Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

While the MacLeod men were feasting, drinking, and engaged in an orgy of rape and violence, the Fachachs¹ (the Eigg men) had taken to their boats and had sailed to Castle Island. Mary, one of the herd girls on Castle Island, had remained in the bothy and not joined the other girls in ‘entertaining’ the MacLeods. She subsequently heard the screams of the girls. Immediately, she went down to the beach, took a row boat, moored there, and rowed to Eigg. It was only a short distance away. She informed the men of Eigg of the slaughter of cattle and the molesting of the herd girls. Soon, they were to face the wrath of Ruaridh MacDonald, the Chief of Eigg.

Ruaridh was quick to summon his men. The MacDonalds had arrived at Castle Island beach in several boats, and numbered almost one hundred men. They approached stealthily the feasting and carousing MacLeod men. They witnessed first-hand the rape of the peasant girls—their daughters and sisters! One of the herd girls lay dead on the ground, mutilated and headless, as the MacLeods carried on drinking, merrymaking, and molesting the young herd girls. The MacDonalds were in no doubt about what they had to do! 

They descended on the MacLeods, who were completely ambushed in their drunkenness. The MacDonalds held and bound them to some bare trees growing nearby. They also managed to accost Uilleam, who was drinking and feasting with another party nearby. The Eigg men wanted to kill all the MacLeods on the spot, but their chief, Ruaridh, bade them to be patient. 

“Revenge is a dish best served cold, and served at least three times over!” said Ruaridh in a deep dark voice.

“First, we will find out who killed and mutilated that poor herd girl.”

At this point, one of the MacDonalds saw that one of the bushes nearby was ‘quivering.’ 

“Sire, see you that yonder – that bush quivering. Perhaps it is some evil spirit,” he asked Ruaridh.

Ruaridh fearlessly approached the ‘quivering’ bush and stabbing at it with his short sword, uttering sternly, “How now a rat. Perhaps a dead rat now?”²   

Stephen emerged from the bush, not dead, but holding his leg, oozing blood from the cut of Ruaridh’s sword. Morag followed him.

“Who are you?” Ruaridh demanded.

“I am Stephen, the foster son of Alasdair Crotach, the Laird of Skye,” Stephen mumbled in a trembling voice.   

“My men! Bind this trembling coward to a tree and we will soon know the truth!”

Ruaridh could easily have asked the herd girls what had happened, but he could see they were traumatised by what had occurred and didn’t want to add to their pain.

After Stephen had been bound to a tree, Ruaridh approached him and asked in a calm voice, “Who murdered the poor herd girl you see lying on the ground mutilated?” Stephen was about to answer when he saw that his brother Uilleam, bound to a nearby tree, gave him a vicious stare. 

“Sir, I did not see anything,” he said, trembling and wetting himself.

“It’s your choice, my dainty little boy. You can tell me now, or I will break every bone in your body until you tell me the truth.”

“I swear, sir, I have seen nothing; I know nothing,“³ as he saw his brother continuing his vicious stare, along with the other MacLeod men, not least Angus MacLeod, the Chief of Arms.

“Oh well, so be it. Give me your dainty hand. I must admit I would love to bed a sweet boy like thou, and feel your tender caresses, and the touch of your fair skin against mine.”

“Oh! such a sweet hand! May I kiss it?” Ruaridh asked the boy, but he didn’t answer.

“Please answer my question,” said Ruaridh in a gruff voice, while still holding his hand in a firm grip, but stroking it at the same time.

“Yes sir – thou mayest kiss it.”⁴

 Ruaridh bent down to kiss the boy’s hand. But changing his expression from a loving one to something severe, he took hold of Stephen’s ring finger and, forcing it backwards, snapped its middle joint.⁵

 Stephen let out a scream of pain and anguish. 

“My dear boy, do you not like me kissing your skinny white fingers? Please let me caress its neighbour.”

Stephen, in great pain, could still see his brother Uilleam and the other MacLeods glowering at him.

He was caught between a rock and a hard place – being tortured now, or later by his own kinsmen. So he answered, “I swear Sir, I know nothing.”

“Very well, I will just have to make love with the rest of your dainty little digits,” he said with a sick smile on his face while he broke two more of his fingers.

“Please, sir, stop. I will tell you. It was Angus over there who molested, murdered, and mutilated the herd girl.“ 

Hearing these words, Ruaridh lost interest in Stephen and turned his attention to Angus.

“Angus, it seems you have a taste for our sweet cherry girls—is it true? Have you tasted our Eigg cherries? Did they taste sweet?”

Angus said nothing at first. Then he replied, “I curse you, sir, you spawn of an inferior race!”

Wielding his sharp dirk in the face of Angus, he barked, “I think it’s true; you came here to taste some Eigg cherries. The MacLeods like our cherry girls. You love to devour our young cherries. True! I know it’s true. But our cherries are not for you!” Ruaridh said, spitting him in the face.

The MacLeod men bound to the trees looked on fearfully as to what might happen next.

Angus was hanging limp, tied to the tree.

Ruaridh shouted at him, “You treacherous MacLeod. This is the last time you will taste the sweet MacDonald cherries!”

Ruaridh took out a curved knife from his sheath. He grabbed Angus by the hair of his head and forced his head back. ”Ye like taking the maidenheads of our maidens, as well as their heads. I swear I will have your head too as a decoration for our trees here!” With a sweeping, circular slash, he cut the throat of Angus so his neck gushed with blood. He then drew out his short sword, slicing off the head, which rolled to the ground. He bade his men decorate the nearest tree with it.

The Eigg men then set about massacring the entire crew of the MacLeods, severing their limbs and heads. They hung their dismembered bodies on the branches of the sparse trees on the island. However, they spared the lives of the leaders, Uilleam and Stephen. 

The Eigg men also wanted to kill and dismember Uilleam and Stephen and hang their body parts on the stark trees as fruit for the crows, but the chief of the MacDonalds on the island, Ruaridh, said no.

“We will let God in heaven decide the fate of these two sinners. We will thrash these effeminate fair-skinned MacLeods within an inch of their lives. They will have a slow and painful death. We will set them adrift on the sea in a boat without rudder or oars.”

The men beat the two brothers with their staves, so they were barely alive by the time they had finished. They then carried their broken bodies to the beach. The brothers were bound to the benches of their birlinn, which was then cast adrift. The wretched men, bound as they were, were left to perish by famine, or by the winds and waves.

Ruaridh continued, “If perchance they, by some miracle or act of God, should arrive at the Isle of Skye and be rescued by their kinsmen, then they can tell the MacLeods how we treat thieves and molesters of MacDonald maidens. Their severed limbs would provide a hearty breakfast for the crows of Eigg. It would be best for the fate of Scotland if we could scourge these Norse fair-skinned miscreants from our midst.

“Besides, we have been too friendly towards these villains. Remember, these scoundrels from Harris and Skye have beheaded our kinsmen for no other reason than they happened to land on their beaches. And then, out of a show of utmost disrespect, presented the heads of our kinsmen on a rope to the governor of the island. But we are Christian men and not barbarians like the MacLeods; let’s hope that in the future, they can choose the Christian path of reconciliation.” 

Footnotes

1.  ^{The men of Eigg were called the Fachachs. Fachach is Gaelic for the Manx shearwater bird. In the summer, the Eigg men would harvest the birds from their nesting burrows in the cliffs of Eigg. The fat young birds were an important part of the islanders’ diet.} ↩︎
2.  ^{Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4.} ↩︎
3.  ^{The waiter Manuel’s most famous line in the TV series ‘Fawlty Towers’.} ↩︎
4.  ^{I have to apologise to the reader here mixing up Shakespearean English, with ‘Scots English’ and Standard English, especially when the characters spoke Gaelic and not English! But the massacre occurred in the sixteenth century, so it also makes some kind of irrational sense to use Shakespearean English. I have accessed various websites, but also my subconscious memory, as my parents were both Scottish. Moreover, I have read and taught Shakespeare for at least 50 years. The reader should be thankful that I do not revert to Chaucerian English.
   As a note for the immature reader, I will point out that this whole story is a little ‘tongue-in-cheek.’ I’m sure no one gets politically up-in-arms about a Monty Python sketch such as ‘Just a Flesh Wound’. Of course, Monty Python is mainly fictional, although not always (‘Life of Brian’).
   The ‘Cave Massacre’ however was a real event. One is not allowed to ‘joke’ about the ‘Holocaust.’ In fact, in some countries, this may be considered a criminal offence. But the passage of time (about 500 years) allows us to ‘joke’ about the genocides of the past. In fact, some nations are ‘proud’ of their former acts of genocide, rape, murder and pillage, such as the Scandinavians who are taught at school to be proud of their inglorious Viking past.
   I can remember in the un-politically correct 1970s – or was it the 1980s – at least during that era when you could make jokes about fat people, mothers-in-law, the mentally handicapped, and so on; the Irish comedian Dave Allen had a sketch about Vikings raping, pillaging and burning English villages:
   “A boat load of Vikings ready to pillage jump out onto the beach.
   ‘Alright! Kill all of the women and rape all of the men!’
   ‘Uh, don’t you mean Kill all of the men and rape all of the women?’
   ‘You play your games, I’ll play mine.’  
   https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1r8of7/that_plot_twist/ Read 19 March 2022.
   This was during a period when words such as ‘rape’ weren’t taboo for comedians. But the point I was trying to make here is that Norwegians are ‘proud’ of their raping, pillaging and burning’ Viking past. And this ‘glorious’ history is taught in schools to young Norwegians. However, by some Orwellian ‘double think’ move, the ‘raping, pillaging and burning’ of the Nazis in Norway during World War Two is taught as something ‘terrible.’ While, in reality, the Germans perhaps did ‘little’ ‘rape, pillage and burn’ compared to the Vikings (at least in Norway – as the Norwegians were ‘racial kin’).} ↩︎
5.  ^{‘Apache Woman’ http://femaledom.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-3419.html Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.} ↩︎