7. Legend of the Cheated Bridegroom
FOLKLORE softens and glamorizes many of the hard facts of history. Thus the tale of the decline of the chiefs of the Clan MacNauchtan and the loss of their lands by foreclosure has been mellowed and tinted in romantic colors by the poetic legend of a deceived lover and the sweetheart who would not give him up. The ancient estates were not roughly seized by grasping claimants, according to the tradition related by Lord Archibald Campbell in his Records of Argyll; they were sacrificed for the sake of his great love by young John MacNauchtan.
The basic truth of the legend is not to be doubted, and most of the details are essentially correct. The tale has been passed down from mother to daughter: women of the Highlands never tire of accounts of thwarted loves that are triumphant in the end, and of heartbreaks that are never mended. Turning to the "Records of Argyll", published by Blackwoods in Edinburgh in 1885, we shall examine Lord Campbcll’s version and the additional material supplied by Alexander Carmichael in the appendix.
At some time not long before 1720, John MacNauchtan, younger son of the last Laird of Dunderave, fell in love with the second daughter of Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglas, and his affection was warmly returned. Sir James had eight daughters, and he thought it would be best for their collective chances of matrimony if he married them off in order, the eldest first. Jane, the first daughter, loved John as much as her sister did, or at least she wished just as ardently to marry him. She was plainer, and no doubt dreaded the idea of being left behind.
For reasons well known to young people in love, John and his sweetheart were not at all moved by Sir James’ canny logic. They insisted upon being married, and the father at length agreed. But MacIan the Brindled, as his Celtic neighbors called him, had an idea in reserve.
It was customary in the Highlands to have weddings in the evening, and to make great celebrations of them, with wine and stronger waters flowing briskly, and with pipe music and dancing keeping spirits high until late hours. There is reasonable certainty that MacIan the Brindled kept the bridegroom’s cup so well filled that he became so gaily muddled he perhaps could not distinguish one veiled girl from another. John trusted his new father-in-law, as so many MacNauchtans had previously trusted Campbells.
The marriage ceremony evidently was performed without disturbing incident, in an atmosphere of festivity. The bride no doubt wore a heavy veil, and John was not the man to lift an edge of it to see who might be concealed behind it. Had he looked, he would have found Jane. Future generations may continue to wonder where and how MacIan the Brindled had hidden the true bride.
Here was a lass of mettle and spirit, as you shall later sec, and nothing less than a heavily locked dungeon could have kept her from her rightful place at the altar.
Lord Campbell relates that the dancing continued until midnight; "then the bridesmaids took away the bride and put her to bed, after which the bridesmen took away the bridegroom and put him to bed, and carried away the candle. ... Having been put to bed as described, McNaughton did not notice the deception until morning."
Came the dawn, as they say in Hollywood. The bridegroom opened his sleepy eyes, took one look, and probably groaned. If a natural man, his first thought must have been for his lost sweetheart, either crying her eyes out or storming like a young lioness in a locked cell. Perhaps John cursed himself for his stupidity in accepting so much wine from the perfidious hand of MacIan the Wily. Lord Campbell recounts the scene in the breakfast room, in which he makes a MacNauchtan behave with the proper docility in the presence of a Campbell. It went off airily:
"On coming to breakfast he [John] remarked that there had been a mistake made last night. Ardkinglas, however, excused himself by saying that it was customary for the eldest daughter to get married first, and that she would make as good a wife as her sister."
And that was that! With that dreadful sense of responsibility of a general nature that has afflicted or ornamented (according to how you look at it) men of the Clan MacNauchtan since the earliest recorded times, John accepted the fact he had married a wife and that he would have to take care of her. Instead of knocking down the Brindled one and stalking out of the place, John sat down and ate his breakfast like a little man. Then he took his unwanted bride home to Dunderave, or more likely to a cottage in Glenshira. This was after the foreclosure, we must remember. We are not told how Jane was taking the events of the morning, but she no doubt was assuring herself complacently that she had got her man, and that Little Sister could go jump into the loch. Then, in the words of Lord Campbell, "when she was near her confinement her sister came to attend her."
That was another mistake, in a way, considering the sister’s indestructible spirit. Denied the fulfillment of their romance in marriage by an arbitrary father, the lovers found their way into each other’s arms. When Campbell of Ardkinglas discovered he was to have a second grandchild he was furious, and caused his son-in-law to be lodged in prison in the old tower of Inveraray.
Jonn MacNauchtan was visited in his cell by his true love, who brought ropes under her mantle to enable him to escape over the prison walls. It is evident she had made all the arrangements with intelligent care: "According to agreement, she and a lad named_MacLean. a native of Dunderave, with a fisherman, came into the bay below the old tower of Inveraray in MacNaughton’s barge at night. Then as the beautiful song composed by Mrs. McNaughton [the older sister] tells us, McNaughton escaped." The words of the Lament will appear when it comes the turn of the abandoned wife to receive our sympathy.
John and his sweetheart disappeared from the neighborhood. Lord Campbell says they went to Port Rush in Ulster to be married, but we are inclined to doubt this story, and to profess lack of any idea as to where or when they were married. John became a collector of customs at the little port of Anstruther on the Fifeshire coast of the Firth of Forth and achieved dignity and respectability, as might have been expected of him. Poetic — and tragic — retribution was to be visited upon Campbell of Ardkinglas for his horrid deception on the fateful wedding night. We must let Lord Campbell go on with his story:
McNaughton and his wife No. 2 sent their eldest daughter, named Jean de la Coeur McNaughton, to Ardkinglas, where she remained all her days. Ardkinglas brought home Mrs. McNaughton No. 1 and her son. The boy, it is said, grew to be a promising youth; but one day when he had been out sailing with his grandfather in an open barge, he fell overboard and was drowned off [the lands of] Ardkinglas. Some time after, Ardkinglas with his own son and heir were out pleasure-sailing, when the boat was upset and both were thrown into the water [of Loch Fyne] where the young ; McNaughton had been drowned.
When a boat that had put off from the shore to the rescue was getting near them, Ardkinglas cried to them to save the young man first, which f they did; but before they could reach him, he sank and was drowned. Then, it is said the gossips had it that the drowning of [Campbell of] Ardkinglas was a mark of the displeasure of Providence because he threw young MacNaughton out and drowned him so that he and his heir would get the McNaughton estate. It is not likely, however, that he would drown his own grandson. McNaughton had feued off Glenshira [i.e., sold as superior with the right to collect feu-duties or quit-rents] before he left; and it was ( said that [the Duke of] Argyll and the Hon. John Campbell of Mamore f had lent McNaughton money, on the security of the estate.
Sir James Campbell’s only son, survivor of the boating accident, did not inherit Ardkinglas, we are told. He may have died before coming of age. And so ended the direct male line of that branch of the Campbell family.
Lord Campbell uses the story of the flight of John MacNauchtan to explain the acquisition of all the MacNauchtan estates by various members of the Campbell clan, but we know that romance had no part in the sad and sordid business of the foreclosures. On one subject we may surmise Lord Campbell was on sure ground when he wrote his book: his careful listing of the MacNauchtan properties that came into the possession of Campbells:
Ardkinglas got the estate from and including Dunderave to the head of Glenfyne. Argyll got BenBuie (‘Yellow Hill) and Ben-an-tean, and the feurent or superiority of all Glenshira and part of Glenara; Mamore got Archnatrabh, Stron, and Blairuisdein (Hugh’s ground) — pronounced Blair-ain — a farm with two tenants on the hillside above the upper end of Duloch [Dubh-loch], east side, where some of the foundations of the buildings are still to be seen. Who resided in Dunderave after McNaughton left, or if anyone, is perhaps not known now. But long after. Mamore came to reside there and found [replenished] Archnatrabh himself, and resided there until he became Duke [of Argyll].
In the appendix to Records of Argyll, Alexander Carmichael tells the story of the marriage and flight in the spirit of a Celtic poet and without any matter-of-fact consideration of seized estates. When John protested next morning at the mistake made at the altar, he relates, "Campbell of Ardkinglas told him that it would be unpropitious for the rest of his daughters that any but the eldest should marry first, and that there were too many of them to be sacrificed for the whim of a young man." .
Another version of the story he presents is that John and the second daughter actually were married, that the bride was spirited away and confined, and that the eldest daughter was substituted in the marriage bed. This account is not to be credited; MacIan the Brindled would hardly have risked such a ruse when he had a better and surer one.
Mr. Carmichael went to considerable trouble to obtain the text of the MacNauchtan Lament composed by the deserted Jane, and but for his effort the poem undoubtedly would have been lose. He went to Mrs. Livingston, "a respectable, intelligent woman living alone, the last of her kindred," in a small cottage at Bunawe, who was wont "to soothe her loneliness by singing to herself the old ballads, songs, lullabies, and hymns with which her beloved mother used to soothe her own childhood eyes to sleep" nearly eighty years before. Mrs. Livingston recited for Mr. Carmichael her mother’s version of the story of the wedding at Ardkinglas and the words of the Lament, all of which he wrote down. The wedding story, he assures us, is less accurate than the generally accepted version already told here, but we shall have it anyway, just as Mrs. Livingston recited it:
MacNaughtan of Dundaramh married. Though not possessed of a beautiful face nor of a stately form, his wife was endowed with nobility of mind, benevolence of heart, and deftness of hand, that endeared her to all. The two were happy together and in their surroundings, and promised themselves pleasure and joy. Her sister came to visit them. This young lady was exceedingly beautiful . . . [her] fairness of face and elegance of form were so singularly fascinating that ... no eye gazed upon her without seeking to gaze upon her again.
Nevertheless a mystery hung over this fair girl, which no ear could hear and no eye could penetrate. At her birth the aged seer of her father’s family prophesied that the helpless infant then in arms would cause more disaster to the MacNaughtan race than were a thousand of their enemies to meet
them on the heath
"All plumed and plaided in battle array."
Subsequently events verified this prophecy. . . . MacNaughtan and the beautiful girl were much with one another. Unhappily a guilty love grew up between them. The result was that they fled together from the place, never again to return to loved Dundaramh of the scarlet banners, on the beautiful banks of Loch Fyne.
The forsaken wife was left alone. She was stricken with grief, which sorely weighed her down. Her clustering hair of golden hue in a few days became of ashen grey; while her sparkling eye, her youthful form, and lithesome active step, became those of dreary age and wayworn weariness. The injured woman tried to soothe her sorrow in songs and in airs of her own composing. The following poem is one of these. It is observable that the wronged wife does not blame the blamable husband. With touching fidelity she passes over him to the sister who used her so ill.
This then is the introduction to the Lament. It must be abundantly clear that opinion has long been divided; that there is a John party and a Jane party. Mrs. Livingston and her mother before her were on Jane’s side, and regarded the lovely younger sister not as a girl cheated of her bridegroom but as a temptress. "The poem," Mr. Carmichael continues, "when sung to me to a weird old air ... seemed to my Highland ear touching, pathetic, and beautiful."
Mr. Carmichael took down the words in the original Gaelic and made a literal translation without attempting versification. Here is the Lament, to which Mr. Carmichael gives the title "MacNaughtan of the Dun":
Though this night be so cold,
Alas! alas! how long it is!
Though the rest be in sound slumbers,
Oh! small is my desire to sleep!
It is not the narrowness of my space,
Nor yet the hardness of my bed,
But the beauteous youth of the brown clustering hair
Who has my heart oppressed and brought me to despair.
I dreamed of thee, love, yestreen,
That I was happy in thine arms;
Beneath the shade of the fragrant birch,
In the kindly warmth of thy tartan plaid.
So tenderly wrapped in thy tartan plaid.
But on my awakening from my dream,
Afar from me wert thou wandering!
Thou brave MacNaughtan of the Dun,
Of the tower, of the hospitality, and of the battlements.
Of the fair beauteous maidens, and of the brave men.
Oh that I but saw thee coming
Along the front of the Leacain!
With thy servant, and with thy dogs,
And with thine own noble manly step!
If silver or if gold
Would induce thee to sail home again,
Afar would I know thy noble head
Coming over the bold crest of Cruachan.
Well becomes thee thy bonnet blue,
On thy head of hair, brown, heavy, and free!
Well becomes thee thy pleated kilt,
On thy person so stalwart, brawny, and fair.
Well becomes thee thy tartan hose over thy leg,
And the fresh-red garter binding it.
And well becomes thee thy pistols beneath thy shield,
With thy blue glaive so bright, sharp, and keen.
And oh! at the feast or on the field,
The like of my own love never has been seen!
Heard ye ever of a woman
Who lost her reason for her lover?
Alas! if I an untruth do not tell,
I myself am that woman!
I shall sit sad and lonely,
Beneath the people of the MacCailean [Campbells].
0 thou woman who took from me mine own husband,
And I so sorely grieving for him!
May a kertch never on thee be seen [as evidence of wifehood ,
On market-day or on church-day!
And never, oh never, may child of thine
Be seen going to the temple of baptism!
Be spikes of thorn beneath thy sole,
And an earth-hole be beneath thy feet!
May thy drip-drop wet and cold [tears]
Ever pour on thy bedstock.
And had it not been for thyself,
This, oh! this were no joy to me!
And that, sad the story, alas! retold,
That she was the same mother we had!
These are indeed moving lyrics, indicating deep and genuine sorrow. We cannot blame Jane too much for her complaisant part in supplanting her younger sister at the altar; she wanted John for herself and when her father said she must have him, she went on and had him for a while. MacIan the Brindled must remain the villain of the piece. One of the sorrows of the abandoned wife, we observe in the twentieth stanza, was that she must remain sad and lonely beneath the tribe of Campbells when she so much yearned to be the wife of a MacNauchtan.
Opinions, as I have remarked, will continue to differ. Major Macnaghten relates the bridal story in his clan history and characterizes John as a bigamist. Perhaps he was just that, but if he had sons by the wife he truly loved, I suspect a great many MacNaughtons on this side of the Atlantic would wish themselves his descendants. Ever prone to quick stirrings of romance, Americans may lack some of the calm objectiveness of their overseas cousins.
There is no evidence that John MacNauchtan had even one son. Very little is known of his later life; he may have chosen to live quietly and let the world forget his story. One thing we do know: he caused to be printed a copy of the charter in Latin by which Alexander III granted the castle of Fraoch Eilean to Gilchrist MacNauchtan in 1267. He attached this inscription:
Excudi fecit Johannes McNauchtan regiorum vectigalium apud Anstruther exactor, a predicto Gillecrist perpetua masculorum serie oriundus A.D. 1753.
Translated, this says: "John McNauchtan, Customs Officer at Anstruther, descended in an unbroken male line from the aforesaid Gillecrist, had this copy printed A.D. 1753."
Major Macnaghten discovered this evidence of John’s interest in the history of his clan in the "Hutton Collection", Advocates Library, Vol. XII.
And that was all. This man, who must have regarded himself as obscure and not very interesting, remains the bright central figure in one of the fascinating legends of Scotland. We need not be too greatly concerned over the precise accuracy in detail of such a story; the fact that it survives to stir imagination is what matters.
Donizetti and a good librettist could have made as much of this legend as was achieved with another Scottish story in the opera Lucia di Lammermoor. Lucia in real life was Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Earl of Stair in Galloway. It was her mother, not her brother, who forced the break in the engagement with young Lord Rutherford and compelled the marriage to the Laird of Baldoon. Loyal to her true love, Janet went mad after the ceremony, and in the bridal chamber cried to those who burst in: "Take up your bonnie bridegroom!" The young man was found to be badly stabbed, but he survived. Janet died raving mad three weeks later.
The story of the cheated bridegroom would do very well for a music drama. Jane’s contralto lament would not quite make a mad scene, but it could be effective; did not Jane ask: "Heard ye ever of a woman who lost her reason for her lover? Alas! if I an untruth do not tell, I myself am that woman!"
The possibilities of the wedding scene in the great hall at Ardkinglas should challenge the imaginative spirit of composer and stage manager. Imagine the lively throng, bright with the costumes of the women and the tartans of the men; the wedding march, the hushed moment of the nuptial ceremony, and dancing to the wild, exhilarating music of the Highlands. Then the escape from the prison cell in the tower of Inveraray, with the golden-haired heroine warbling in purest soprano while producing the rope that meant freedom to her lover: does this not kindle the mind? And what a part for a good dramatic basso in the treacherous MacIan the Brindled! Consider the arrival of little Jean Of-the-Heart MacNauchtan at Ardkinglas to soften the wrath of her stern grandfather. The old man didn’t have much longer to live; Fate was about to snatch him!
This must stop, or I shall be suggesting a cast to the managers of the Edinburgh Festival, only to be told no modern composer would write an opera of such antique pattern. Anyhow, we are not likely to forget the story.