engarry, for example,
having been affronted by the people of Culloden, surrounded Culloden
church on a Sunday, shut the doors, and burned the whole congregation
alive. While the flames were raging, the hereditary musician of the
murderers mocked the shrieks of the perishing crowd with the notes of
his bagpipe. [218] A band of Macgregors, having cut off the head of an
enemy, laid it, the mouth filled with bread and cheese, on his sister's
table, and had the satisfaction of seeing her go mad with horror at the
sight. They then carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to their chief.
The whole clan met under the roof of an ancient church. Every one in
turn laid his hand on the dead man's scalp, and vowed to defend the
slayers. [219] The inhabitants of Eigg seized some Macleods, bound them
hand and foot, and turned them adrift in a boat to be swallowed up by
the waves or to perish of hunger. The Macleods retaliated by driving the
population of Eigg into a cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, and
suffocating the whole race, men, women and children. [220] It is much
less strange that the two great Earls of the house of Campbell, animated
by the passions of Highland chieftains, should have planned a Highland
revenge, than that they should have found an accomplice, and something
more than an accomplice, in the Master of Stair.

The Master of Stair was one of the first men of his time, a jurist, a
statesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent orator. His polished manners and
lively conversation were the delight of aristocratical societies; and
none who met him in such societies would have thought it possible that
he could bear the chief part in any atrocious crime. His political
principles were lax, yet not more lax than those of most Scotch
politicians of that age. Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Those
who most disliked him did him the justice to own that, where his schemes
of policy were not concerned, he was a very goodnatured man. [221] There
is not the slightest reason to believe that he gained a single pound
Scots by the act which has covered his name with infamy. He had no
personal reason to wish the Glencoe men ill. There had been no feud
between them and his family. His property lay in a district where their
tartan was never seen. Yet he hated them with a hatred as fierce and
implacable as if they had laid waste his fields, burned his mansion,
murdered his child in the cradle.

To what cause are we to ascribe so stran