United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From the pages of his readers I learned to know and love the poems of Scott, Byron, Southey, Wordsworth and a long line of the English masters. I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the selected scenes which I read in these books. With terror as well as delight I rose to read Lochiel's Warning, The Battle of Waterloo or The Roman Captive.
James Philip of Amryclos, in Forfarshire, who bore Dundee's standard at Killiecrankie. Lochiel's biographer does not quote the Latin text, but gives translations of certain passages. The original manuscript, bearing the date 1691, is now in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh.
There is something strangely terrible in the calmness and conciseness with which the instructions are given. "Your troops will destroy entirely the country of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's, Glengarry's and Glencoe's. Your power shall be large enough. I hope the soldiers will not trouble the government with prisoners."
As Mackay's line was much longer than his, Dundee was compelled to widen the spaces between the clans for fear of being outflanked, which left for his centre only this little cluster of sabres. Lochiel's eldest son, John, was with his father, but Allan, the second, held a commission in Mackay's own regiment.
'Sir, he had, upon the alledgeance foresaid, been transported, at Lochiel's desire, to France, to gratify the M'Martins, and upon his return home, about five years ago, married: But now he is so much threatened by the M'Martins, that he is not secure enough to stay where he is, being Ardmurchan, which occasions this trouble to you.
Of the Camerons, the gentle Lochiel had died in France; his son, a boy, was abroad; the interests of the clan were represented by Cameron of Fassifern, Lochiel's uncle, living a few miles west by north of Fort William. Ardshiel, also, was in exile, and his tenants, under James Stewart of the Glens, loyally paid rent to him, as well as to the commissioners of his forfeited estates.
The Campbells and the Macleods under their recreant chief, the Whig Macdonalds under Sir Alexander of Sleat, ravaged the lands of the Jacobite clansmen; but the spies of Albemarle, who now commanded in Scotland, reported the Macleans, the Grants of Glenmoriston, with the Macphersons, Glengarry's men, and Lochiel's Camerons, as all eager "to do it again" if France would only help.
Southey's "April Day." "All day the low-hung clouds have dropped Their garnered fullness down. All day a soft gray mist hath wrapped Hill, valley, grove and town." Bryant's "Death of the Flowers;" Campbell's "Lochiel's Warning;" and the trial scene from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. All these became favorite reading exercises in later years.
But the clan, deprived of the leader whom it adored, and aware that he had withdrawn himself in ill humour, was no longer the same terrible column which had a few days before kept so well the vow to perish or to conquer. Macdonald of Sleat, whose forces exceeded in number those of any other of the confederate chiefs, followed Lochiel's example and returned to Sky,
Who was this Samuel Cameron, who stained by treachery the glorious name of Lochiel's own clan? On this point the following letter, written after Archy's death, casts some light. We have already seen that Samuel Cameron was accused of being in communication with Murray of Broughton, as also was Young Glengarry.
Word Of The Day