Gairloch in North-West Ross-Shire: Its Records, Traditions, Inhabitants, and Natural History, with a Guide to Gairloch and Loch Maree, and a Map and IllustrationsDixon, John H. (John Henry)
History
Gairloch in North-West Ross-Shire: Its Records, Traditions, Inhabitants, and Natural History, with a Guide to Gairloch and Loch Maree, and a Map and Illustrations
Dixon, John H. (John Henry)
Gairloch (Scotland) -- Guidebooks; Gairloch (Scotland) -- History; Ross and Cromarty (Scotland) -- History
There were at this time three brothers of the name of Cross, who were
sons of one of the last of the Loch Maree ironworkers. One of them was a
bard, who built a house at Kernsary, still called Innis a bhaird, or
"the oasis of the bard." One of the bard's brothers, named Hector, who
had become a crofter at Letterewe, was at a shieling at the Claonadh (or
Slopes), at the back of Beinn Lair, above Letterewe, where he and other
crofters grazed their cattle in summer. One day after the battle of
Culloden a stranger, a young Highlander, with yellow hair and clad in
tartan, came to Hector's bothie and asked for shelter and refreshment.
When the girl gave him a bowl of cream, he drank it off, and returned it
to her with a gold piece in it. The news quickly spread among the
shieling bothies that the stranger had gold about him. Soon after his
departure from Hector's hospitable roof next morning, a shot was heard,
and on a search being made the dead body of the young man was found,
robbed of all valuables. The murder and robbery were ascribed to a
crofter, whose name is well remembered, and whose descendants are still
at Letterewe, for from that time the family had money. It is almost
superfluous to add that no steps were taken to bring the murderer to
justice; the unsettled state of the Highlands at the time would alone
account for the immunity of the offender. It afterwards transpired that
the murdered stranger had been a valet or personal servant to Prince
Charlie, and that he had gone by the name of the "Gille Buidhe," or
"yellow-haired lad." He was conveying the gold to his master, which had
been sent from France, and it was to meet him that the two vessels had
come to Sgeir Bhoora, near Poolewe. It seems he carried the gold in one
end of his plaid, which had been formed into a temporary bag, an
expedient still often resorted to in the Highlands. A portion of the
Gille Buidhe's plaid formed the lining of a coat belonging to an old man
at Letterewe in the nineteenth century. Kenneth Mackenzie, an old man
living at Cliff (now dead), told me he had seen it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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