Cover

About the Book

Chester Royde, an American millionaire, travels to Scotland with his new bride Carrie and sister Myrtle, to find out more about Carrie’s Scottish ancestry. Their new ‘relatives’ turn out to be a little more authentically Scottish than they bargained for. Ben Nevis, Laird of Glenbogle Castle, is fiercely protective of his lands and the Macdonald clan spirit, but being cash-strapped he’s not above attempts to marry heiress Myrtle to one of his many brawny sons. But then a group of hikers stumble onto his moor and spoil a day’s hunting, sparking all-out war between gentry and commoners.

About the Author

Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool in 1883, and educated at St Paul’s School and Magdalen College, Oxford. During the First World War he rose to the rank of Captain in the Royal Marines, and he was made Director of the Aegean Intelligence Service. He wrote more than ninety books – novels, history and biography, essays and criticism, children’s stories and verse – and was also an outstanding broadcaster. He founded and edited the magazine The Gramophone, and was President of the Siamese Cat Club. He lived for many years on the Island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, but later settled in Edinburgh. He was knighted in 1952. Compton Mackenzie died in 1972.

OTHER WORKS BY COMPTON MACKENZIE

Whisky Galore

Dedication

To
Pilot Officer Robert Boothby, M.P., R.A.F.

My dear Bob,

I do not propose to involve myself with any institution or any individual by saying why I particularly choose this moment to dedicate to you a farce; but I want to commemorate a friendship of twenty years, and this dedication gives me a chance to say how precious that friendship has been, is and always will be to

Yours ever,

COMPTON MACKENZIE.

SUIDHEACHAN,
ISLAND OF BARRA,
JULY 14, 1941.

Title Page

Chapter 1

GLENBOGLE

INADEQUATE INDEED WOULD be the guidebook or traveller’s tale that did not accord to Glenbogle a place of honour in the very forefront of Highland scenery and romance, and it is a tribute to Scottish thoroughness that no such guidebook exists. Here are a page or two from Summer Days Among the Heather:

“Nobody who can spare the time should omit to explore Glenbogle. Apart from the wild magnificence of the natural scene Glenbogle literally teems with historic memories and romantic legends. It was in a cave in the rocky fastnesses of Ben Booey, the yellow mountain, that Bonny Prince Charlie spent several nights hidden from the ‘redcoats.’ Ben Booey (3,100 ft.) with Ben Glass (2,890 ft.), the grey mountain, and Ben Gorm (3,055 ft.), the blue mountain, are the famous Three Sisters of Glenbogle celebrated in many a poem and many a picture. Loch na Craosnaich (the loch of the spear) will be noticed on the left-hand side of the road five miles up the glen from the main road between Fort William and Fort Augustus. It was here that the famous Hector MacDonald of Ben Nevis, known as Hector of the Great Jaw, speared eleven Macintoshes and drowned them in the waters of the loch. A further two hours’ walk from Loch na Craosnaich will bring the visitor to the gates of Glenbogle Castle, the seat of MacDonald of Ben Nevis. The present Chieftain, Donald MacDonald of Ben Nevis, is the twenty-third of the famous line of Mac ’ic Eachainn (pron. Mack ’ick Yacken), and it is one of the boasts of the ‘true and tender North’ that a MacDonald of Ben Nevis in the direct male line still occupies the stronghold of the ‘sons of Hector.’

“The Castle itself is not shown to visitors, but permission to wander about the well-wooded policies is readily granted on application at the lodge by the main entrance-gate, on the pillars of which will be noticed the two stone water-horses mordant of the MacDonalds of Ben Nevis. Legend says that the first Mac ’ic Eachainn was pursued by two water-horses from sunrise till sunset all over Glenbogle and its guardian bens, and that at sunset, having found a clay-more embedded in a granite boulder, he drew the weapon and immediately slew the two monsters. Thereupon a fairy woman appeared and promised that all the land within the line along which he had been pursued by the two water-horses should be his and his heirs, until the day of the seven whirlwinds or, as the more prosiac Sassenach would say, the end of the world. Tradition goes on to relate that the granite boulder in which the claymore was embedded is the actual cornerstone of Glenbogle Castle. Everybody who is privileged to gaze upon this stately pile, portions of which date back to the first half of the fourteenth century, will give a fervid assent to the motto of this branch of the great Clan Donald, Beinn Nibheis Gu Brath (Anglicé Ben Nevis For Ever).

“Those who have promised themselves the pleasure of passing a summer’s day exploring dark Glenbogle or wild Glenbogle as it is variously called, will do well to provide beforehand for the refreshment of the inner man. The grandeur and desolation which greet the eye on every side from the moment the wayfarer enters Glenbogle will amply compensate for the absence of any dwelling-place until the immediate surroundings of the Castle are reached. No, gentle reader, Glenbogle has no hotel, and the sophisticated traveller who expects teashops and restaurants should not wend his steps towards this historic spot. For him, however, who is content with a mossy bank for his resting-place, with water from the burn, and with the simple fare he carries in his knapsack, Glenbogle is ‘Paradise enow.’ Many a long summer’s day has the present scribe dreamed away in that delectable spot ‘far from the madding crowd,’ pondering upon the lore of the misty past and recapturing with the mind’s eye the stirring scenes of auld lang syne. The scent of the bell-heather and the bog-myrtle, the buzzing of honeybees, the babbling of the peaty burn, the solemn shapes of the old brooding bens, are not these better than the superficial luxury of our so-called civilisation? If we go to Glenbogle when ‘the world is too much with us’ there is no doubt what our answer will be.”

With a romantic sigh young Mrs Chester Royde laid down Summer Days Among the Heather and gazed out of the window in the North Tower of Glenbogle Castle at the Three Sisters of Glenbogle dreaming majestically in the flickering haze of a fine morning on the twelfth of August. She had some reason to sigh romantically, for this was her first visit to the home of her forefathers, one of whom, much against his will, had been deported to Canada by the twentieth MacDonald of Ben Nevis, the great-grandfather of the present laird. As a girl Caroline Macdonald had suffered from the Lone Shieling complex. She had seen the fairies in a peach-orchard on the shores of Lake Ontario. She had repined at not having been christened Flora, but had derived a measure of consolation from the thought that Caroline was the feminine of Charles. Then Chester Royde Jr., who was in Canada on business for his father’s great financial house in New York, had met Caroline Macdonald at a Toronto ball and she was persuaded to become Mrs Chester Royde Jr. Chester was no Prince Charlie. Indeed, Carrie’s friends all said they were surprised, after the way Carrie Macdonald had talked so much about Celtic romance and second-sight and Mrs Kennedy-Fraser’s Hebridean songs, she should go and marry a fat pug-nosed New Yorker with a double chin already at twenty-five and a complexion like a marsh-mallow. Yet Carrie’s friends weren’t so much surprised as they pretended: Chester Royde Jr. was the heir to the Royde millions, and well they knew it.

That was last year, and the honeymoon had been cut short on account of a crisis in the money market. So they had had a supplementary honeymoon this year in Europe and in London they had met Mrs MacDonald of Ben Nevis, who was down there with her two hefty daughters, Catriona and Mary. They were known to the ribald as the Three Sisters of Glenbogle, but this was an injustice to Mrs MacDonald, who was as large as her two girls put together and English at that. The yearly matrimonial campaign of Mrs MacDonald was short and sharp. They were always back in Glenbogle by the beginning of June.

The knowledge that a clanswoman of his was married to the heir of the Royde millions had filled Donald MacDonald, twenty-third of Ben Nevis, with the liveliest patriarchal emotions. Blood of an unusually disproportionate thickness compared with water coursed through his arteries, and the little veins upon his eagle’s beak glowed like neon round a shop-window.

“You must come and visit Glenbogle,” he declared. “Home of your forefathers, what? And we must work out our exact relationship.”

“But my great-great-grandfather was just a simple crofter. He left Glenbogle during the first clearance. In fact I’m afraid he was put out by the Ben Nevis of the time.”

“That was my great-grandfather Hector, twentieth of Ben Nevis. Yes, a bad business. Well, well, that’s what comes of loyalty.”

“Loyalty?” Carrie Royde repeated, perplexed.

“Loyalty to the old Stuarts. We managed to keep the land, but it was only by raising regiments for the Government. And then of course once Highlanders had started settling in Canada the only sound economic policy was to settle as many more of them as possible. That was why my grandfather had to make a second clearance. He hated doing it of course, but it was for their own good, and where would the Empire be to-day if people like my great-grandfather and grandfather hadn’t taken the bull by the horns and faced up to hard facts? Yes, I’m sure we must be related. Distantly of course. But if you and your husband come up to Glenbogle we’ll work it out.”

“Chester’s young sister is coming over to us at the end of July.”

“Is she married?”

“Oh, no, Myrtle’s only twenty. And one of the sweetest girls in the world.”

“Look here, Mrs Royde,” said the Chieftain earnestly, “you and your husband and your sister-in-law simply must come up for the Twelfth and put in at least six weeks with us at Glenbogle. My eldest boy Hector’s unfortunately out in India with his regiment, but my second boy Murdoch expects to be with us for part of August. He’s in the Navy. And Iain, my youngest boy, who’s at Cambridge, will be with us the whole of his vacation. In fact we shall be a very jolly party of young people.”

Thus it was that Mrs Chester Royde Jr. found herself gazing from the window in the North Tower of Glenbogle Castle at the shapes of the Three Sisters of Glenbogle, dreaming majestically in the flickering haze of a fine Twelfth of August morning.

When the rest of the party had been mustered by their host to shoot the grouse or watch them being shot on his most prolific moors which swept between the braes of Strathdun and the braes of Strathdiddle, Carrie Royde, surrendering to the Lone Shieling complex of her youth, had expressed a desire to enjoy by herself the solitude of Glenbogle.

“I just want to make the most of this lovely weather, Ben Nevis,” she told the Chieftain. “And I’m feeling kind of remote and mysterious. I feel as if anything might happen to me if I go and search for it alone.”

“Well, don’t go and sprain your ankle or anything,” said Ben Nevis, who believed that a heavy bag of grouse was the way to make the most of the weather but had too much respect for the Royde millions to discourage anybody in close touch with them from the utmost extravagance of emotional self-indulgence.

“Carrie and I will find plenty to do to amuse ourselves,” Mrs MacDonald boomed confidently.

Carrie Royde threw a slanting glance from greenish eyes at her monumental hostess and said quickly that the very last thing she should think of being was the least responsibility.

“I know you have lots and lots to do without bothering yourself about me, dear Mrs MacDonald. So please, if I may just have a little packet of sandwiches and a few crackers I’ll go wandering off by myself and spend the day with my dreams.”

“But won’t that be rather dull for you?” the hostess suggested anxiously.

“You let her do as she likes, Trixie,” Ben Nevis adjured. “She’s going to look for the fairies. I can see it in her eye.”

Carrie put a finger to her lips and flashed a glance at the Chieftain, who went charging from the room to see that the party from the moors had gathered in the courtyard of the Castle, convinced that between him and that pretty little red-haired American-Canadian with her roots in the peat of his own moors there existed a secret understanding. Well, so much the better. If Murdoch could manage to make the running with that attractive little sister-in-law of hers, the closer the understanding between him and Mrs Chester Royde Jr. there was the better. As he climbed up into the big pre-war Daimler (there was only one war to date fashion at the time of this tale) which was to drive him and most of his house-party to the Ballochy Pass where the ponies would be waiting for them, he wished regretfully that the Clanranalds were not in India, because after all Hector as the Younger of Ben Nevis was the son of his most entitled to benefit from the share of the Royde millions that would be Miss Myrtle Royde’s portion. He looked round to where the engagingly plump little heiress was seated beside his second son Murdoch in the sports car whose noisiness and vulgarity he had hitherto deplored and reflected that after all there might be something in these foul products of the post-war age—sometimes.

He turned to his principal guest, Chester Royde Jr., who in his costume for the moors looked like a full-page colour advertisement in the pages of Esquire or Vanity Fair designed to haunt, to startle and waylay the most casual reader.

“And this is really your first experience of our Twelfth, Royde?” he asked.

The cork-pop with which his guest answered him Ben Nevis had learnt by now to recognize as an affirmative.

“We’re expecting plenty of birds this year.”

“That’s fine,” the young financier twanged enthusiastically.

Up in the North Tower of the Castle Carrie Royde watched the cars down the glen turn off to the right and start winding slowly up the narrow road that led toward the Pass of Ballochy. Her Macdonald heart beat faster at the memories the name brought back. She opened Summer Days Among the Heather again:

“It was in the Pass of Ballochy that in the year 1546 a party of marauding Macintoshes were surprised by the Macdonalds of Ben Nevis led by Mac ’ic Eachainn in person and every single one of them killed. Some years later Clan Chattan took its revenge for this defeat by descending into Strathdiddle, when the young men were raiding the Cameron country to the south, and baking thirty-two old and infirm Macdonalds in an oven. For this Hector the ninth of Ben Nevis exacted a terrible penalty from Clan Chattan when after marching from Glenbogle with his Macdonalds through a stormy December night in the year 1549 he caught the Macintoshes unawares on a Sunday morning and burned forty-five of them in church. While the unfortunate victims of Hector’s vengeance were burning, Hector’s piper Angus MacQuat improvised a tune and played it to drown their shrieks. This tune, called Mac ’ic Eachainn’s Return to Glenbogle, is still played by a MacQuat whenever MacDonald of Ben Nevis returns after spending even a single night away from his Castle.

“A poem by an unknown Gaelic bard of the sixteenth century celebrating the battle in the Pass of Ballochy was rendered into spirited English verse by the late lamented Reverend Colin MacKellaig, D.D., whose translations from the vernacular rendered a service to the ‘land of bens and glens and heroes’ second only to his faithful service for over sixty years as a Minister of the Gospel at first in his own Inverness-shire and then at the United Free Church in Dudden Gardens, Glasgow.

“THE BATTLE OF THE PASS OF BALLOCHY

Sound the loud pibroch, ye sons of great Hector,

Lift your claymores and strike hard at the foe,

Hurry as fast as ye can from Glenbogle,

Clansmen of Hector, cry shame on the slow!

Whistle, ye winds, ‘Mac ’ic Eachainn for ever!’

Roar, ye wild waters, ‘Ben Nevis gu brath!’

Swift as the Bogle in spate, ye MacDonalds,

Fall on the Macintosh, drive him awa’.

Sharp are the claws of the cat of Clan Chattan,

Gleam their claymores in the Ballochy Pass;

But sharper the talons of Hector’s own eagles

That swoop from Ben Booey, Ben Gorm and Ben Glass.

Swoop on the Macintosh, rend him in pieces,

None of Clan Chattan this day shall survive,

Sons of Clan Donald, salute your great Chieftain;

Dead is the Macintosh, Hector’s alive!

Faithful and fair is my own Mac ’ic Eachainn,

Mighty and mettlesome, stalwart and true,

Lord of Ben Nevis, Glenbogle, Glenbristle,

Strathdiddle, Strathdun, Loch Hoch and Loch Hoo.”

Mrs Chester Royde tossed her red locks. The echoes of ancestral voices prophesying war were ringing in her ears when she took from the butler the packet of sandwiches and set out to commune with her forefathers, the nettle-grown tumbled stones of whose cottages were strewn about the emptiness of wild Glenbogle. In one pocket of her green coat were the sandwiches, in the other a copy of Gaelic Without Tears.

Seldom can the long winding drive of Glenbogle Castle have been graced by a more becoming figure than that presented by Mrs Chester Royde Jr. when she set out that morning to commune with her ancestors. She was wearing a skirt of the tartan of the Ben Nevis MacDonalds, the predominance of red in which did not detract from her own red hair, thanks to the judicious interposition of the green coat, and her green bonnet was brooched with the eagle’s head of the Ben Nevis MacDonalds. Her host had presented her with a cromag as dainty as the crook of a Dresden shepherdess. The dark pines that bordered the drive seemed to light up when she passed as if touched by a fleeting sunbeam.

She paused a moment at the gate and looked up at the two water-horses mordant gnashing their teeth at one another from the lichen-covered pillars on either side. She turned to the vocabulary of her Gaelic Without Tears to see if she could find the Gaelic for water-horse, but it was evidently too difficult a word for such an elementary instructor and was not to be found. Just beyond the gate a Glenbogle estate painter was admiring the result of some recent work on a large notice-board:

GLENBOGLE CASTLE. NO CAMPING.

Thus the inscription ran in large black letters on a white ground. The spread of hiking had soured the milk of human kindness. No longer was permission readily granted on application at the lodge by the main entrance-gate to wander in the well-wooded policies of the Castle, as recorded by the author of Summer Days Among the Heather.

Carrie debated with herself for a moment whether she should venture to give the painter ‘good day’ in Gaelic, decided that one had to begin some time, looked up the phrase in her little brown volume, muttered her phonetics over to herself once or twice, and gulped:

“La math.”

There are few joys accessible to human beings more grateful than the joy of trying out a phrase from a conversation manual according to the pronunciation indicated in brackets alongside and finding that the subject of the experiment understands and responds. This joy was denied to Mrs Chester Royde. It was clear from the expression on the painter’s face as he touched his cap that he was respectfully hoping the Castle guest would amplify her question if it was a question or if she had not really addressed him at all relieve his embarrassment by doing so.

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