The
day was brilliantly sunny, with the sort of sweltering heat that comes only
once in a while to the Highlands. Clashing on the reedy, swampy shores at
the head of Loch Lochy--the loch was lower then, and the field larger--the
two groups met. Trapped in ambush, the Frasers and Grants defended as best
they could. The skirmish erupted with bows and arrows at a distance, but soon
the shafts were gone. Drawing closer, apparently determined to see an end
to the conflict, both sides drew out heavier weaponry, including sturdy Lochaber
axes, and the huge two-handed claidheamh mór that measured
from a man's chin to his toe.
Unforgiving, unrelenting hack-and-slash combat is art and part of such weapons,
and the men struggled fiercely and violently on the reedy banks of the loch,
in hot, unrelieved sun and heat. An old account mentions the use of firearms
at Blar na Léine. This would have meant clumsy, expensive match-lock pistols
that were cumbersome to load, but once fired, served well for bludgeoning.
With some swordblades and axes broken, and fired pistols cast aside, the men
resorted to long dirks. Each side refused utterly to give up. Under the blazing
sun, the watery field absorbed a massacre.
Perhaps the baking heat and intense sunlight increased the maddening scent
of blood and sweat, magnifying anger and diminishing reason. Whatever happened,
the battle raged on. The men are said to have torn off their garments, fighting
half-clad or even naked. Later the field was littered with hundreds of mutilated
bodies. Scattered among them were the pale, blood-stained linen and flax shirts
that they had worn beneath their wrapped and belted plaids. For this reason,
the battle is still remembered as Blar na Léine, or Field of Shirts (Blar
can mean battlefield as well as level plain).
Likely those men who wore armor, including hot, lined helmets, hammered steel
breastplates with quilted gambesons beneath, and heavy jacks of iron-studded,
quilted canvas, cast those aside to seek relief from the sweltering heat.
Shirts were discarded by the hundreds, and some threw off their woolen plaids
as well. The struggling Highlanders must have looked more like wild, furious
ancient Celtic warriors than men of the sixteenth century.
In part, it is this heedless, courageous stripping away of encumberments to
release raw power and fury that marks this battle as memorable and astonishing.
Those
who died among the Frasers included Hugh Fraser of Lovat--Mac Shimi
himself--and Ranald Gallda, whose stranger status had sparked the tragedy.
The young Master of Lovat, who had arrived halfway through the fray against
his father's orders, was wounded and captured, and died days later. Ranald
Gallda's own sword, it is said, was once owned by a MacDonald family in
Strontian, who proudly displayed the nicks in the steel.
Among the host of Frasers and Grants, tradtion claims that less than half
a dozen men--accounts report one to five--walked away from that bloody
field. Clan Ranald and the Camerons, with their larger numbers, fared
proportionately worse at the hands of the Frasers. Only eight or ten men
reclaimed their notched sticks from the brae at the foot of Ben Tigh.
© Susan King 2003
