Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Trigger warning: This post contains graphic description of slaughter and rape all throughout the post.

After some hours, the clement weather suddenly became worse, so the men struggled against the high and choppy waves. Despite the stormy seas, they were finally able to cast their anchor at Castle Island late in the evening. The first thing Uilleam suggested was that they slaughtered one of the cattle so they could barbecue it on makeshift skewers fashioned from their iron spears. Stephen immediately protested, “This would be an insult to the people of Eigg and the MacDonalds to slaughter one of their cattle without first asking permission.”

“Dae nae be sic a misery mah young brother! If thay dae nae lik’ it then we hae enough coins in oor sporrans tae pay thaim!”¹ 

Young Stephen did not dare oppose the wishes of his older brother. But Uilleam also had another motive for slaughtering and roasting one of the oxen. He knew that the smoke from the roasting ox would attract the attention of the herd girls sleeping in a bothy not far from where they had landed. In particular, he hoped it would awaken Catriona.

They slaughtered one of the oxen with their sharp swords. They proceeded to skin it, quarter it, and pierce the flanks of the animal on their iron spears over a fire after having gathered some sparse kindling wood they found on the island. 

It was now early morning, and the sun was peeping over the horizon in the east. The men were still preparing the feast. Just as Uilleam planned, the smoke and smell of burning flesh soon attracted the attention of the waking herd girls.

Catriona suddenly appeared before them like a vision. She was a girl of exquisite and intense beauty, with piercing blue eyes and thick, wavy, black hair that fell wildly about her shoulders. “I beg to enquire of you sir, why have you slaughtered one of my master’s cattle?”

Uilleam was quick to allay her fears 

“Dae nae be alarmit mah wee lassie. They ca’ me Uilleam. A’m th’ son o’ th’ chief o’ th’ Macleods. Yer laird, th’ chief o’ th’ MacDonalds haes allowed it, as a gesture o’ hospitality. He haes agreed that ah shuid pay ye, if ye hulp us prepare a wee feast ‘ere. Oor plan is tae visit th’ main island ‘n’ hew a slab o’ rock o’ th’ An Sgurr, which we wull tak’ back tae Dunvegan in Skye. We wull uise it in a healing ritual tae cure mah sick faither, Alasdair Crotach, th’ eicht chief o’ th’ Macleods.”²³ 

 He thus presented himself as the heir to the title of his father, Alasdair Crotach, of Dunvegan, Skye.

“Come ‘ere mah wee lassie,” he coaxed her.⁴ Catriona wasn’t fully convinced of Uilleam’s story, but could hardly protest either, as there were no Eigg men on Castle Island to protect her. 

“Come nearer. Gimme yer haun,” Uilleam cajoled her.⁵ She gave him her hand, into which he placed substantial coin. Catriona thought to herself. ‘Perhaps the man is telling the truth. What’s more, he is very handsome too, despite being a MacLeod.’

“Ca’ yer girlfriends ‘ere, sae thay kin an’ a’ hulp ‘ere,” Uilleam urged her.⁶

“Well, I will have to run to the bothy – they are tending the herd, and milking the cows.”

“Dae nae tak’ a lang time lassie.”⁷

Catriona decided to go along with Uilleam’s scheme. She ran to the bothy and fetched her girlfriends, Morag, Flora, Anne, and Peggie. The girls helped the men roast the meat spitted on the spears, and the MacLeod men induced them to drink from the flagon of whisky.  

“Come ‘n’ jyne me, ‘n’ sit neist tae me by th’ fire,”⁸ Uilleam enticed her. “Yer laird haes tellt me ye wull welcum us. Sae come ‘n’ jyne me in a toast tae th’ freish brotherhood atween oor clans.”⁹ Uilleam offered her some whisky from the flagon. 

Catriona was only a young herd girl and had hardly smelt, let alone tasted, the Scottish ‘water of life’ before. But she dared not refuse it, as it was perhaps true that he was an emissary and an agent sent to heal the division and enmity between their feuding clans. So she drank some of the whisky from the flagon, although she almost gagged on swallowing it. After two or three such toasts, Catriona started to feel queasy. During this time, Stephen had also become enamoured with one of the herd girls, Morag, so he wasn’t paying attention to what his elder brother was doing. 

After some time, Uilleam became more intoxicated, and plucked up enough courage to accomplish what he had set out to do – that is, to ravish Catriona. He held her strongly. 

“Dae nae worry, ah wull be careful wi’ ye,”¹⁰ he said as he kissed her neck. Catriona tried to resist him, but as soon as she tried to push him away with her two hands, he swiftly caught them. She tried to kick him and wiggle free, but his strong and heavy body was now on top of her. He overpowered her small frame.

She fought as long as she could until her body gave way, and her tears started falling. Her tears were the only thing about Catriona’s body that Uilleam was not now in control of. When the poor girl was about to scream in shock and fear, he held his strong hand over her mouth.  

“My God brother – what are you doing? Don’t molest this young innocent maiden!” Stephen protested.

“Keep quiet young brother if ye value yer life. Ah wull hae this lassie if it’s th’ lest thing ah dae in this life. I will take her maidenhead. Stoap whimpering lik’ a lassie. We ur Macleods – th’ wummin o’ th’ MacDonalds ur ours tae dae wi’ as we please!”¹¹

With this warning to his younger brother, Uilleam continued violating the defenceless Catriona, and finally took her virginity. After Uilleam had had his way with Catriona, he and his men continued drinking, and feasting on the meat they had roasted. They all raised their cups and let out a thunderous laughter, stamping their feet, and carried on with their merriment and carousing. The drunken crew of the MacLeod men took the lead from their chief, Uilleam, and molested two of the other young herd girls, Flora and Peggie. Stephen managed to offer Morag protection. 

The girls were not offered any payment for the abuse, and were roughly treated by the MacLeod men who made sport with them. Two men held Peggie down, while the other men took turns in violating her. When they tired of Peggie, they repeated the crime with Flora. She tried to run away, but had been caught by one of the MacLeods, and dragged back to the party by her long hair. Her screaming and crying aroused no sympathy in the MacLeod men, but only incensed their animal lusts.  

Stephen begged the men to show charity towards the young MacDonald girls, but his older brother Uilleam bade him be quiet. Stephen slunk away, not participating in the mass rape of the girls but not doing anything to prevent it either.  

Meanwhile, Angus MacLeod, the Chief of Arms, became even more drunk. He was attempting to rape Anne, but she was putting up fierce resistance. Angus got it into his drunken head to put into force Uilleam’s bawdy jest of “cutting off their heads—the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads”,¹² In other words, it was not just a bawdy jest anymore, he would actually do it. “He would let the maids decide, their heads or their maidenheads,” he thought in his deranged and drunken mind.

Angus took his long and sharp-pointed dirk out of its sheath and held it to her throat, “Well! What’s it to be? Do you want to taste this dirk of steel, or would you rather taste my meaty weapon of hard flesh. Your maidenhead, or off with your head? ” The other men, and the trembling herd girls, watched closely as this tragic drama was unfolding. 

Anne, who was a proud MacDonald, said scornfully, “It’s better you kill me. I will never yield to a traitorous MacLeod,” she said, spitting in his face.

“You dirty little bawd,” Angus yelled, while cutting her throat. He then decapitated her, and held her head up by its hair, and squawked, “You wouldn’t give me your maidenhead, so I took your head,” to the great amusement of the MacLeod men. All this while, the cowardly Stephen and Morag had hidden behind some bushes. They had witnessed the whole violent scene of rape, mutilation, and murder.

Footnotes

1.  ^{Don’t be such a misery my young brother. If they don’t like it, then we have enough coins in our sporrans to pay for them.} ↩︎
2.  ^{Do not be alarmed my little girl. My name is William. I am the son of the chief of the MacLeods. Your lord, the chief of the MacDonalds, has given me permission as a gesture of hospitality, and he has also agreed that I should pay you if you help us to prepare a small feast here. Our plan is to visit the main island and hew a slab of rock off the An Sgurr, which we will take back to Dunvegan in Skye. We will use it in a healing ritual to cure the ill health of my father, Alisdair Crotach, the eighth chief of the MacLeods.} ↩︎
3.  ^{Only some of the dialogue is written in Scots English dialect (mainly when Uilleam is speaking); other parts are mainly written in standard English, so as to make the story more understandable for a wider audience.} ↩︎
4.  ^{Come here my little girl.} ↩︎
5.  ^{Come nearer. Give me your hand.} ↩︎
6.  ^{Call your girlfriends here, so they can also help here.} ↩︎
7.  ^{Do not take a long time, girl.} ↩︎
8.  ^{Come and join me, and sit next to me by the fire.} ↩︎
9.  ^{Your lord has told me you will welcome us. So come and join me in a toast to the new brotherhood between our clans.} ↩︎
10.  ^{Don’t worry, I will be careful with you.} ↩︎
11.  ^{Keep quiet young brother, if you value your life. I will have this girl if it is the last thing I do in this life. Stop whimpering like a girl – we are MacLeods – the women of the MacDonalds are ours to do with as we please.} ↩︎
12.  ^{Adapted from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1.} ↩︎