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There was a height like a Good People's mount, and a braw fine-clad lord speaking and reading frae a paper, and by him a surpliced man to gie a prayer, and there was a banner pole, and it went up high, and it had a gowd ball atop. The braw lord stopped speaking, and all the Hielandmen and Lowlandmen drew and held up and brandished their claymores and swords. The flash ran around like the levin.
The soldiers had not time to fix their bayonets in the smoking muzzles of their muskets before the claymores were among them and the battle was over. On the left wing scarcely a trigger was pulled: the men broke and ran like sheep. The famous Scots Brigade, in fact, set the example of flight. Their officers behaved like brave soldiers.
Many others of high rank fell, valiantly fighting, men who knew not the meaning of flight. But the bulk of the army was in hopeless panic, flying for life, red lines constantly falling before the crimsoned claymores of the Scotch, until the very streams ran red with blood. King Edward found war less than ever to his royal taste. He fled to Stirling Castle and begged admittance.
The Highlanders could no longer be restrained, and rushed forward from the reserve, cutting and carving their way through trees and other obstacles with their claymores. The deadly fire still continued from the fort.
Various little antique cabinets stand about the room; and in one corner is a collection of really useful weapons those of the forest craft, to wit axes and bills, &c. Over the fire-place, too, are some Highland claymores clustered round a target. There is only one window, pierced in a very thick wall, so that the place is rather sombre.
During a day or two, indeed, the new general might flatter himself that all would go well. His army was rapidly swollen to near double the number of claymores that Dundee had commanded. The Stewarts of Appin, who, though full of zeal, had not been able to come up in time for the battle, were among the first who arrived.
Chiefs alone, such as the unspeakable Lovat, had entered as political condottieri into the dynastic intrigues of the period, and brought the claymores of their clansmen to the standard of their patron, as Indian chiefs in the American wars brought the tomahawks of their tribes to the standard of France or England.
"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."
Soon the vulgar imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, and claymores, that, by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander were regarded as synonymous words.
The Macleans remembered that, only fourteen years before, their lands had been invaded and the seat of their chief taken and garrisoned by the Campbells, Even before William and Mary had been proclaimed at Edinburgh, a Maclean, deputed doubtless by the head of his tribe, had crossed the sea to Dublin, and had assured James that, if two or three battalions from Ireland were landed in Argyleshire, they would be immediately joined by four thousand four hundred claymores,
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