Lady's Rock Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
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Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast
Episode 58 - Lady’s Rock
There are many stories from Scotland’s clan history which have been told and retold so many times that barely a shred of truth remains. This might be one of those… but then again, every word might be true.
NARRATOR
It is 1520… ish. Every day he would take the air around the castle and would half watch him roam around the garden with one of his mistresses, laughing performatively as you gaze out over the Firth of Lorn back towards your homeland.
When you had been married it had been hailed as a new era of peace between the Campbells and his lot, the MacLeans.
Your families had never been the best of friends but their territory and influence was expanding all the time and of course, the best way to avoid conflict was to use women like currency.
Using you like currency is a fortunate privilege for your husband and your brothers as 16th Century ‘men about castles’.
Ever since he was a wee boy they’d called him Lachlan Cattenach, because his mother was of Clan Chattan. He loved telling that story. That was it, that was the whole story but Lachlan would tell it over and over again anyway and his vassals would laugh and you would bite down on your lip.
Cattenach also means rough too, unkempt… so you called him Lachlan the Shaggy.
That wasn’t what you meant by it.
Shaggy by name… shaggy by nature.
Head of Clan MacLean for nearly ten years, your husband had used his privileged position to enjoy as much of the good life as he could. He’d tried rebelling - every clan chief had to have a go at least once - but he’d wound up under the heel of your brother Colin Campbell, the third Earl of Argyll.
That’s how you’d become Lady Catherine MacLean, after the death of his first wife Lady Marion.
The smarter MacLean’s knew that the marriage was a good idea since Clan Campbell were a lot more favoured by the crown and, to be quite honest, your family could probably take Lachlan’s in a fight so… better keep them sweet.
And so often you hear of these arranged marriages where both parties take their fate with good humour and make the best of it for the good of their dynastic families and their desperate commitment to propagating power.
But not you and Lachlan.
You hate one another.
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This is Scotland. A podcast about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
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It is 1523 and this story has so many holes that you could drain tatties through it.
It’s been months since that night where you sat by the roaring fire with your wife whose contempt for you burned hotter than a forge, and your desire for the servant that poured your drink was… well you know where this is going.
She seemed in better spirits than usual, she was willing to talk with you about family and the future. She seemed excited about something, buzzing with nervous energy. You could see her hands tremble a little when she took the cup from the tray and handed it across to you, her eyes glimmering in the light of the fire.
You could almost have loved her in that moment, had she been anything more than a pawn to you… a tool to keep you from losing your land to a more powerful clan.
It is not for you, the sixteenth century Chief about Castle to change the way things had been done for hundreds of years. Women were an important part of the noble ecosystem - they couldn’t ascend to chiefdom themselves so they played what was often called an important diplomatic role.
Didn’t bother you… since you were born a man… and held power.
You take a sip of your drink and something in the whisky tastes… off. No harm, no foul, probably something in the cup. Washing up isn’t easy after all, these things happen.
You have been trying desperately for another son since the ones you already have kicking about from your first wife don’t seem to be up to much… Eachann spends all his time asking your advisors questions and Ailean seems to spend an awful lot of time setting fire to things.
Too much for your liking.
But either way Catherine says she’s not in the mood to try again tonight and retires to bed, leaving you to pick which mistress to visit.
And then you cough.
You splutter.
And suddenly glowing worms appear in your vision as you feel your throat dry up and close as you grasp at anything you can.
Miraculously you survive and as you look up at the window of the woman who quite obviously tried to bump you off, who hates you and won’t give you a son, you make a decision.
If she wants to go back across the Firth of Lorn to her family’s lands in Argyll then you’re not going to stop her. In fact, you’ll row her there yourself. It’s the least you can do for your wife.
So that night you steal into her room as she readies herself for bed and, along with one of your most loyal and presumably least moral men, you bind Lady Catherine and drag her down to a boat which waits just outside the walls of Duart Castle.
The night is dark, and calm and the sound of the oars covers the muffled complaints of your wife as you row out to the little spit of rock, a wee skerry in the middle of the Sound of Mull. She would have seen it every day as she looked across at Argyll.
She probably knows as well as you do that it will soon be swallowed by the sea.
And so you untie her and leave her there, screaming her head off and cursing your name for your sins. Perhaps leaving her tied up would have made more sense but if her body was going to found - there was no guarantee she wouldn’t wash up somewhere - it was probably best to not have to explain a load of rope.
You sleep soundly in your bed that night and when you awake in the morning you look out over the calm, crystal blue water of the Sound and you see nothing, just the wee skerry sitting twinkling against the reflection of the water.
So you’re a murderer then.
Time to cover your tracks.
You send word to the 3rd Earl of Argyll, Colin Campbell, the unfortunate Catherine’s brother telling him of a terrible fate that befell your beloved wife when she was at sea.
You tell him that you are beside yourself with grief and that you plan to bring the body to Inveraray Castle for burial - she would have wanted to be on her family’s own soil after all.
The nails are hammered into the coffin and you set out along with a small detachment of your men for Inveraray, the way lined with mourners from Clan MacLean.
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MIDROLL
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It is that night in 1523. Your husband has left you to die. He has dumped you on a tiny spit of land on which you will drown when it is taken by the sea. You can’t swim - it was never considered a good thing for a young lady to learn - probably for this exact reason but you’ll be damned if that bastard is going to get away with this.
So you do what you were taught to do in hopeless situations like being married to a philandering, murderous MacLean.
You pray.
You pray to God. You pray to any deity that will listen for something, anything to help you. A couple of times you even pray for a sudden strike of lightning to take down Lachlan’s boat because if you were going to die tonight then he might as well go too. You could wave to him on his way to hell.
And then you hear it. It can’t be far from you but that’s definitely the sound of a boat under sail. Surely it can’t be at this time of night?!
But there it is, its grubby off-white sail raised just in sight of you. A little fishing boat heading back to harbour at Lismore.
You scream louder than you’ve ever screamed. You leap and wail and throw your arms in the air and eventually the progress of the little vessel slows. And it turns. And as the water starts to rise just above your ankles it reaches you.
It rescues you from almost certain death just in time.
You call it a miracle.
The whole thing is a haze as you eventually find your way home to your family where Colin, your eldest brother has just received word of your tragic death and the departure of your funeral cortege from Duart Castle.
Needless to say he’s surprised to see you.
The family Campbell gathers as you tell your story, and a plan is put in motion.
Days later the funerary retinue arrives at Inveraray Castle, empty coffin in tow. Lachlan MacLean is embraced by your brother for whom he makes quite the show of sorrow at his dear wife’s departure.
The great hall is lit soberly and the other guests, your siblings, stand and greet your murderous husband with tempered well-wishes while a place sits empty at the head of the table, opposite where your brother takes his place.
The phrase ‘revenge is a dish best eaten cold’ will not be penned for another 200 years but as you step out of the shadows and take your place at the head of the table, saying nothing and offering nothing but the most cursory nod to your supposed murderer, the sentiment behind it is etched in your eyes.
The bruises and cuts are still smarting from the brutal treatment you were subjected to but bruises and cuts heal. What is coming to Lachlan MacLean will eat away at him every moment of every day until revenge finds him.
Not a word is uttered about the fact that a coffin lies in an adjoining room where you are supposedly lying drowned, your body washed up on the shore underneath Duart Castle after a tragic accident.
It takes him longer than expected to begin some stammered excuse about needing to be on his way to Edinburgh. How convenient it is that your brother, Sir John Campbell of Cawdor is heading back to his estate via Edinburgh having had the opportunity to attend this wonderful reunion.
John and Lachlan set off for what you assume will be the most awkward cross country journey of the 16th Century. Days later you receive word that your husband was dirked - stabbed repeatedly with a dagger in his bed and that your almost murder was avenged.
And that’s the romantic version, where the story lives in the heart and lingers in the mind. Another version, probably more rooted in truth but sounding more ridiculous, is that all of this happened 30 years before Lachlan MacLean was murdered by John Campbell of Cawdor, in the late 1490s and after many years of the two clans working together.
Another romantic version is the story in Thomas Campbell’s poem, Glenara, in which Catherine (or Elizabeth as she may well have been called) had a young lover who tried to clandestinely live at Duart Castle with her, disguised as a monk.
Whichever you choose to believe… the little rock, between Duart Castle and Oban was christened Lady’s Rock because one night, whether in the 1490s or the 1520s, a woman was saved from certain death by a passing boat.
Glenara by Thomas Campbell
O, heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale,
Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail?
'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear;
And her sire and her people are called to her bier.
Glenara came first, with the mourners and shroud;
Her kinsmen they followed, but mourned not aloud;
Their plaids all their bosoms were folded around;
They marched all in silence, — they looked on the ground.
In silence they reached, over mountain and moor,
To a heath where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar;
"Now here let us place the gray stone of her cairn; —
Why speak ye no word?" said Glenara the stern.
"And tell me, I charge ye, ye clan of my spouse,
Why fold ye your mantles, why cloud ye your brows?"
So spake the rude chieftain; no answer is made.
But each mantle, unfolding, a dagger displayed.
"I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud."
Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud;
"And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem;
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"
O, pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween,
When the shroud was unclosed and no lady was seen;
When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in scorn, —
'Twas the youth who had loved the fair Ellen of Lorn,
"I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief,
I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief;
On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem;
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"
In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground,
And the desert revealed where his lady was found;
From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne;
Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn.
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You’ve been listening to Scotland, it was written and produced by me, Michael Park and is a production of Be Quiet Media.
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