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Arriving in the neighbourhood of the residence of Lord Stair, whose grandfather had been one of the chief instigators of the massacre, the prince took special precautions lest the people of Glenco should wreak inherited vengeance on the earl.
Avoiding all mention of his reasons either for assuming another name or for leaving his native glen, he told how, having wandered forth with no companion but his bagpipes, and nothing he could call his own beyond the garments and weapons which he wore, he traversed the shires of Inverness and Nairn and Moray, offering at every house on his road, to play the pipes, or clean the lamps and candlesticks, and receiving sufficient return, mostly in the shape of food and shelter, but partly in money, to bring him all the way from Glenco to Portlossie: somewhere near the latter was a cave in which his father, after his flight from Culloden, had lain in hiding for six months, in hunger and cold, and in constant peril of discovery and death, all in that region being rebels for as such Duncan of course regarded the adherents of the houses of Orange and Hanover; and having occasion, for reasons, as I have said, unexplained, in his turn to seek, like a hunted stag, a place far from his beloved glen, wherein to hide his head, he had set out to find the cave, which the memory of his father would render far more of a home to him now than any other place left him on earth.
Whatever instances of it may have appeared, and however strikingly they may have been worked up in fiction, such belong to the individual and not to the race. A remarkable proof of this occurs in the history of the family of Glenco itself. What remained of it after the massacre in 1689, rose in 1745, and joined the forces of Prince Charles Edward.
But the next moment he came to himself, saying, in a tone of assumed composure: "You'll pe knowing now, my laty, why she'll pe hating ta very name of Clenlyon." "But it was not your grandfather that Glenlyon killed, Mr MacPhail was it?" "And whose grandfather would it pe then, my lady?" returned Duncan, drawing himself up. "The Glenco people weren't MacPhails.
Ye see he comes o' Glenco, an' the Cawmills are jist a hate till him specially Cawmill o' Glenlyon, wha was the warst o' them a'. Ye sud hear him tell the story till 's pipes, my leddy! It's gran' to hear him! An' the poetry a' his ain!" There came a blinding flash, and a roar through the leaden air, followed by heavy drops mixed with huge hailstones.
The presence of his boy soon calmed the old man, however, and he fell into a troubled sleep in which Malcolm, who sat by his bed all night, heard him, at intervals, now lamenting over the murdered of Glenco, now exulting in a stab that had reached the heart of Glenlyon, and now bewailing his ruined bagpipes. At length towards morning he grew quieter, and Malcolm fell asleep in his chair.
In the deep snow the women and children Fell down and slept, nor awoke in the morning. The bard of the glen, alone among strangers, Allister, bard of the glen and the mountain, Sings peace to the ghost of his father's father, Slain by the curse of Glenco, Glenlyon. Curse on Glenlyon! His wife's fair bosom Dry up with weeping the fates of her children! Curse on Glenlyon!
Black rise the hills round the vale of Glenco; Hard rise its rocks up the sides of the sky; Cold fall the streams from the snow on their summits; Bitter are the winds that search for the wanderer; False are the vapours that trail o'er the correi Blacker than caverns that hollow the mountain, Harder than crystals in the rock's bosom Colder than ice borne down in the torrents, More bitter than hail windswept o'er the correi, Falser than vapours that hide the dark precipice, Is the heart of the Campbell, the hell hound Glenlyon.
He is tead more than a hundert years." "Then why do you hate him so?" "Och hone! Ton't you'll never hear why?" "He can't have done you any harm." "Not done old Tuncan any harm! Tidn't you'll know what ta tog would pe toing to her aancestors of Glenco? Och hone! Och hone!
Each drop of his heart's blood Turn to red fire and hum through his arteries! The pale murdered faces haunt him to madness! The shrieks of the ghosts from the mists of Glenco Ring in his ears through the caves of perdition! Man, woman, and child, to the last born Campbell, Rush howling to hell, and fall cursing Glenlyon The liar who drank with his host and then slew him!
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