The following very short
historical anecdote was taken down by Calum Maclean from the recitation of
Duncan Chisholm (b. c. 1859), who belonged to Foyers,
Stratherrick, on the 31st of October 1952:
Tha feadhainn agus rinn iad murst agus bha feadhainn
air son a maraadh, tha fhios agat. Agus bha Ionbhar Gharadh, an
fheadhainn aig an robh Gleanna Garadh air an taoi’. Agus dh’fhalabh
iad seo agus ghearr iad na cinn dhiubh a's a' Cheapach agus chaidh an ceangal
ann an gad. Chaidh an toir’ leis gu Ionbhar Gharadh, agus ghlanadh anns an
fhuaran iad. Bha fuaran fo’n an àite uras agus…They were going to carry them
and put them at Mac ’Ic Alasdair’s front door, the heads.
And the
translation goes something like the following:
There were those that committed the murder and there were those
who were out for revenge, you know. And MacDonell of Glengarry, those that were
on Glengarry’s side, they set off and they decapitated them in Keppoch and they
tied them on a withie. They took them back to Invergarry and they were washed
in a spring. And the spring was under the place below and…They were going to
carry them and put them at Mac ’Ic Alasdair’s (Glengarry’s) front door, the heads.
A more detailed account of
the Keppoch Murder was given in an earlier blog and also in Glen-Albyn or Tales and Truths of the
Central Highlands reproduced in full as follows:
Directly
opposite Invergarry station on the edge of the loch there stands a small
monument commemorating one of those deeds of blood so common in the Highlands.
Beneath the monument there bubbles up a little spring of clear, cold water,
whilst the top of the shaft is crowned by a hand grasping seven heads transfixed
with a dagger. Few stories are better known in the Highlands than this tale of
the seven heads, yet seldom has so well-known a fact been confused with such a
mass of conflicting details.
The
case is characteristic and throws a singular sidelight on the manners of the
north at the time of the Restoration.
One
of the chiefs of Keppoch had sought a bride outside the limits of his clan and
had married “a woman from the south,” as she was contemptuously styled, one of
the Forresters of Kilbaggie, in Clachmannan. The two sons of this marriage were
sent abroad to be educated in Rome, and while there the father died, leaving
his brother in charge of the clan till such time as his son should have Completed
his course and attained his majority. Five years after their father’s death the
two youths, Alexander and Ranald, returned to Lochaber and took up the
leadership of the clan.
With
all the enthusiasm of youth and a liberal education, Alexander set about
improving the condition of his people and made it his endeavour “to drive all
thieves and cattle-lifters from his boundaries. This running counter to all the
dearest traditions of Lochaber brought a certain amount of discontent and
disaffection in its wake. The uncle, Alastair Buidhe, an unscrupulous and
ambitious man, turned this dissatisfaction to account and fanned the spirit of
rebellion till a widespread conspiracy was formed against the youthful
chieftain. Finally the head of one of the minor septs, who had long cherished a
secret grudge against the family of the chief, set out one night with his six
sons and some other retainers, and having wade the river below Keppoch Castle,
entered the house “with the water of the Spean still in his shoes.” Finding the
young chief defenceless in his bed they plunged their dirks into his body,
killing him on the spot.
Ranald,
the younger brother chanced to be out at the moment of attack, and hearing of
the disturbance hastened to the rescue; but on entering the castle he was
instantly seized and overpowered. He cried to his uncle, Alastair Buidhe, who
was present, to assist him, but instead of Trying to defend him the uncle
plunged the first dagger into his breast. The other conspirators followed suit
and then fled to their own homes. The clansmen quickly gathered, and John Macdonald,
the famous poet, better known as Ian Lorn, the bare or biting bard of Keppoch,
had the bodies carefully laid out and honourably buried.
No
one thought of seeking redress at the hands of the Government, and had it not
been for Ian Lom the incident would probably passed unavenged. As it was, the
bard poured forth such a torrent of bitterest invective against the
perpetrators of the deed that he had to fly the country and take refuge in
Kintail. Glengarry, though loving the name of Superior of Clan Donald,
evidently thought that charity began at home, and his love of justice was not
sufficiently strong to make him risk burning his fingers by attempting to call
the culprits to account.
Finally,
Sir James Macdonald of Sleat dispatched a party of his clan, under command of
his brother, to try and bring the murderers to justice. The conspirators
expected an avenging party to come from Glengarry, and kept a sharp look out
upon the castle from a little bothy on the summit of one of the hills of the
southern range. But Ian Lom skilfully outwitted them, and brought the little
party of Islesmen up the valley of the Spean to Inverlair, where they surprised
the father and six sons in bed. The sons were instantly dragged out and slain
and the house set on fire. In the scuffle the father almost escaped unnoticed,
when Ian Lorn cried out, “the six cubs are here but the old fox is still in the
den.” At once a number of men dashed into the blazing house and dragged out the
father, dispatching him on the spot. The bard then severed the heads from the
bodies and putting them into a sack carried them by a circuitous route to
Invergarry. Before reaching the castle he washed his gory trophies at this
little spring. Then, after taunting Glengarry with bitter sarcasm on the
inactivity which left the avenging of this foul murder to his distant kinsman,
the poet laid the seven heads at his feet, and they were afterwards buried in a
little glade not far from the present mansion house of Invergarry.
It
is worthy of note that the mother of these murderers on whom the beardless bard
executed such summary vengeance was his own sister. This monument was erected
and the inscription upon it invented by Colonel M’Donell, the last chief of
Glengarry, in 1812.
Some
years ago an antiquarian enthusiast in Fort William sought to prove the truth
of this tradition, and dug up the mound at Inverlair where the bodies were
supposed to have been buried. The skeletons were found buried without a coffin,
whole and entire, excepting that each one lacked a skull, thus confirming the
main facts of the story current in Lochaber.
Later, the heads were sent
to Edinburgh and ordered to be “affixit to the gallows standing on the
Gallowlie between Edinburgh and Leith.” However, if the original list of the names are compared with the heads
displayed on the 7th December, 1665, a telling discrepancy arises for the
Tutor’s sons’ names are wanting as they had escaped decapitation, although they
were still outlawed.
The inscription, containing
some half-truths, that appears on the monument reads as follows:
As a memorial of the ample and summary vengeance which in
the swift course of feudal justice, inflicted by the orders of the Lord
McDonnell and Aross, overtook the perpetrators of the foul murder of the
Keppoch family, a branch of the powerful and illustrious clan, of which His
Lordship was the chief. This monument is erected by Colonel McDonnell of
Glengarry XVII. MacMhicAlaister his successor and representative in the year of
our Lord 1812. The heads of the seven murderers were presented at the feet of
the noble chief in Glengarry Castle, after having been washed in this spring:
and ever since that event, which took place early in the sixteenth century, it
has been known by the name of “Tobar-nan-Ceann”, or the Well of the Seven
Heads.
References:
Catriona Fforde, The Great
Glen: From Columba to Telford (Castle Douglas: Neil Wilson, 2011)
Andrew
J. Macdonald, Glen-Albyn or Tales and
Truths of the Central Highlands (Fort Augustus: The Abbey Press, 1920), pp.
48–51
Calum
I. Maclean, The Highlands (London:
Batsford, 1959)
Donald C. MacPherson, ‘The Clan Donald of
Keppoch’, The Celtic Magazine, vol. 4 (1878), pp. 368–75
SSS
NB 22, pp. 27–28
Image:
Tobar nan Ceann / Well of the Seven Heads, Loch
Oich, Invergarry
