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'They fought till their hand to the broadsword was glued, They fought against fortune with hearts unsubdued. Do not come at such a moment, when my head is full of plaids, pibrochs, and claymores, and ask my reason to admit what, I am afraid, it cannot deny I mean, that the public advantage peremptorily demanded that these things should cease to exist.
Macdonald of Keppoch or Maclean of Duart would have struck dead any officer who had demanded his sword, and told him to consider himself as under arrest; and hundreds of claymores would instantly have been drawn to protect the murderer.
But Guy had hung around here and there a Samouraï sabre, Malay krises, Oriental daggers in purple velvet sheaths, and upon the green tapestry background of the antechamber a panoply on which keen-bladed swords with steel guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus giving a masculine character to this hôtel of a fashionable lounger, steeped with the odor of ylang-ylang like the little house of a pretty courtesan.
And on his word that all was well she had calmly composed herself for sleep as though all the dead chieftains of Isla stood on guard with naked claymores! Nothing in all his life had ever so thrilled him as this girl's confidence. And, as he entered his room, he knew that within him the accursed thing that had been, lay dead forever.
John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the great House of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of the mountains. He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into the field; and, ten years before the Revolution, he had actually marched into the Lowlands with this great force for the purpose of supporting the prelatical tyranny.
The concession was first made only to generals, field officers and aides-de-camp; but Keith persuaded the king, at last, to grant it to all Scottish officers, pointing out that they were able to do much better service with their own claymores, than with weapons to which they were altogether unaccustomed; and that Scottish men were accustomed to fight with the edge, and to strike downright sweeping blows, whereas the swords here are fitted only for the point, which, although doubtless superior in a duel, is far less effective in a general melee."
'And what number of such gallant fellows have the happiness to call you leader? asked Waverley. 'In a good cause, and under a chieftain whom they loved, the race of Ivor have seldom taken the field under five hundred claymores.
One word from the Marquess would have sent two thousand claymores to the Jacobite side. But that word he would not speak; and the consequence was, that the conduct of his followers was as irresolute and inconsistent as his own.
"Ah! brave Highlanders and bright claymores," said the Duke, "well do I wish them, 'for a' the ill they've done me yet, as the song goes. But come, madcaps, say a civil word to your countrywoman I wish ye had half her canny hamely sense; I think you may be as leal and true-hearted."
They used their claymores, their dirks, their scythes fastened upon poles, against the horses, then, springing up, put long arms about the horsemen and, regardless of sword or pistol, dragged them down. They shouted their Gaelic slogans; their costume, themselves, seemed out of a fiercer, earlier world.
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