Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 309: New Series, Saturday, December 8, 1849Various
General
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 309: New Series, Saturday, December 8, 1849
Various
Periodicals
A guide in the interest of the peasants conducted the Scottish party
towards the narrow defile which has been described. The peasants
themselves were gathered in force on the mountains above. As it was
impossible for them to see what was going on in the pass, they caused
a man mounted on a white horse to pass to the other side of the
river, and move a little way in front of the advancing enemy, that
they might know when he was near at hand. At the same time a girl was
placed on the other side of the Logan, to attract the attention of
the Scots by sounding her rustic horn. When the unfortunate strangers
had thus been led to the most suitable place, the boors tumbled down
huge stones upon them from the mountain-top, destroying them, to use
their own expression, like potsherds. Then descending with sword
and gun, they completed the destruction of the Scots. There is a
romantic story, which seems far from likely, that Sinclair had been
accompanied on this occasion by his wife. It is added that a young
lady of the neighbourhood, hearing of this, and anxious to save an
innocent individual of her own sex, sent her lover to protect the
lady in the impending assault. Mrs Sinclair, seeing him approach,
and mistaking his object, shot him dead. Some accounts represent the
immediate destruction of the Scottish party as complete, excepting only
that two men escaped. One more probable states that sixty were taken
prisoners, and kept by the peasants till next spring, when, provisions
failing, and the government making no movement in the matter, the poor
captives were put into a barn and murdered in cold blood, only two
escaping, of whom one survived to be the progenitor of a family still
dwelling in these wilds. Such were the circumstances of the bloody
affair of Kringelen, to commemorate which a little wooden monument has
been erected on the wayside, at the precise spot where the Scottish
party was surprised. The grave of Sinclair is also pointed out in the
neighbouring churchyard of Quham. An inspection of the scene of the
massacre gives a thrilling sense of the utterly desperate circumstances
of the Scottish troops when beset by the Norwegian boors. One looks
round with horror on the blocks scattered along the hill-side, every
one of which had destroyed a life. 'Now all is peaceful, all is still,'
on the spot where this piece of savage warfare was acted, save that
which only marks the general silence--the murmur of the river. Resting
here for a while, I could not but enter a mental protest against the
triumphant spirit with which the affair is still referred to by the
Norwegians, seeing that the assailants fought at such advantage, not
to speak of the safety in which they fought, that nothing but the
grossest misconduct could have failed to give them a victory. The
grace of a generous mercy would have been worth twice their boast. I
walked on about a mile to a hamlet where there is a sort of rustic
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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