Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

On the Isle of Skye were two brothers, Uilleam and Stephen (a foster son). They were the sons of Alasdair Crotach,¹ ‘The Humpbacked’, the 8th Chief of the MacLeods. The MacLeods had Norse blood in their veins and were thus, fair in complexion.

The two brothers had opposite natures. Uilleam, the eldest son, was strong and powerfully built. He was cruel, callous, and heartless. He was a womaniser, a drunkard, and a battalion berserker. Most often, he was at the front in any battle, swinging his sword in the hope of catching the neck of an adversary. Shouting, gnarling, and biting the edges of his shield in battle–he did these things to contain his excitement for blood. He was the soldier you would want to have in front of you in any conflict. At the same time, he was also the last person you’d choose as a friend in times of peace.

Stephen, the younger stepbrother, was the opposite. He was weak, cowardly, and effeminate, yet always ready to help the poor people of the Isle of Skye.  

One day, Uilleam suggested to his brother that they visit the Isle of Eigg, which belonged to their mortal enemies, the MacDonalds. Uilleam described to his younger brother the extraordinary An Sgurr, a phallic, daunting rock of basalt. The rock could be seen from the Isle of Skye on a clear day, despite being leagues distant. It can also be used for ritual purposes, radiating certain life-giving and spiritual properties that could prolong life, heal people, and make them stronger. ²

Their father, the humpbacked Alisdair Crotach, had been sickly since his battle with the MacDonalds. The fight left him wounded in the back by Evan MacKail’s battle axe. Uilleam explained to Stephen that the properties of the rock could restore the vigour and health of their father. With this aim in mind, Stephen quickly agreed with Uilleam’s plan to hew a slab of basalt rock from An Sgurr and take it back to Skye.   

They set sail in the early spring in one of the MacLeod birlinns,³ manned by twenty or more men. The sun was showing off its glory, and the waves clapped against the boat, rocking it steadily. Before they set sail, Uilleam made certain they had loaded several flagons of Uisge beatha⁴ (English: whisky) amongst their cargo.

Celebrating the start of the adventure, Uilleam drank from one of the flagons of whisky. He offered Stephen a drink, but the squeamish and seasick Stephen declined. Uilleam couldn’t offer a drink to the whole crew, as they had to steer a steady course towards Eigg. But he wanted a drinking companion, so he offered a drink to Angus MacLeod, his uncle and the Chief of Arms.

They basked in the sunshine at the stern of the boat, got merrily drunk, and joked about the fair maidens of Eigg. Uilleam said, “We will grab some of the MacDonald maids by their snatches, their nether parts! Ay, we will be civil to them and cut off their heads!”

Angus replied, “Surely, you mean their maidenheads?”

“Ay the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads. Take it in what sense you will.”

“The girls you molest are the ones who will have to ‘sense’ it,” laughed Angus. 

“Me they shall feel as long as I am able to stand, and ’tis known I have a pretty huge slab of flesh,” joked Uilleam. He laughed raucously, rubbing himself between the legs and making a vulgar gesture by gyrating his hips.  

Uilleam continued with his bawdy joking puns. “As soon as we land on Eigg and accost the MacDonald maidens, we will show them our naked weapons. They will feel the sharpness of our steel, and their blood will be dripping off our blades.”

Angus countered, “I will back you up, and take out my naked sword too.”⁵

Sitting in the stern of the boat, drinking and getting more and more drunk, they laughed and joked about how they would molest the MacDonald maidens. They carried on in this fashion, drinking, and making bawdy jokes about the Eigg maidens. Often, they had its dark undertones that only Uilleam understood. The fair-haired Uilleam wanted to sail to Eigg for his own evil purposes. He wanted not only to hew a slab of basalt rock from the An Sgurr, but to seek out maidens — one maiden in particular. 

Uilleam previously visited the island on a spying mission for the MacLeods. He disguised himself as a vagrant, an itinerant beggar. He had been immediately captivated by a diminutive dark-haired herd girl, Catriona. She tended the cattle on Eilean Chathastail (Eng: Castle Island), a small island off the coast of the south of Eigg.

Uilleam’s evil plan was to ravish Catriona. Of course, he couldn’t have any other kind of relationship with the girl. First, she belonged to the MacDonalds, his arch enemy; second, she was below him in station. He was the son of a clan chief, and she was a mere peasant girl.

The clan chiefs and their sons could freely avail themselves of their own peasant girls if they wished. The clan chiefs and their sons freely exercised their ‘laird’s right, also known as jus primae noctis, ‘right of the first night’. This means they had the legal right to allow the lairds and their sons to have intimate relations with peasant women, in particular, on the wedding nights of the women. But Uilleam was avaricious and lusted after the peasant girls of his foe, the MacDonalds.

Uilleam had even told his father, Crotach, about his carnal desire for the peasant girl of Eigg when Uilleam had returned from his spying mission on the island. Crotach had long since given up trying to control his son, but at least he could lead him by the nose, like a one-eyed cat can be led by the nose towards any old reeking fish. In other words, Uilleam’s blind love, his one-eyed cat, could smell the reeking aroma of the Eigg girls; but he also knew they weren’t ‘girls’ anymore.⁶ 

Crotach realised he could lead his ‘one-eyed’ son by the nose with his taste for ‘rotting fish.’ He proposed to Dunvegan’s Upper Council that they should stage a kind of ‘false flag’ action. That was a visible event that the MacLeods could use as justification for taking armed action against the MacDonalds so they could grab some of their lands. The plan was to molest and murder some of the MacDonald peasant girls to provoke an act of revenge from the MacDonalds. This plan would give the MacLeods a reason for invading the lands of the MacDonalds to ‘keep the peace.’

Donald MacLeod, the head of Dunvegan’s Upper Council, had said, “This is genius… at so little cost. We can ‘grab’ some land and call it ours just by ‘grabbing’ and molesting some Eigg maidens.”⁷    

However, the Upper Council elders were not unanimous in their resolve because wherever Uilleam goes, peril follows. In other words, he was what you may call a ‘loose cannon.’ He was never really good at following rules. Orders were always insignificant to him, as he always just followed his needs and desires.   

Ultimately, the Council decided by a majority that Uilleam should lead this ‘false flag’ attack so the MacLeods could increase their power in the Western Isles by ‘grabbing’ MacDonald lands under the pretense of ‘establishing peace.’ Of course, Stephen, Uilleam’s younger brother, had no knowledge of Uilleam’s secret mission.  

Thus, the Dunvegan’s Upper Council decided to use the homicidal Uilleam in an act of provocation against the MacDonalds by molesting the peasant maidens of Eigg. The Upper Council also gave him permission to slay some of the inhabitants of Eigg, depending on what he deemed appropriate in any situation that may arise.

Of course, this appealed to Uilleam; he had a taste for young maidens, but, like a wolf, he also had a taste for blood. If he could choose between the two—the taste for maidens and the taste for blood—then perhaps it was the taste for the latter that satisfied him the most. The Upper Council had thus given him free reign. Now, he could satisfy both of these desires.

Footnotes

1.  ^{‘Crotach’ is Gaelic for ‘humpbacked’. Alisdair’s ‘humpback’ was from an injury he sustained in a battle on Skye between the MacDonalds and MacLeods. A large force of MacDonalds led by Evan MacKail, had landed at Aird Bay with the intention of laying waste to MacLeod territory. Alisdair rallied the clan’s forces and marched them towards the MacDonalds who were encamped near their galleys.
   The opposing forces clashed with each other and Alisdair was wounded in the back by Evan MacKail, who wielded a battle axe. As the wounded Alisdair fell, he grabbed hold of Evan MacKail and brought him to the ground as well. Alisdair then killed MacKail with his dirk and cut off the dead man’s head as a trophy. The battle ended with the defeat of the MacDonalds, who lost most of their men and ten galleys. (Adapted from ‘Alisdair Crotach MacLeod’, Wikipedia. Accessed: 26 Feb. 2022)} ↩︎
2.  ^{The opposite of Kryptonite.} ↩︎
3.  ^{The birlinn (Scottish Gaelic: bìrlinn) was a wooden vessel propelled by sail and oar, used extensively in the Hebrides and West Highlands of Scotland from the Middle Ages on. … The Gaelic term may derive from the Norse byrðingr (ship of boards).} ↩︎
4.  ^{‘Uisge beatha’ is Gaelic for ‘water of life’, better known as whisky.} ↩︎
5.  ^{Freely adapted from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1.} ↩︎
6.  ^{“Shake, Rattle and Roll”, Elvis Presley, 1954. See YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBlWGyp4eOY “I’m like a one-eyed cat peepin’ in a seafood store. Well, I can look at you till you ain’t no child no more.” “One-eyed cat” refers to the male member, see:  https://www.houstonpress.com/music/dear-penis-20-songs-about-the-tube-snake-boogie-6773416} ↩︎
7.  ^{Adapted from: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/03/politics/trump-putin-russia-ukraine-graham/index.html (19 March 2022), and https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html (same date).} ↩︎