Clan Hay · 1411
The Earl of Erroll at Harlaw
On the morning of the twenty-fourth of July 1411, on the rising ground above the head of the Garioch, twenty miles north-west of Aberdeen, the Lowland-Norman levies of Aberdeenshire and Angus, under Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, met a Highland-Hebridean army of about ten thousand under Donald, Lord of the Isles, in the most consequential battle fought in north-east Scotland in the post-Bruce century. Donald had been pressing east for the earldom of Ross. Mar's hastily levied army of three thousand had three of the great Lowland constables on the field. The High Constable of Scotland, Sir Gilbert Hay of Erroll, son of the second Lord of Erroll, in his fifty-first year, in his hereditary office and on his own ground, held the right wing of Mar's line. The action was, by every contemporary account, fought to a standstill on the strath of Harlaw at the cost of about a thousand dead a side. Donald withdrew north-west overnight; Mar held the field. The Lowland-speaking belt of Aberdeenshire and Angus would not be reabsorbed into a Gaelic west again. The Hay tradition has it that the day held because Erroll held the right.
It is twenty past nine on the morning of the twenty-fourth of July 1411, on the rising ground above the village of Harlaw, twenty miles north-west of Aberdeen, in heavy summer light with no wind. He is fifty-one years old. He is Sir Gilbert Hay of Erroll, second Lord of Erroll, High Constable of Scotland by hereditary office, in plate-and-mail armour with the Hay arms in red and silver on the surcoat. He is in command of the right wing of Mar's line, three hundred and fifty men of his own Erroll levies, four hundred and fifty Lowland Aberdeenshire spearmen, two of the Provost of Aberdeen's burgh-foot companies on the wing's outer flank.
The Highland line, two cables to the west, is forming on the brae above the Urie burn. Donald's Hebridean galley-fighters in the centre, the men of Lochaber on the left, the MacLeans of Duart and the MacKenzies on the right under Red Hector. Donald has, by Mar's scout's report, ten thousand men. Mar has, on the field, three thousand five hundred. The numerical balance, in plain terms, is three to one against the Lowland line.
He thinks: the right is the open flank. If the right gives, the centre is rolled into the river.
He thinks: Lochiel and the MacLeans will come at our right because the right is the open flank. They will come at the run with the broadswords. The Aberdeen burgh-foot will not stand a Highland charge.
He thinks: I am the Constable of Scotland on a Lowland field defending my own grand-tenant's grain. The right will not give.
He thinks: the right will not give because I am on the right.
He goes to the front of his line. He says, in the Aberdeen Scots they will understand: we will hold here this day. We will not break. The Constable of Scotland is on this hill.
The Highland line came on at twenty past ten with the pibroch playing. The MacLeans of Duart under Red Hector struck Erroll's wing at the run with the targe and broadsword. The Erroll line did not break. Red Hector and Sir Alexander Irving of Drum, by the tradition, killed each other in single combat in front of the Hay men at midday; the two are buried in adjacent graves at the Drum churchyard, ten miles south of the field. The action ran through the afternoon. Donald's centre pressed Mar's hard. Mar took a wound in the head. The day did not break either way; the Highland line withdrew at sunset across the burn and went west overnight. Mar held the field at first light on the twenty-fifth and was still on it three days later when the Aberdeen burgh-troop came up to support him.
About a thousand Lowland dead, including Sir James Scrimgeour the Constable of Dundee and the Provost of Aberdeen Sir Robert Davidson, killed at the head of his burgh men. About a thousand Highland dead, including Red Hector of the Battles. Donald did not come east again. The earldom of Ross remained, eventually, with the Crown. The Lowland belt of Aberdeenshire and Angus stayed Lowland. The battle was called the Reid Harlaw, the red harlaw, in the local memory for the next four hundred years; the bothy songs and ballads of the Garioch carried it into the modern parish.
Sir Gilbert Hay of Erroll lived another twenty-five years. His son William was raised to the earldom of Erroll in 1453. The hereditary office of the Constable of Scotland is, by an unbroken male-line descent, still held by the Hay family today, the only one of the medieval Scottish offices of state that has been continuously occupied by the same family from the thirteenth century to the present. The 24th Earl of Erroll, Merlin Sereld Victor Gilbert Hay, holds the office; he is the Constable in the Court of the Lord Lyon and walks at coronations immediately after the King. The Harlaw Monument was put up by the Aberdeen burgh in 1911 on the highest point of the field, at the five-hundredth anniversary, and bears the names of the great Lowland fallen, including Sir Robert Davidson the Provost. The names of the Highland fallen, by Aberdeen civic decision, were not put on the monument; a separate stone, put up by the Friends of Harlaw in 2011 at the six-hundredth, records them.