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Updated: June 6, 2025
The three months that had passed since the battle of Largs had brought but little joy into Aasta's lonely heart. The destruction of the castle of Kilmory, and the coming of winter, had deprived her of her daily occupations upon the farm lands, and her work would not be renewed until Allan Redmain had rebuilt his castle and spring had softened the frozen fields.
Ivy and honeysuckle grow in profusion; for several miles along the coast, near Largs, there is a perpendicular wall of rock from fifty to one hundred feet in height, which follows the windings of the shore at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards from the water, enclosing between itself and the sea a long ribbon of fine soil, on which shrubs, flowers, and fruit grow luxuriantly; and this natural rampart, which advances and retreats as we pursue the road at its base, like the bastions and curtains of some magnificent feudal castle, is in many places clad with ivy, so fresh and green that we can hardly believe that for months in the year it is wet with the salt spray of the Atlantic.
These ships, which during the night had taken shelter in the harbour that is now named Millport Bay, were already making for the shores of the mainland below the village of Largs, for it was at this point that the Norse king had determined to land his invading forces. Largs was not a spot which a modern general would have chosen for an invasion.
Other boatmen were sent on a like errand to Toward, Dunoon, Largs, and all other villages and castles upon the banks of the Clyde, while a special messenger was sent into Scotland to warn King Alexander. For three days and nights there was not a man in Bute who was not occupied in some fashion in preparing to meet the expected enemy.
We had reached Largs, on the coast of Ayrshire, and saw the Isle of Bute, the Cumbraes, and the lofty summits of Arran, rise out of the Firth of Clyde, in beautiful succession. At this time steamboats were unknown.
The events which followed are recounted, in considerable detail and with much exaggeration on both sides, by Scottish and Norse chroniclers, but it is impossible to reconcile their different versions of the story of the battle of Largs. Nor does such detail, save in the result, affect Sutherland or Caithness.
Relying upon these, I did not stand out for an interview his home lying so far away as Largs, in Ayrshire but came to terms at once, and he arrived at my door with his valise at the untimely hour of five in the morning, the fifteenth of October, having travelled all the way to Bristol in a ship laden with salted herrings.
Accordingly, with the three ships and the men they had brought from Holland, he went toward Largs, famed in old time for a great battle fought there; but, on arriving opposite to the shore, he found it guarded by the powers and forces of the government, in so much, that he was fain to direct his course farther up the river; and weighing anchor sailed for Greenock.
The English coasts are most thickly dotted, but this is to be expected from the greater proportion of shipping; next in the scale is Ireland, and then Scotland, which has comparatively few black dots, the densest portion being on the west coast, from Ayr to Largs, where we count eleven, nine indicating total wrecks. In the Firth of Forth there are but three, one total.
They were a present from my mother's sister, resident in Paisley, and I misdoubt there will have been something amiss in her instructions to the tailor, for they gall me woundily though in justice to her and the honest tradesman I should add that my legs, maybe, are out of practice since leaving Glasgow. At Largs, sir, I have been reverting to the ancestral garb."
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