Chapter XX: Desolation

Night came down on that scene of lamentation and woe--on more than eighty human beings who were fashioned in the image of God, and were yet denied such shelter as He accords to the fox and eagle; but though their hearths were desolate, and their old hereditary but humble homes demolished, the clearance could not be deemed complete, until the people were entirely swept away from the country.

Callum and I obtained shelter with the old priest Father Raoul, who afforded us a corner of his little hut; the poor man had but one pallet--and there we remained for a day or two, considering what steps should be taken to find food for those who were starving in the now desolate glen, and moreover to provide for ourselves.

Thus I found a temporary home, within a few feet of the spot, where she, to whom I had ever turned for consolation and comfort, advice and sympathy, was taking her eternal rest.

Meanwhile fresh cruelties and scenes of horror took place in that ill-fated glen, where the people were completely given up to the malevolent fury of Snaggs, who, as a man of the law, had a truly legal aversion to Highlanders.

The evicted formed a little bivouac on the heather. In one place lay a sick mother, stretched on a pallet, covered by her husband's plaid; around her nestled her little ones, gazing with awe and terror at this unusual scene; on the deathlike visage of one parent and the stern despair that lurked in the eyes of the other. Fires of turf and rafters were kindled, and round these, in little booths of rugs and plaids, nestled the younger children, and infants in cradles. Amid these the elder children sported and played, ignorant of the ruin that had come upon them, and in their heedless glee forming a strong contrast to their grief-stricken parents, whose once high spirit was crushed and broken now. Such is the effect of tyranny, starvation, and misrule!

The old soldier, Ian Mac Raonuil, burrowed a hole on the brow of a hill under a rock, and spread his plaid over it. Herein lay his wife, nursing a sickly and delicate child, while he with his stouter sons slept on the sward. The air became chilly, and the cloudy sky was overcharged with dew; thus many who were sick and ailing, wandered about like ghosts on the midnight hill, unable to find either shelter or repose. Premature labour came on the wife of Gillespie Ruadh; and there, on the bleak side of Ben Ora, the wretched Highland mother brought her child into the world. Before morning she expired, and the aged widow Mac Gouran lay also a corpse, not far from her; for before dawn, there came on a tempest of lightning, wind, and rain, as if the very elements had conspired with the petty tyrants of the glen, to destroy the homeless Mac Innons. And while the blue lightning gleamed between the bare scalp of Ben Ora and the rifted brow of the Craig-na-tuirc; while the rain like a ceaseless torrent smoked along the soaking heather, and flooded every rocky chasm and sandy runnel; while the wind swept over the hills as if it would have torn up the heath by the roots, our poor people all nestled together, and, lifting up their voices, sang a psalm with touching piety. Amid this tempest the mother and her youngling died; and the beautiful Celtic superstition--that a woman who dies in childbed, whatever her offences in life--is borne by angels straight to heaven, was remembered now, as the people whispered it to one another, and drew comfort from it.

The sufferings of the night left them more wretched than ever.

To shelter the women, and to veil the dead bodies from the view of the children, a few cabers were propped together, and above these the men spread their plaids and grey frieze coats; but ere long there was a cry of alarm, and the infamous Snaggs, with a party of his levellers and armed constables, came upon them again. Then the coverings were torn off; the cabers flung aside, and the sick and the dead were remorselessly exposed to the blaze of the hot morning sun. The booth which sheltered the children was demolished, and the wife of Mac Raonuil was dragged from her hole on the hill-side.

In vain did she weep and hold up her babe; in vain did the sick veteran, her husband, point to his wounded arm, his silver hairs, and three war-medals; the only reply was fierce abuse for daring to seek shelter, or to burrow, after a notice of removal had been duly served upon them.

A few ducks and hens, which had been wandering and scraping among the ruins of the cottages, were now collected and carried off by the constables, lest they might afford a day's food to the homeless, who were threatened with fresh vengeance by those jacks-in-office, if found in the glen to-morrow. Mr. Snaggs, who always spoke blandly, quoted Scripture and Blair on the folly of resistance; the beauty of submission to the will of God, and more especially of the new proprietor, for 'go they must--a ship was coming round to Loch Ora with sheep; and on the morrow there would arrive several hampers of a new species of game with which Sir Horace meant to stock the glen. Go then, my dear friends,' continued Mr. Snaggs, with a gloating eye at Minnie, who was kneeling over some sick children; 'go, and the Lord will provide for you in Canada--"for," as the divine Blair says, "neither obscurity of station, nor imperfection of knowledge sink below his regard those who obey and worship him."'

With this trite quotation, the elder and the factor whipped up his pony, and departed with a couple of fat ducks dangling at its saddle-bow.

Next morning, the keepers arrived with their hampers of game on a cart, and as they entered the glen by the lower pass, the original inhabitants retired by the upper, (bearing their dead, their dying, the sick, aged, and little ones, slung in plaids over the shoulders of the stoutest men,) towards the only shelter that remained to them--and assuredly the last which the Gael would think of adopting--the old ruined chapel of St. Colme upon the sea-beaten rocks of the western coast, for, as no Highland landlord will allow the evicted tenants of another to tarry within his bounds, the graveyards alone are now the neutral ground. There among the tombs they formed a new bivouac above the long rank grass that wrapped their fathers' dust. Close by were the moss-covered and lichen-spotted ruins of the old chapel, where the owl and the bat had their nests, and where the sombre ivy grew in luxuriance--a place of many solemn memories and many legendary terrors.

Location of every kind was refused by the adjacent proprietors; so with a vast tract of wild and rugged mountains and pathless hunting forests around them, our people were compelled to herd like cattle within the circular wall of the burying-ground; for most of the modern tyrants of the North share alike the love of game, the lust of gold, and a horror of the Celtic race.

It was on the fourth day that the widow of the Ca-Dearg (whose head had been fractured by the blow of a baton) died; and a cry for vengeance against her murderers went up to heaven from the denizens of that uncouth bivouac, as they committed her body to the earth; and it was fortunate that all the rifles and weapons of the people had been seized; for in Callum's breast and mine, there swelled up such a glow of fury, that we would assuredly have committed some fierce and retributive act, at which all Britain would have been startled.

'Are we slaves?' exclaimed Callum, furiously; 'I speak in English, Mac Innon; for, thank heaven, the Gaelic is the _only_ language in the world that has no word expressive of slavery.'

'A bootless boast,' said I, gloomily; 'and what matters it, when we may be murdered with impunity?'

'Evil has come upon us like snow upon the mountains, unsought and unsent for,' said he, as we closed the grave of the soldier's widow; 'poor old woman! Her blood has been shed by a staff that bore the royal crown and cypher--and for that crown her three brave sons are fighting in the East. A chial! a Highland soldier, or a Highland soldier's mother, are of less value than a grouse or plover--a sheep or a cow; for they cannot be shot for pleasure like the former, nor fattened to feed the southern market like the latter; and it is for a Government that treats us thus our soldiers fight and die! _Is samhach an obair dol a dholaidh!_'

'Alas, yes--silent is the progress of ruin!' I replied, repeating the proverb; 'but had our glen been in Tipperary, at what premium would the lives of Snaggs and Sir Horace been insured?'

'Sir Horace has driven us forth, that our glen may be peopled by wild animals; _but if fire will burn_, by the five wounds of God, and by the Black Stone of Scone, he will make little of that!' swore Callum, in a hoarse Gaelic whisper.

There was a dark and savage gleam in his hazel eyes as he spoke; and though aware that he referred to a project of vengeance, I cared not then to ask what it was.

Old Mhari was the wise woman and chief adviser and mediciner of the glen; she placed implicit belief in a hundred charms, spells, traditions, and absurdities that have come down to us through long and misty ages--yea, since the days of Fingal; for the supernatural is full of charms to the mind of a mountaineer. Thus Mhari was the custodier of one of those sanctified girdles which were usually kept in many Highland families, and which were bound about women in childbed. They were impressed with strange and mystic figures; and the ceremony of binding was accompanied by words of Druidical origin; but Mhari was sorely perplexed and bewildered when the wife of Gillespie Ruadh expired amid the tempest, with this ancient girdle of maternity around her.

In a revengeful spirit, that bordered on the necromantic malevolence of the olden time, she fashioned an image of clay, which she named 'Ephraim Snaggs,' and selecting a time when the moon was full, placed it in a runnel which distilled between the rocks from a lonely tarn, among the sedges of which the dusky water-ouzel laid its eggs, and where the lazy bittern, whose croak forebodes a storm, made its home; and she believed that as the stream washed away the clay, and reduced it to a shapeless mass, and from thence to mere mud, so would the ungainly person of Mr. Ephraim Snaggs waste, pine, and decay: but most unfortunately, and greatly to the injury of Mhari's local reputation, this incantation of the nineteenth century turned out a complete failure; for though the runnel washed away the image in less than three days, Snaggs remained unharmed and well as ever; for we frequently saw him trotting his pony along the mountain path which led to the house of Sir Horace Everingham.

Though supported by the secret charity of the neighbouring clachans, our poor people were meanwhile enduring great misery. Their nights were passed shelterless among the dreary shades of the dead--each mother with her children clinging round her in terror and hunger; for their principal sustenance had been herbs, mountain-berries, and cold water.

Each morning they thanked God that another night was past; and each night they thanked Him for the sorrowful day that was gone. The wind whistled drearily from the ocean round the open ruins, and over the long grassy graves, and bare, bleak headland of St. Colme. It seemed to bear on its breath a wailing sound, like a dirge of the dying, as it swept through the old yew-trees--but this, of course, was fancy.

With a heart that vibrated between love and hatred, anger and sorrow, I thought of Laura Everingham.

If the regret she expressed so prettily and so pithily for her father's previous severity and his Victor's cruelty was sincere, what would her emotions be now?

But days passed away, and no message from her ever reached me at that wretched hut, which the poor but hospitable priest had invited me to share. This neglect stung me to the soul, and caused an anger that not even the memory of Laura's winning kindness, the strange admissions of Snobleigh in the avenue, and the memory of her soft smile or the beauty of her person could subdue; but I knew not that during this, our time of calamity, she and Fanny Clavering were paying a visit to a noble marquis, whose exterminating propensities have made him famous as one of the chief '_Barriers_ to the prosperity of Scotland.'

Meanwhile Sir Horace, Sheriff Mac Fee, and Mr. Snaggs, after a voluminous correspondence with the Board of Supervision, had a steamer despatched to Loch Ora, to convey our people to Glasgow, where (without being landed) they were to be thrust like slaves on board of a vessel bound for America. Their final expatriation was fully resolved on by the trio; and none of the evicted were consulted either as to their wishes or destination, as they were alleged to be poor and ignorant Celts, who knew no language but their native Gaelic, and were helpless and stricken alike by poverty, sickness, and a wholesome terror of the powers that be.

The night was pitchy dark and somewhat stormy, when our poor outcasts saw the steamer that was to convey them for ever from their loved Highland home, ploughing the lonely waters of the deep salt loch that opened into the mountains; and a wail of despair ascended from the bleak burial promontory, as they heard the roar of the escaping steam, and the plunge of the descending anchor, when the vessel came to her moorings. Then the red light at her mast-head was watched for hours by the doomed and expatriated clansmen with emotions which no pen can describe, or pencil portray.

On this night it was averred that the _white stag_ had been seen to hover near us in the gloom.

Low down along the base of Ben Ora, round the shore of the mirrored loch, and in the dark glen they had left, our people saw a wondrous blaze of light that illuminated the sky--that tinged the clouds with wavering fire, and lit the cold grey rocks and hills--the waving woods, and ghastly corries. It widened and grew on every hand, that marvellous sheet of flame, seeming to embrace the whole country in its fiery grasp; and with shouts of fear and wonder, the poor people, while gazing on this phenomenon, forgot for a time their own sorrows, and the approaching hour of their final expatriation.