Chronicles of the Canongate

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"Leave me," she said, "to baffle your pursuers. I will save your
life--I will save your honour. I will tell them that my fair-
haired Hamish fell from the Corrie Dhu (black precipice) into the
gulf, of which human eye never beheld the bottom. I will tell
them this, and I will fling your plaid on the thorns which grow
on the brink of the precipice, that they may believe my words.
They will believe, and they will return to the Dun of the double-
crest; for though the Saxon drum can call the living to die, it
cannot recall the dead to their slavish standard. Then will we
travel together far northward to the salt lakes of Kintail, and
place glens and mountains betwixt us and the sons of Dermid. We
will visit the shores of the dark lake; and my kinsmen--for was
not my mother of the children of Kenneth, and will they not
remember us with the old love?--my kinsmen will receive us with
the affection of the olden time, which lives in those distant
glens, where the Gael still dwell in their nobleness, unmingled
with the churl Saxons, or with the base brood that are their
tools and their slaves."

The energy of the language, somewhat allied to hyperbole, even in
its most ordinary expressions, now seemed almost too weak to
afford Elspat the means of bringing out the splendid picture
which she presented to her son of the land in which she proposed
to him to take refuge. Yet the colours were few with which she
could paint her Highland paradise. "The hills," she said, "were
higher and more magnificent than those of Breadalbane--Ben
Cruachan was but a dwarf to Skooroora. The lakes were broader
and larger, and abounded not only with fish, but with the
enchanted and amphibious animal which gives oil to the lamp.
[The seals are considered by the Highlanders as enchanted
princes.] The deer were larger and more numerous; the white-
tusked boar, the chase of which the brave loved best, was yet to
be roused in those western solitudes; the men were nobler, wiser,
and stronger than the degenerate brood who lived under the Saxon
banner. The daughters of the land were beautiful, with blue eyes
and fair hair, and bosoms of snow; and out of these she would
choose a wife for Hamish, of blameless descent, spotless fame,
fixed and true affection, who should be in their summer bothy as
a beam of the sun, and in their winter abode as the warmth of the
needful fire."

Such were the topics with which Elspat strove to soothe the
despair of her son, and to determine him, if possible, to leave
the fatal spot, on which he seemed resolved to linger. The style
of her rhetoric was poetical, but in other respects resembled
that which, like other fond mothers, she had lavished on Hamish,
while a child or a boy, in order to gain his consent to do
something he had no mind to; and she spoke louder, quicker, and
more earnestly, in proportion as she began to despair of her
words carrying conviction.

On the mind of Hamish her eloquence made no impression. He knew
far better than she did the actual situation of the country, and
was sensible that, though it might be possible to hide himself as
a fugitive among more distant mountains, there was now no corner
in the Highlands in which his father's profession could be
practised, even if he had not adopted, from the improved ideas of
the time when he lived, the opinion that the trade of the cateran
was no longer the road to honour and distinction. Her words were
therefore poured into regardless ears, and she exhausted herself
in vain in the attempt to paint the regions of her mother's
kinsmen in such terms as might tempt Hamish to accompany her
thither. She spoke for hours, but she spoke in vain. She could
extort no answer, save groans and sighs and ejaculations,
expressing the extremity of despair.

At length, starting on her feet, and changing the monotonous tone
in which she had chanted, as it were, the praises of the province
of refuge, into the short, stern language of eager passion--"I am
a fool," she said, "to spend my words upon an idle, poor-
spirited, unintelligent boy, who crouches like a hound to the
lash. Wait here, and receive your taskmasters, and abide your
chastisement at their hands; but do not think your mother's eyes
will behold it. I could not see it and live. My eyes have
looked often upon death, but never upon dishonour. Farewell,
Hamish! We never meet again."

She dashed from the hut like a lapwing, and perhaps for the
moment actually entertained the purpose which she expressed, of
parting with her son for ever. A fearful sight she would have
been that evening to any who might have met her wandering through
the wilderness like a restless spirit, and speaking to herself in
language which will endure no translation. She rambled for
hours, seeking rather than shunning the most dangerous paths.
The precarious track through the morass, the dizzy path along the
edge of the precipice or by the banks of the gulfing river, were
the roads which, far from avoiding, she sought with eagerness,
and traversed with reckless haste. But the courage arising from
despair was the means of saving the life which (though deliberate
suicide was rarely practised in the Highlands) she was perhaps
desirous of terminating. Her step on the verge of the precipice
was firm as that of the wild goat. Her eye, in that state of
excitation, was so keen as to discern, even amid darkness, the
perils which noon would not have enabled a stranger to avoid.

Elspat's course was not directly forward, else she had soon been
far from the bothy in which she had left her son. It was
circuitous, for that hut was the centre to which her heartstrings
were chained, and though she wandered around it, she felt it
impossible to leave the vicinity. With the first beams of
morning she returned to the hut. Awhile she paused at the
wattled door, as if ashamed that lingering fondness should have
brought her back to the spot which she had left with the purpose
of never returning; but there was yet more of fear and anxiety in
her hesitation--of anxiety, lest her fair-haired son had suffered
from the effects of her potion--of fear, lest his enemies had
come upon him in the night. She opened the door of the hut
gently, and entered with noiseless step. Exhausted with his
sorrow and anxiety, and not entirely relieved perhaps from the
influence of the powerful opiate, Hamish Bean again slept the
stern, sound sleep by which the Indians are said to be overcome
during the interval of their torments. His mother was scarcely
sure that she actually discerned his form on the bed, scarce
certain that her ear caught the sound of his breathing. With a
throbbing heart, Elspat went to the fireplace in the centre of
the hut, where slumbered, covered with a piece of turf, the
glimmering embers of the fire, never extinguished on a Scottish
hearth until the indwellers leave the mansion for ever.

"Feeble greishogh," [Greishogh, a glowing ember.] she said, as
she lighted, by the help of a match, a splinter of bog pine which
was to serve the place of a candle--"weak greishogh, soon shalt
thou be put out for ever, and may Heaven grant that the life of
Elspat MacTavish have no longer duration than thine!"

While she spoke she raised the blazing light towards the bed, on
which still lay the prostrate limbs of her son, in a posture that
left it doubtful whether he slept or swooned. As she advanced
towards him, the light flashed upon his eyes--he started up in an
instant, made a stride forward with his naked dirk in his hand,
like a man armed to meet a mortal enemy, and exclaimed, "Stand
off!--on thy life, stand off!"

"It is the word and the action of my husband," answered Elspat;
"and I know by his speech and his step the son of MacTavish
Mhor."

"Mother," said Hamish, relapsing from his tone of desperate
firmness into one of melancholy expostulation--"oh, dearest
mother, wherefore have you returned hither?"

"Ask why the hind comes back to the fawn," said Elspat, "why the
cat of the mountain returns to her lodge and her young. Know
you, Hamish, that the heart of the mother only lives in the bosom
of the child."

"Then will it soon cease to throb," said Hamish, "unless it can
beat within a bosom that lies beneath the turf. Mother, do not
blame me. If I weep, it is not for myself but for you; for my
sufferings will soon be over, but yours--oh, who but Heaven shall
set a boundary to them?"

Elspat shuddered and stepped backward, but almost instantly
resumed her firm and upright position and her dauntless bearing.

"I thought thou wert a man but even now," she said, "and thou art
again a child. Hearken to me yet, and let us leave this place
together. Have I done thee wrong or injury? if so, yet do not
avenge it so cruelly. See, Elspat MacTavish, who never kneeled
before even to a priest, falls prostrate before her own son, and
craves his forgiveness." And at once she threw herself on her
knees before the young man, seized on his hand, and kissing it an
hundred times, repeated as often, in heart-breaking accents, the
most earnest entreaties for forgiveness. "Pardon," she
exclaimed, "pardon, for the sake of your father's ashes--pardon,
for the sake of the pain with which I bore thee, the care with
which I nurtured thee!--Hear it, Heaven, and behold it, Earth--
the mother asks pardon of her child, and she is refused!"

It was in vain that Hamish endeavoured to stem this tide of
passion, by assuring his mother, with the most solemn
asseverations, that he forgave entirely the fatal deceit which
she had practised upon him.

"Empty words," she said, "idle protestations, which are but used
to hide the obduracy of your resentment. Would you have me
believe you, then leave the hut this instant, and retire from a
country which every hour renders more dangerous. Do this, and I
may think you have forgiven me; refuse it, and again I call on
moon and stars, heaven and earth, to witness the unrelenting
resentment with which you prosecute your mother for a fault,
which, if it be one, arose out of love to you."

"Mother," said Hamish, "on this subject you move me not. I will
fly before no man. If Barcaldine should send every Gael that is
under his banner, here, and in this place, will I abide them; and
when you bid me fly, you may as well command yonder mountain to
be loosened from its foundations. Had I been sure of the road by
which they are coming hither, I had spared them the pains of
seeking me; but I might go by the mountain, while they perchance
came by the lake. Here I will abide my fate; nor is there in
Scotland a voice of power enough to bid me stir from hence, and
be obeyed."

"Here, then, I also stay," said Elspat, rising up and speaking
with assumed composure. "I have seen my husband's death--my
eyelids shall not grieve to look on the fall of my son. But
MacTavish Mhor died as became the brave, with his good sword in
his right hand; my son will perish like the bullock that is
driven to the shambles by the Saxon owner who had bought him for
a price."

"Mother," said the unhappy young man, "you have taken my life.
To that you have a right, for you gave it; but touch not my
honour! It came to me from a brave train of ancestors, and
should be sullied neither by man's deed nor woman's speech. What
I shall do, perhaps I myself yet know not; but tempt me no
farther by reproachful words--you have already made wounds more
than you can ever heal."

"It is well, my son," said Elspat, in reply. "Expect neither
farther complaint nor remonstrance from me; but let us be silent,
and wait the chance which Heaven shall send us."

The sun arose on the next morning, and found the bothy silent as
the grave. The mother and son had arisen, and were engaged each
in their separate task--Hamish in preparing and cleaning his arms
with the greatest accuracy, but with an air of deep dejection.
Elspat, more restless in her agony of spirit, employed herself in
making ready the food which the distress of yesterday had induced
them both to dispense with for an unusual number of hours. She
placed it on the board before her son so soon as it was prepared,
with the words of a Gaelic poet, "Without daily food, the
husbandman's ploughshare stands still in the furrow; without
daily food, the sword of the warrior is too heavy for his hand.
Our bodies are our slaves, yet they must be fed if we would have
their service. So spake in ancient days the Blind Bard to the
warriors of Fion."

The young man made no reply, but he fed on what was placed before
him, as if to gather strength for the scene which he was to
undergo. When his mother saw that he had eaten what sufficed
him, she again filled the fatal quaigh, and proffered it as the
conclusion of the repast. But he started aside with a convulsive
gesture, expressive at once of fear and abhorrence.

"Nay, my son," she said, "this time surely, thou hast no cause of
fear."

"Urge me not, mother," answered Hamish--"or put the leprous toad
into a flagon, and I will drink; but from that accursed cup, and
of that mind-destroying potion, never will I taste more!"

"At your pleasure, my son," said Elspat, haughtily, and began,
with much apparent assiduity, the various domestic tasks which
had been interrupted during the preceding day. Whatever was at
her heart, all anxiety seemed banished from her looks and
demeanour. It was but from an over-activity of bustling exertion
that it might have been perceived, by a close observer, that her
actions were spurred by some internal cause of painful
excitement; and such a spectator, too, might also have observed
how often she broke off the snatches of songs or tunes which she
hummed, apparently without knowing what she was doing, in order
to cast a hasty glance from the door of the hut. Whatever might
be in the mind of Hamish, his demeanour was directly the reverse
of that adopted by his mother. Having finished the task of
cleaning and preparing his arms, which he arranged within the
hut, he sat himself down before the door of the bothy, and
watched the opposite hill, like the fixed sentinel who expects
the approach of an enemy. Noon found him in the same unchanged
posture, and it was an hour after that period, when his mother,
standing beside him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and said, in
a tone indifferent, as if she had been talking of some friendly
visit, "When dost thou expect them?"

"They cannot be here till the shadows fall long to the eastward,"
replied Hamish; "that is, even supposing the nearest party,
commanded by Sergeant Allan Breack Cameron, has been commanded
hither by express from Dunbarton, as it is most likely they
will."

"Then enter beneath your mother's roof once more; partake the
last time of the food which she has prepared; after this, let
them come, and thou shalt see if thy mother is an useless
encumbrance in the day of strife. Thy hand, practised as it is,
cannot fire these arms so fast as I can load them; nay, if it is
necessary, I do not myself fear the flash or the report, and my
aim has been held fatal."

"In the name of Heaven, mother, meddle not with this matter!"
said Hamish. "Allan Breack is a wise man and a kind one, and
comes of a good stem. It may be, he can promise for our officers
that they will touch me with no infamous punishment; and if they
offer me confinement in the dungeon, or death by the musket, to
that I may not object."

"Alas, and wilt thou trust to their word, my foolish child?
Remember the race of Dermid were ever fair and false; and no
sooner shall they have gyves on thy hands, than they will strip
thy shoulders for the scourge."

"Save your advice, mother," said Hamish, sternly; "for me, my
mind is made up."

But though he spoke thus, to escape the almost persecuting
urgency of his mother, Hamish would have found it, at that
moment, impossible to say upon what course of conduct he had thus
fixed. On one point alone he was determined--namely, to abide
his destiny, be what it might, and not to add to the breach of
his word, of which he had been involuntarily rendered guilty, by
attempting to escape from punishment. This act of self-devotion
he conceived to be due to his own honour and that of his
countrymen. Which of his comrades would in future be trusted, if
he should be considered as having broken his word, and betrayed
the confidence of his officers? and whom but Hamish Bean
MacTavish would the Gael accuse for having verified and confirmed
the suspicions which the Saxon General was well known to
entertain against the good faith of the Highlanders? He was,
therefore, bent firmly to abide his fate. But whether his
intention was to yield himself peaceably into the bands of the
party who should come to apprehend him, or whether he purposed,
by a show of resistance, to provoke them to kill him on the spot,
was a question which he could not himself have answered. His
desire to see Barcaldine, and explain the cause of his absence at
the appointed time, urged him to the one course; his fear of the
degrading punishment, and of his mother's bitter upbraidings,
strongly instigated the latter and the more dangerous purpose.
He left it to chance to decide when the crisis should arrive; nor
did he tarry long in expectation of the catastrophe.

Evening approached; the gigantic shadows of the mountains
streamed in darkness towards the east, while their western peaks
were still glowing with crimson and gold. The road which winds
round Ben Cruachan was fully visible from the door of the bothy,
when a party of five Highland soldiers, whose arms glanced in the
sun, wheeled suddenly into sight from the most distant extremity,
where the highway is hidden behind the mountain. One of the
party walked a little before the other four, who marched
regularly and in files, according to the rules of military
discipline. There was no dispute, from the firelocks which they
carried, and the plaids and bonnets which they wore, that they
were a party of Hamish's regiment, under a non-commissioned
officer; and there could be as little doubt of the purpose of
their appearance on the banks of Loch Awe.

"They come briskly forward"--said the widow of MacTavish Mhor;--
"I wonder how fast or how slow some of them will return again!
But they are five, and it is too much odds for a fair field.
Step back within the hut, my son, and shoot from the loophole
beside the door. Two you may bring down ere they quit the
highroad for the footpath--there will remain but three; and your
father, with my aid, has often stood against that number."

Hamish Bean took the gun which his mother offered, but did not
stir from the door of the hut. He was soon visible to the party
on the highroad, as was evident from their increasing their pace
to a run--the files, however, still keeping together like coupled
greyhounds, and advancing with great rapidity. In far less time
than would have been accomplished by men less accustomed to the
mountains, they had left the highroad, traversed the narrow path,
and approached within pistol-shot of the bothy, at the door of
which stood Hamish, fixed like a statue of stone, with his
firelock in his band, while his mother, placed behind him, and
almost driven to frenzy by the violence of her passions,
reproached him in the strongest terms which despair could invent,
for his want of resolution and faintness of heart. Her words
increased the bitter gall which was arising in the young man's
own spirit, as he observed the unfriendly speed with which his
late comrades were eagerly making towards him, like hounds
towards the stag when he is at bay. The untamed and angry
passions which he inherited from father and mother, were awakened
by the supposed hostility of those who pursued him; and the
restraint under which these passions had been hitherto held by
his sober judgment began gradually to give way. The sergeant now
called to him, "Hamish Bean MacTavish, lay down your arms and
surrender."

"Do YOU stand, Allan Breack Cameron, and command your men to
stand, or it will be the worse for us all."

"Halt, men," said the sergeant, but continuing himself to
advance. "Hamish, think what you do, and give up your gun; you
may spill blood, but you cannot escape punishment."

"The scourge--the scourge--my son, beware the scourge!"
whispered his mother.

"Take heed, Allan Breack," said Hamish. "I would not hurt you
willingly, but I will not be taken unless you can assure me
against the Saxon lash."

"Fool!" answered Cameron, "you know I cannot. Yet I will do all
I can. I will say I met you on your return, and the punishment
will be light; but give up your musket--Come on, men."

Instantly he rushed forward, extending his arm as if to push
aside the young man's levelled firelock. Elspat exclaimed, "Now,
spare not your father's blood to defend your father's hearth!"
Hamish fired his piece, and Cameron dropped dead. All these
things happened, it might be said, in the same moment of time.
The soldiers rushed forward and seized Hamish, who, seeming
petrified with what he had done, offered not the least
resistance. Not so his mother, who, seeing the men about to put
handcuffs on her son, threw herself on the soldiers with such
fury, that it required two of them to hold her, while the rest
secured the prisoner.

"Are you not an accursed creature," said one of the men to
Hamish, "to have slain your best friend, who was contriving,
during the whole march, how he could find some way of getting you
off without punishment for your desertion?"

"Do you hear THAT, mother?" said Hamish, turning himself as much
towards her as his bonds would permit; but the mother heard
nothing, and saw nothing. She had fainted on the floor of her
hut. Without waiting for her recovery, the party almost
immediately began their homeward march towards Dunbarton, leading
along with them their prisoner. They thought it necessary,
however, to stay for a little space at the village of Dalmally,
from which they despatched a party of the inhabitants to bring
away the body of their unfortunate leader, while they themselves
repaired to a magistrate, to state what had happened, and require
his instructions as to the farther course to be pursued. The
crime being of a military character, they were instructed to
march the prisoner to Dunbarton without delay.

The swoon of the mother of Hamish lasted for a length of time--
the longer perhaps that her constitution, strong as it was, must
have been much exhausted by her previous agitation of three days'
endurance. She was roused from her stupor at length by female
voices, which cried the coronach, or lament for the dead, with
clapping of hands and loud exclamations; while the melancholy
note of a lament, appropriate to the clan Cameron, played on the
bagpipe, was heard from time to time.

Elspat started up like one awakened from the dead, and without
any accurate recollection of the scene which had passed before
her eyes. There were females in the hut who were swathing the
corpse in its bloody plaid before carrying it from the fatal
spot. "Women," she said, starting up and interrupting their
chant at once and their labour--"Tell me, women, why sing you the
dirge of MacDhonuil Dhu in the house of MacTavish Mhor?"

"She-wolf, be silent with thine ill-omened yell," answered one of
the females, a relation of the deceased, "and let us do our duty
to our beloved kinsman. There shall never be coronach cried, or
dirge played, for thee or thy bloody wolf-burd. [Wolf-brood--
that is, wolf-cub.] The ravens shall eat him from the gibbet, and
the foxes and wild-cats shall tear thy corpse upon the hill.
Cursed be he that would sain [Bless.] your bones, or add a stone
to your cairn!"

"Daughter of a foolish mother," answered the widow of MacTavish
Mhor, "know that the gibbet with which you threaten us is no
portion of our inheritance. For thirty years the Black Tree of
the Law, whose apples are dead men's bodies, hungered after the
beloved husband of my heart; but he died like a brave man, with
the sword in his hand, and defrauded it of its hopes and its
fruit."

"So shall it not be with thy child, bloody sorceress," replied
the female mourner, whose passions were as violent as those of
Elspat herself. "The ravens shall tear his fair hair to line
their nests, before the sun sinks beneath the Treshornish
islands."

These words recalled to Elspat's mind the whole history of the
last three dreadful days. At first she stood fixed, as if the
extremity of distress had converted her into stone; but in a
minute, the pride and violence of her temper, outbraved as she
thought herself on her own threshold, enabled her to reply, "Yes,
insulting hag, my fair-haired boy may die, but it will not be
with a white hand. It has been dyed in the blood of his enemy,
in the best blood of a Cameron--remember that; and when you lay
your dead in his grave, let it be his best epitaph that he was
killed by Hamish Bean for essaying to lay hands on the son of
MacTavish Mhor on his own threshold. Farewell--the shame of
defeat, loss, and slaughter remain with the clan that has endured
it!"

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