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
a syllable, he laid hold of his tenant with the intention of thrusting
him in. But he had mistaken his man; the grasp was returned by one of
more than equal firmness, and a struggle ensued, in which Macculloch,
a bold, powerful Highlander, had so decidedly the advantage, that he
forced the laird into his own dungeon, and then locking the door,
carried away the key in his pocket. The other anecdote is of a sterner
cast:--A poor vassal had been condemned on the Court-hill under
circumstances more than usually unjust; and the laird, after sentence
had been executed on the eminence at the _Witch’s Hole_, was returning
homewards through the town, surrounded by his retainers, when he was
accosted in a tone of prophecy by an old man, one of the Hossacks of
Cromarty, who, though bedridden for years before, had crawled to a seat
by the wayside to wait his coming up. Tradition has preserved the words
which follow as those in which he concluded his prediction; but they
stand no less in need of a commentary than the obscurest prophecies of
Merlin or Thomas the Rhymer:--“Laird, laird, what mayna skaith i’ the
brock, maun skaith i’ the stock.” The seer is said to have meant that
the injustice of the father would be visited on the children.
The recollection of these stories was curiously revived in Cromarty
in the spring of 1829; when a labourer employed in digging a pit on
the eminence above the harbour, and within a few yards of the _Witch’s
Hole_, struck his mattock through a human skull, which immediately fell
in pieces. A pair of shin-bones lay directly below it, and on digging
a little further there were found the remains of two several skeletons
and a second skull. From the manner in which the bones were blended
together, it seemed evident that the bodies had been thrown into the
same hole, with their heads turned in opposite directions, either out
of carelessness or in studied contempt. And they had, apparently, lain
undisturbed in this place for centuries. A child, by pressing its
foot against the skull which had been raised entire, crushed it to
pieces like the other; and the whole of the bones had become so light
and porous, that when first seen by the writer, some of the smaller
fragments were tumbling over the sward before a light breeze, like
withered leaves, or pieces of fungous wood.
CHAPTER VII.
“He was a veray parfit, gentil knight.”--CHAUCER.
[Sidenote: SIR THOMAS URQUHART.]