I remember one Summer evening at work, I looked up, and for a fleeting moment, thought that I was back in Scotland.
I was actually in the middle of an empty restaurant... After closing.
Let me explain.
The restaurant I worked at, had tinted, ceiling to floor windows, running the length of an entire wall. The Venetian blinds were practically always open (unless requested otherwise), to ensure customers were given the optimum view of the exquisite suburbia that the restaurant looked out onto. As I am sure you can appreciate, the superbly mismatched picket fences, fading brick veneers, and vast array of rusting (not to be confused with rustic) letter boxes, really set the mood for a romantic dining experience, (and apparently work like a charm, for those with imaginations as overactive as mine).
This one particular night, there was a looming dark cloud, casting a grey shadow over the whole city. (Ok, slight exaggeration written mainly for effect... Maybe it was just the small 'provence' in which said restaurant was located that seemed shadowed, or maybe I was just gloomy for having to be at work. Either way, these digressions are hardly relevant to the story). The bleak atmosphere outside and eerie dull ambience inside (coupled with my apparent apathetic mood at the time), took me straight back to the heart-wrenching battlefields of Glencoe...
My Scotish Tour guide was the most patriotic person I have ever met. You would be hard-pressed to find somebody who knows more about everything pertaining to Scotland than she does. Unlike many of my other tour guides, rather than just regurgitating the same old information, memorised word-for-word from Wikipedia, she actually told us stories, made the history interesting and witty and romantic and comedic all at the same time. She made Scotland seem like the most enchanting and magical place in the world. Until Glencoe.
Picture this: we arrive in a tiny little 12 seater bus and park on the side of a one lane highway, in the middle of what seems like nowhere. To appreciate how 'in the middle of nowhere' it really was, you have understand that Scotland is the least densely populated country in the whole of Europe, and Glencoe is in the Highlands, which is practically not populated at all. Anyway, we pull over on the side of the road, completely unaware of where we are, pile out of the bus, and find ourselves standing infront of this eerie, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raising mountain range. (Not all that strange considering Scotland is famous for its rugged country side.) It was overcast, and drizzling, and cold (which shouldn't come as much of a surprise either) and there was a heavy mist (low-hanging cloud if you don't want to romanticise it, although mist sounds much more thrilling) that was just seemingly floating accross the tips of the mountains.
So we follow our tour guide across a rickety little brige...
...along an overgrown path, and trudge our way halfway up the mountain side (in the cold and rain and 'mist' I might add),
...to stand under a small ledge of overhanging cliff, barely able to see three feet ahead of us. It was under this ledge, in the spine-tingling quiet and isolation, that she told us a story of the massacre that had taken place at the very same location, hundreds of years beforehand. The image of that picturesque mountain 'glen', (previously so majestic and beautiful to the untrained tourists' mind), now haunting, and the silence deafening.
In 1692 to be exact...
The MacIan clan of GlenCoe (a small sect of the MacDonald clan), one dreadful night, extended their hospitality to a group of travelling Government officials. The officials drank their beer, ate their food, and slept in their beds, for 12 whole days. Little did the MacIans know however, that these officials were infact the enemy Campbell clan, with whom they had been fighting with over petty disputes for years.
I don't know (or completely comprehend) all the gritty details, but true to Scotland's gruesome history, there was some controversy (and of course many a battle) over the King, and his rules, at the time. The Jacobites (a group of rebels trying to overthrow the King) had an influence, and if British History is anything to go by, the battle at Glencoe, although not for the throne specifically, was nothing short of a battle over allegiance to the King standing on it.
At sunrise on the 13 February 1692, The Cambpell Clan, who had knowingly AND willingly, accepted the hospitality and offerings, not to mention friendship of the MacIan Clan, with whom thay had been staying, of whose beer they had been drinking, food they had been eating, and beds they had been sleeping in; on the 12th morning, then turned around and slaughtered them, in cold blood, on direct order of the King.
38 people were killed that morning.
Further to that, hundreds of people fled into the snow covered hills, where some 40 more ended up dying of cold, hunger or both.
When it was over, the King was angry that any escaped at all.
The people of Scotland, (and all of Britain) were so rocked by the Cambells' cruelty, that the massacre gave rise to a whole new brand of evil; 'Murder Under Trust', which is precisely what the Battle of GlenCoe was.
To this day, Campbell's are still not welcome in Glencoe.
If that's not chilling, I can't tell you what is.
Don't say I didn't warn you... My imagination has surpassed hyperactive. It has ADHD.
I'm not saying that I 'imagined' that whole story, look up any history book and you'll find it, I guess it's more that no matter where I am, I can find a way to connect myself to somewhere i've been... (or where I'd like to be again)
Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's escapism. Maybe I am clinically insane. I don't really know. All I know is, my head is full of amazingly vivid memories and images, yet ask me what I had for breakfast and I would be hard-pressed to tell you. Ask me what my phone number is and you'll be fresh out of luck. (I do remember my name though, so that one is generally a winner).
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