Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : $b or, The traditional history of Cromarty — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : $b or, The traditional history of Cromarty
John Stuart Mill · en
pile of embers, fanned by the breeze, and amid which the very stones of
the building were sputtering and bubbling with the intense heat, like
the contents of a boiling caldron. Wild with rage and astonishment,
and yet collected enough to conclude that none but Garry could be
the author of a deed so barbarous, they tracked him into a nameless
Highland glen, which has ever since been known as Glen-_Garry_, and
there tore him to pieces. And as all the women of the tribe perished in
the flames, there was an end, when this forlorn and widowed generation
had passed away, to the whole race of the _Fions_. The next incident
of our history bears no other connexion to this story, than that it
belongs to a very early age, that of the Viking and Sea-King, and
that we owe our data regarding it, not to written records, but to an
interesting class of ancient remains, and to a doubtful and imperfect
tradition.
[Sidenote: THE KING’S SONS.]
In this age, says the tradition, the Maormor of Ross was married to a
daughter of the king of Denmark, and proved so barbarous a husband,
that her father, to whom she at length found the means of escape,
fitted out a fleet and army to avenge on him the cruelties inflicted
on her. Three of her brothers accompanied the expedition; but, on
nearing the Scottish coast, a terrible storm arose, in which almost
all the vessels of the fleet either foundered or were driven ashore,
and the three princes were drowned. The ledge of rock at which this
latter disaster is said to have taken place, still bears the name of
the King’s Sons; a magnificent cave which opens among the cliffs of
the neighbouring shore is still known as the King’s Cave; and a path
that winds to the summits of the precipices beside it, as the King’s
Path. The bodies of the princes, says the tradition, were interred,
one at Shandwick, one at Hilton, and one at Nigg; and the sculptured
obelisks of these places, three very curious pieces of antiquity, are
said to be monuments erected to their memory by their father. In no
part of Scotland do stones of this class so abound as on the shores of
the Moray Firth. And they have often attracted the notice and employed
the ingenuity of the antiquary; but it still appears somewhat doubtful
whether we are to regard them as of Celtic or of Scandinavian origin.
It may be remarked, however, that though their style of sculpture
resembles, in its general features, that exhibited in the ancient
crosses of Wales, which are unquestionably British, and though they are
described in a tradition current on the southern shore of the Moray
Firth, as monuments raised by the inhabitants on the expulsion of the
Danes, the amount of evidence seems to preponderate in the opposite
direction; when we consider that they are invariably found bordering
on the sea; that their design and workmanship display a degree of
taste and mechanical ability which the Celtæ of North Britain seem
never to have possessed; that the eastern shores of the German Ocean