Clan Maclean · 1598
Lachlan Mor at Traigh Ghruinneart
On the fifth of August 1598, on the long strand of Traigh Ghruinneart on the north coast of Islay, Lachlan Mor MacLean, fourteenth chief of MacLean of Duart, in his forty-fourth year, was killed in a feud action against the MacDonalds of Islay. The feud was over the Rinns, the western peninsula of Islay, claimed by both houses. Lachlan Mor had landed at Bunnahabhain at the head of about a thousand of his Mull and Tiree clansmen and had marched west across the island looking for the MacDonald force. Sir James MacDonald of Islay, the young chief, had assembled about six hundred men and waited for him on the strand. Tradition holds that Lachlan Mor consulted a Hebridean seeress on the morning of the action, who told him three things he must avoid that day: he must not drink from a particular well, he must not land at a particular bay, and he must not face a particular dwarf. By the tradition, he did all three. He was killed by an arrow loosed by a MacDonald retainer called Du-Sith, the black peace, a red-haired man traditionally rendered as a dwarf. His body was buried in Kilchoman churchyard, half a mile from where he fell.
It is the early afternoon of the fifth of August 1598, on the long crescent of pale shell-sand at Traigh Ghruinneart, the strand of Gruinart, on the north coast of Islay, in clear summer light with the wind off the Atlantic across the dunes. He is forty-four years old. He is Lachlan Mór, the great Lachlan, son of Hector Mor, fourteenth chief of MacLean of Duart, husband of Margaret Cunningham (daughter of the fourth Earl of Glencairn), in command of about a thousand men of Mull and Tiree and the Treshnish Isles, who have come over with him in the longships from Duart in the past three days for the matter of the Rinns of Islay.
The MacDonald line of Sir James of Islay is on the high dune above the strand, six hundred men by his scouts' count. The wind is in the MacDonalds' favour for arrows. The strand at low tide, where MacLean must form his line, is a quarter of a mile of soft shell-sand without cover.
He has, by his nephew Hector's later account written in the Inverness Court Book of Justiciary deposition, met a red-haired man on the way down from Bunnahabhain that morning who told him not to fight today. The man was a Du-Sith, a man of the black peace, a Hebridean taibhsear of the kind that the western tradition placed some of its inheritance in. The man was, by the same account, in the service of the MacDonalds of Islay. He had told Lachlan Mor three things to avoid that day. Tradition holds that the three were: a particular well east of the strand, a particular bay south of Bunnahabhain, and a particular dwarf in the hostile line.
He thinks: I have already drunk from the well at the head of the strand this morning. The seeress was in the service of the enemy. The seeress was warning me to forfeit the field on her advice. The advice is the enemy's.
He thinks: I cannot stop now. The men have come over from Mull. The Rinns are the matter we have come for.
He thinks: the dwarf, if there is a dwarf, is in the line on the dune. The dwarf will be a marksman with a bow. I will be in the front rank and the dwarf will draw on me.
He thinks: I have a heavy plate-and-mail under the plaid. The arrow will not take through the plate.
He thinks, looking up the strand at the MacDonald line on the dune: the line of plate is open at the upper neck under the bevor. The seeress did not tell me about the upper neck.
He gives the order to advance at twenty past two. The MacLean line moves up the strand at the run. The MacDonald archers on the dune loose at three hundred yards. Most of the arrows fall short or strike plate. One arrow, fired by a red-haired man in the third rank of the dune line, takes Lachlan Mor in the gap between the bevor and the helmet on the right side of the upper neck and severs the carotid. He dies on the strand within thirty seconds, before he has reached the foot of the dune. The MacLean line breaks at the loss of the chief and is rolled back down the strand by the MacDonalds within the hour. Two hundred MacLean dead are left on the sand. Sir James MacDonald keeps the field.
Du-Sith, the black peace, by every Hebridean tradition of Islay and Mull and Coll, was the red-haired bowman of the third rank. Whether he was, in fact, of unusual stature is unrecorded by any contemporary; the taibhsear tradition rendered him as a dwarf because the taibhsear tradition needed the prophecy to come round. He survived the action, by the same tradition, and lived in Islay another twenty years. The arrow, the bow, and the ground above Kilchoman where Lachlan Mor was buried are all in the memory of the people of Mull and Islay today. The grave-stone is a flat slab in the south-west corner of Kilchoman churchyard, four feet long, in red Mull sandstone, with the chief's two-handed sword cut on the upper face. The MacLeans of Duart held a long memory of Traigh Ghruinneart afterward; the feud with the MacDonalds of Islay was not formally closed until the eighteenth century. Tradition holds, in Mull, that no MacLean has worn a helmet without a high gorget since.