sandal. Armed like the rest, the Red MacGregor soon came forth, and was greeted by a murmur of applause. "Good wife--Helen," he exclaimed, "it is ill marching with a fasting stomach; bring forth cakes and the kebboc, with a dram of usquebaugh; for the lads must have their deoch an doruis ere we start."

With a short plaid folded over her head and shoulders, his wife, a young and pretty woman, appeared at the door, accompanied by two female servants, having oat-cakes, cheese, a bottle, glasses, and quaichs (_i.e._, little wooden cups) on an oval mahogany teaboard.

Doffing his bonnet to the black-eyed Dame of Inversnaid, each man took a dram of whisky and a morsel of bread and cheese; more as a ceremony, it seemed, than because it was necessary.

Little Coll MacGregor, then Rob's only child, was held up for his father to kiss. "Now, fare-ye-well, Bird Helen," said he; "ere we return, I will have laid the wolf's head on the heather;" and with his followers, he left the hamlet at a quick pace.

The wife of Rob Roy looked after them for a moment, as their tartans waved, and their bright arms flashed in the moonlight; then her eye glanced down the glen, where the burn wound in silver sheen towards Loch Lomond, and with a single pious hope for her husband's safety, she quietly shut the door, which was well secured by triple locks and bars of iron, and which had, moreover, two loopholes on each side, to fire muskets through. When not required for defence, these apertures were closed within, by a plug of wood. To her, the daughter of a proscribed race, the wife of a levier of black-mail, reared as she had been in the land of swordsmen, among fierce and predatory clans, the departure of her husband on such a mission was not a matter for much anxiety, and yet this pursuit of the MacRaes was the first important exploit of Rob Roy which appears in history.