Ancient Animosity

Glenure mounted his horse and came up with his nephew.  Mungo asked whether old Ballachulish had said anything about the removal of the Ardsheal tenants; Glenure replied that he had not, but he did not say what they had talked about.  According to lore, Ballachulish, like the one-eyed ferryman, was warning Glenure: “It is better for you to stay in my house tonight, Colin, to take a night’s hospitality from me, and go away in the morning.”  But Glenure insisted he must hurry to Ardsheal.  Again Ballachulish urged him: “You are welcome to stay a night with me if you like, and I do think it were better for you to stay.”  But Glenure was determined on Ardsheal.[i]

While Glenure’s party and Ballachulish were passing along the road, the tenant John Roy Livingstone was watching from the wood of Ballachulish.  He later explained that after his encounter with James Stewart’s servant John Beg MacColl, he had gone to the wood to cut some sticks he needed.  Now John Roy came down to the road to talk to Glenure’s servant, John MacKenzie, as he returned behind the others to pick up the coat he had dropped.  Then “after a few questions,” said John Roy, MacKenzie continued on his way.  MacKenzie stated later in his precognition that he had seen a man he called John MacCormaig in the wood of Ballachulish cutting wood with his hatchet, but did not mention stopping and talking with him.  (Probably MacKenzie had simply confused John Roy’s name; records indicate his Gaelic patronymic was MacAnure or MacNuir, although it was the Gaelic name MacLeay that was usually “Englished” as Livingstone.)  The pair’s meeting and conversation was significant, for MacKenzie had now fallen “some little distance” behind the others, Kennedy in front, then Glenure and Mungo, and he could not see them because of the rising ground.[ii]

None of his companions saw the fatal shooting of Glenure in the wood of Lettermore, but Mungo was closest to him at the time and his accounts are of primary importance.  Three of these accounts have been preserved.  The first is his precognition, taken four days after the murder.  Then there is a letter he wrote to an unknown correspondent nine days after the murder, discovered and published many years afterward.  And there is the evidence he gave at James Stewart’s trial, four months after Glenure’s death.  These accounts complement and agree with one another on the whole.  But there are differences, and “the Jacks” would “cry out loudly,” saying Mungo’s testimony at the trial differed from his first account in order to support the prosecution’s case against James Stewart (as will be seen).

Soon after parting with Alexander Stewart of Ballachulish, just seven or eight minutes later, Mungo estimated, he and Glenure came to a part of the road so rough and narrow that they could not ride abreast.  Mungo went on in front and was ahead of his uncle when he heard a shot.  At once Glenure cried out, “Oh!  I am dead.  He’s going to shoot you.  Take care of yourself.”  These words seem to indicate Glenure saw the man who shot him, and saw a gun being reloaded.  Mungo dismounted immediately and came back to Glenure, who still sat his horse, saying over and over, “I am dead.”[iii]