I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.
Fifteen years on, Johne still has nightmares; nightmares that breed nightmares, feeding on the all-too-real catastrophes that have afflicted Kilsyth, mangling them into a seamless spate of terror.
This year, it is the King’s turn to lay waste to the parish in service of the Divine Plan. The tormentor has the proprietor, Sir James Livingstone, and his household under English lock and key in Edinburgh. In his absence, the King’s Commissioner has dinged down his house at Kilsyth (again) to prevent its fortification by good Protestants of whatever nationality.
Johne and Jonet watch as the blaze consumes the few parts of Livingstone’s mansion he has managed to refurbish since Cromwell’s army burned the place ten years ago with all the goods stored in it. Their utter helplessness has become ingrained.
Before they burned the castle, Cromwell’s Army passed through the village, stripping the land of whatever grain, goods or cattle could not be hidden from them. The hairst was barely in when they arrived in late September. The hungry English and their commissaries stalked the parish, always on the look-out for stores or windfall. They harassed the women and the girls. They molested Jonet. Johne could only stand back in incontinent helplessness.
And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword.
In the following year, it was the King’s soldiers who stripped Kilsyth’s fermtouns of horses, cattle, oxen, sheep and whatever goods remained, eating or destroying the hairst of four hundred and forty acres of oats, barley and peas. The grass and straw was taken to feed their horses.
Each year another callus of hope, regrown at such miserable cost, is flayed from their backs by hungry men, armed and lustful and inured to violence. The King’s men denied them seed-corn or sustenance. Livingstone’s interest on their rent arrears compounded. Johne’s dreams are sodden with hunger and helplessness and shame.
Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
Their oldest boy, James, has grown up gaunt: the progeny of fifteen years of famine and hard darg. Most of their rigs lie fallow now for want of corn and the energy to plough them. He was six months old when the thieving Highland men and Irish, descended on Kilsyth. It is that battle, and its aftermath, that gouges deepest into Johne’ s dreams. The shock and carnage of a few brief days in 1645.
Jonet was a maltsters daughter from Falkirk before she married Johne two years before.
Johne’s father’s family were gudemen in Kilsyth back when it was still called Monaeburgh. They prospered, slowly, on their fermtoun’s rigs…until the King’s army arrived.
At first, it was hard for Jonet, as a toonser: a big shift to become a farmer’s wife after her burgh childhood. She could milk a cow or tend to chickens for her father had a milch cow and hens back in Falkirk. The hairst was harder work but it yielded the grain her brothers’ malt came from. There seemed a certain justice. Divine justice.
She had barely adjusted to the change when the Highlanders appeared in the sweltering heat of a mid-August afternoon. There were thousands of them. The rattle of their gear and the hoof-beats of Aberdeenshire cavalry announced their advance. Gaels jabbled in their incomprehensible language. The Irish too.
Johne was not Job to be caught unaware.
The year’s crop was standing straight in the rigs, ripe enough to pillage. There was no point trying to stop them but he knew he could not stand and watch. One flicker of resistance and he would be cleaved by a claymore or pierced by a dirk. But their gear and oxen might be saved.
Even as the Gaelic host flooded onto the meadow by the Colzium Burn, Johne dragged the plough and riddle and what other tools he could carry to the moss and sank them in the shough. There was no corn yet harvested and none remained of last year’s stock.
For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
Neither of them saw any sense in him remaining in the house. He was more likely to be a victim of one or other of the caterans. Jonet told him he should go while she waited with the infant.
In a day abuzz with dragonflies and fear, Johne drove their oxen higher into the hills and on towards the Campsies. His neighbours also drove their beasts, lugged what gear they could across the moss. Some brought their wives and bairns, abandoning their homes.
Looking back, he could see the Highlanders settle on the meadow by Colzium Castle. They were not dressed like lowland soldiers with jacks and burgonets. These wild men wore plaids with sarks beneath, carried double-handed claymores, dirks or lochaber axes, pistols and muskets. Each carried a targe. The Irish, who also served the terrible, notorious captain, Alasdair MacColla, wore plaid but trews and carried either musket or pike. The pikemen carried swords as well.
Only the Northeast horsemen wore hats like civilised gentlemen.
As night came, their campfires covered the lower ground.
*
The door shakes with the pounding of fists so it might rock off of its hinges. They will not go away. It seems best not provoke them. Jonet snatchs the bairn from the crib, bundling the naked boy in her shawl.
“What is it ye want?”
“Fosgail an doras[1].”
“What?”
“An doras!” The soft sole of a brogue butts against the planking.
“Wait. Wait. Tapla!”
As she lifts the bar, she is blinded by the sunlight until three figures bundle forward to block out the light. Jonet clutches the baby to her breast to quiet herself, hoping the sight will mollify the marauders.
“Biadh, boireannach. A bheil leann agad? Càit a bheil an duine agad?[2]”
The first ruffian has a long dirk in his fist.
“Sorry. I dinna…speak.”
“Chan eil Gàidhlig aice, a Dhòmhnaill,[3]” says an older fellow. The youngest of them is already raking around the hearth, dipping coarse fingers into the thin porridge in the pot.
“Hungry, missus. Acrach? Ken?”
“Acrach?”
“Food. Biadh. And drink.”
Outside the cott, the chickens squawk and cluck.
“Food. Yes,” she says. If they would only take what little food is in the house and not the poultry. The meal kist is emptier than it had been three hours ago but she is still loath to lose it.
“There’s butter. Butter? And some meal? Meal?”
“Min-choirce agus im uile, tha i ag ràdh. Chan eil…uisghe? Ale?[4]”
She nods towards the barrel of ale in the far corner. The young forager has already flipped open the meal kist.
“An urrainn dhut bonnaich a dhèanamh? Boinnaich?[5]”
“Bannocks.”
“Tha.”
She moves to put the baby back in the crib.
“Thoir dhomh e,” the older man says. “Am balach.”[6]
He is smiling but there is terror in her. There was news that the Covenanters massacred a their papish, Irish camp-followers near Methven a week ago. If she hands over Wee Johne what might they do to her? What would she let them do to her? What will they do with the bairn? She thinks she might be safer with the Highland men than the Irish. Better the devils you know.
“Bannocks, aye?”
She surrenders wee Johne into the highland man’s arms. The cateran tickles the boy’s naked skin with a grubby finger. The big man has swept two wooden cups from the trestle and is dipping them into the ale.
“Dè an t-ainm a th’ air?[7]” he says, straightening up again.
“A name? Am balach.[8]”
“Jonet,” she says.
“Am balach.” The old man points to the boy in his arms.
“Johne. Efter his faither.”
“Chon,” the man confirms. “Iain, a Dhòmhnaill. Is mise Aonghas Mac Phadein,[9]” he continues, touching his collar bone. Wee Johne begins mewling. “Mo bhràithrean. Domhnal agus Tearlach.[10]”
“Brothers?” She kneels to stir the hearth, blowing up a flame to cook the oatcakes.
“Tha.”
There is a clatter as Tearlach finds her stash of cheese and lifts it down onto the trestle.
“Fìor mhath.[11]”
As Aonghas rocks and jiggles the bairn, his brothers turn out every kist and jar. They take her two pewter spoons then sit, supping ale as they wait for their supper. The sound of poultry outside fades and she concludes that will be the last egg they will see in months.
*
As the heat of the day fades, a dew falls on the Campsies. Johne settles the two oxen and presses himself close to their heaving sides for warmth. The cud-reek of their breath steams in the moonlight. The night is full of murmurs and ructions from the camp below.
Hidden from view, he watches, imagines, prays. His life, his wife and son are down there amidst those hungry, greedy, pestilential men. Highlanders whose only motive is plunder. Irish who kill for money and revenge. They have split their hazard. Johne outlawed on the moss and Jonet and the boy…what? Victims? Like mice that must outwit the cats if they will live. Johne worries that his soul will be cursed if he dies and the iron ploughshare is not found.
Would it not have been cannier to take Wee Johne and Jonet and leave the oxen to be roasted over the caterans’ fires? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Coward!
For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
He prays the Jacobites will move on in the morning, chased South or North by Argyll and the Covenanting Army who must surely be pursuing them.
Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
Somewhere in the night, tiredness defeats him. At dawn, when the oxen rise and pass water in thick ammoniac streams, he remains on the turf until he is wakened by the beating of drums and the blaring of trumpets, sharp above the lowing of his beasts. He hobbles the oxen in the loan then clambers up onto the ridge, expecting to see the thieving host in marching order, intent on moving on. Not so.
The sprawling camp has emptied, sure enough, but the Royalists are drawn up in formation on the far side of burn.
He scans the fermtoun roofs for any sign. Their thatch is still intact. No-one is moving. Because they are all dead? Dread and guilt drowns him.
The Jacobite banners droop in the still air. The sun is on the faces of the savages. Horsemen and aristocrats fuss at the rear of the formations. The Highlanders are stripping off their plaids.
Up towards Brockieside, against the morning sun, he notices a few figures fidgetting on the skyline. Argyll’s scouts, close on the rebels’ heels? More men break the skyline, in columns with pike and musket,. Loyalists begin to spill across the ridge to the East, descending from the higher ground towards the gulley at the head of the burn.
Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance.
The shooting starts when a trail of Highland men emerge from the gulley lower down,. First a cloud of smoke and then the sound.
*
The McPhadden brothers stripped the bothy bare, taking whatever fine things she and Johne had managed to acquire but they left the bairn and Jonet unmolested. She blesses her plainness and, at the same time, feels ashamed. Aonghas kept a watchful eye on Tearlach who, nonetheless, kept an appraising eye on Jonet as she cooked. Domhnal seemed amused, content to drink their ale and eat their meal.
As she watched them eat, the dread of inevitable starvation chilled her bones. The boy would not yet be weaned. But, as she had hoped, the McPhadden’s presence kept others at bay. Jonet and her cott were their booty and the brothers were not keen to share the contents with the others who roamed the fermtouns taking what they could of goods and livestock.
Aonghas’ few words of English didn’t amount to conversation but he translated each new whim and wish as they dawned on his brothers. She did what she could to satisfy them until they settled on some straw to sleep. Jonet tried to keep watch, the boy at her breast beneath a rough plaid. The Highland men did not bring the warmth the oxen would have. They smelled of sweat and ale and wind.
She woke as the drums were beating. Aonghas and his brothers were gone. The food was gone too but, to her surprise, they had left her cooking pot and the cups on the trestle. When she opened the door, she found the King’s men formed into ranks and columns on the pasture. She sensed a fierce excitement to them. The Highlanders plaids lay in piles on the grass. Rough hairy men, long bearded with unkempt shocks of hair, took up axes and broadswords, checked the powder in their matchlocks. Ready. They tied their linen sarks between their thighs and ran towards the hill, legs and arms bare.
She tried to spot Aonghas and his brothers in the ranks but they all seemed much like the other.
To the East, Covenanters were descending from the high ground, their ranks breaking and straggling as they progressed. The first wave of Highlanders marched up the brae to meet them. The bare-arsed Northerners louped and jumped, hirpling their warlike tackle up across the moss. The first rank of the Covenanters fired. A hank of smoke blew back across them, obscuring them for a moment then drifting away down the glen. Jonet heard the report a moment later. By then the Highlanders had clumped up a few yards down-slope from the Covenanters. Another cloud of gunsmoke. The sounds of their volley arrived entangled with yells and whoops and roars as the Highlanders disappeared into the fog.
Like a landslide in reverse, thousands of caterans and horsemen slumped up the hillside. The Covenanters’ ranks broke. Blades flashed in the morning sun and the cheers of the Jacobites were woven through with high-pitched screams. The Covenanters ran headlong, back uphill. Their officers and horse outstripped them, all hurrying towards Denny.
She had thought a battle was a long thing but it seemed like only moments and the Jacobites had won. The Irish infantry streamed East, following the Highlanders in their hot pursuit and she realised the length of it would not be in the event but the long miles of the rout.
*
When the battle is over and it is clear who has won, Johne leaves the oxen to find a burn to drink from then confers with his neighbours whether it is best to wait before descending. The Royalist camp remains below, full of gear and recent plunder. But will the rascals return? Has the Lord set them a trap, just over the ridgeline? A judgement from which they will not return?
They can hear screams from the hills to the East. A great dying is in process.
But who is dying?
Tam Smythe thinks it best to wait. No point being caught by the papist savages when their blood is up.
They watch and wait through the day, unable to decide. As night comes on, the Royalists return to their encampment in trickles. They are bloodied, quiet. They do not seem downcast. There are no signs of Covenanters.
*
The locust rested two more days in the meadow by the Castle. They licked their wounds and foraged as before, but for slimmer pickings. The McPhaddens came by to take her pot. The Garrel Burn flowed red from the cleaning of the Highlanders’ bloody sarks.
. By the time they moved on, the land was bare of all sustenance. Straw was trampled in an ugly harvest. The hills to the East were quiet.
They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it.
Johne did not descend from the moss until the Royalist Army had marched away towards Glasgow. He drove their two oxen before them. Jonet was suckling the bairn from tired teats. Craven with hunger, Johne had eaten the last of the cheese that he had brought with him, bled the oxen to mix with his meal.
Having examined their stripped and plundered cotts, the folk of the fermtoun formed in parties to investigate the carnage on the hills across the Garrow Burn.
They found neighbours butchered by the cotts which lay in the path of the rout. The limbs and torsos of an old man and his sons lay, hacked to pieces, in their kailyard. Others from the parish lay murdered on the moss. Women. Children. Anyone who was not part of the Royalists’ fury.
With the neighbours who remained, Jonet, Johne and the bairn proceeded up, across the moss, towards Banton.
Here and there, men lay amongst the rushes and heather, hacked and stabbed, arms and legs severed, necks cut almost through, skulls smashed. They had been stripped of whatever they carried that might have value.
Towards the head of Drum Burn, corpses lay heaped in hollows where they had tried to make futile stands, bodies by the hundreds, thousands of dead. Boys and men. Pikemen. Musketeers. No Highlanders. No Irish men. Covenanters and good Protestants all.
Crows scrapped and foraged for what the Highlanders had left. Eyeballs. Tongues.
This is the core of Johne’s nightmare: to be buried beneath a chilling, oozing, rotting heap of death, overlooked, still breathing, unsure if the next face he sees will be succour or quietus or simply a stripping away of more of who he is.
At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh: neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth.
Jonet began to search among the heaps and piles, turning bodies, riffling their clothes.
“Jonet!”
Her turning uncovered new mutilations. Body parts. An ear. Dead men heaved, twitched, sat upright then sagged back.
“What are you doing, woman?”
The bodies of the Covenanters had lain on the moss for three days and the Irish and the Gaels had been thorough with their prodding pikes and stabbing dirks. No need to waste good powder. Anyone with half a chance would have dragged himself away in the first night. Some lay face down in the burn, drowned in their own thirst.
“There’s nae grain,” she said. “Naething left. What will we eat this winter? How will we pay thon papish swine his rent?”
In time, she found some coins and a bible in a pocket. A broch from an officer’s jack. A ring some teuchter over-looked.
All along the gully, others were doing the same. Stripping the dead of anything left of value. Gleanings to trade for meal and butter, chattels and the rent.
They did quite well from it. Enough to survive a hungry winter, buy seed for the next Spring. Replace the stool and pot the McPhaddens stole. Even buy linen and clothes – though some were dead men’s clothes.
They buried their neighbours in a common grave, families together and body parts matched where it could be done. The soldiers were left to rot in the gullies and on the moss. Poor ground manured with Covenanter’s blood.
Next day, Johne uncovered the plough in the shough relieved that he would not be cursed.
[1] Open the door.
[2] Food, woman. Do you have any ale? Where’s your man?
[3] She doesn’t have the Gaelic, Donald.
[4] Only oatmeal and butter, she says. No…whisky? Ale?
[5] Can you make bannocks? Bannocks?
[6] Give me the boy.
[7] What’s his name?
[8] The boy.
[9] John, Donald. I am Angus MacFadyen.
[10] My brothers. Donald and Charles.
[11] Awesome
© John Bolland 2026
Notes:
[i] Book of Job, 3:26
[ii] 1650: The proprietor, Sir James Livingston, had come into his estate in 1647. Livingstone was a Royalist and staunch. Many of the parish, including Johne’s father, Johne Forrester, were staunch Covenanters, influenced by the preaching of their minister, William Livingstone. James Livingstone pledged his castle to Charles Stewart (King Charles II ) before Stewart fled to Holland.
[iii] Book of Job 1:14-15
[iv] 1651
[v] Around 200 Irish women and children, camp-followers of Montrose’s army, had been massacred by Covenanting soldiers at Mentieth a few days earlier.
[vi] Charles Stewart
[vii] Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the losses sustained by the Laird of Kilsyth during the Civil Wars, as recorded in the Acts of Parliament of Scotland, under date 9th July, 1661.
The Estates of Parliament, now presentlie conveened by his Majestie’s speciall authoritie, haveing considered the Report underwritten, Have ordained and ordaines the same to be recorded in the books of Parliament, whereof the tenor follows We, the Earle of Callander, the Lord Cochrane, the Lord Carden, the Laird of Ricartoun, the Provosts of Ayr and Stirling, Commissioners appointed be the Lord Commissioner, his grace, and heigh court of Parliament, for reviseing and considering the accompt of the fynes and losses sustained by Sir James Levingstoun of Kilsyth, knight, dureing the trubleous tymes for his loyaltie to the King’s Majestie in maner afterspeit, Confonne to the Commission granted be the said Commissioner and Estates foresaid to us thereanent, And to report Be vertew whairof Wee haveing this day met, and the said Sir Janies haveing produced ane act of the Committee of Estates made and granted be the King’s Majestie and Committee of Estates in anno 1651, whereby commission is granted for tryeing of the said Sir James, his and his tennents, thair losses and sufferings. Lykas he did give in the particular accompt of his fynes and losses with the instructions and verificatiouns thairof, which being considered be us, Wee find that the victuall growing upon the said lands of Kilsyth, his lands of Eister and Wester Kilsyth, with the bestiall and other goods, were destroyed in anno 1645 my Lord Marques of Montrose and his op-posers, whereby the said Sir James sustained losse of fiftie thousand one hundred and seventie-sex punds. And also wee find the said lands of Eister and Wester Kilsyth in anno 1646 lay waste, at leaste, the two parte therof, wherby the said Sir James wes losser in the sume of six thousand punds Scots, and siclyk in anno 1648 his lands were quartered upon be those who were under the command of George Munro when they went from Stirleing to Ireland and took money out of the said lands as the Act of Parliament bears, the sume of one thousand seven hundred twenty-sex punds. Item, Wee find in November, 1649, the then Committee of Estates Ordained the said Sir James to pay to Sir James Stewart, then Generali Commissary of the armie, the sume of four thousand eight hundreth punds, whilk the said laird was forced to pay accordingly. Item, the arent therof from Mertymes, 1649, to Whitsunday last by past being eleven yeers and ane halff Extends to the sume of three thousand three hundredth and twelf punds. Item, Wee find that the said Laird of Kilsyth sustained great losses throw the English Armie their quartering severall tymes up the said lands of Eister and Wester Kilsyth in anno 1650, Extending to the sume of fourty two thousand threttie seven punds. As also wee find that in the said yeer, 1650, his mansion house of Kilsyth was burnt be the Usurper’s Armie with all his plenishing and victuall whilk wes put in the said house for preservation, through which he has sustained great losses to the value of Twentie-four thousand punds. Item, there wes taken from him in anno, 1651, be his Majestie’s Armie, of horse, kyne, oxen, sheep, and other goods to the value of sextein thousand four hundreth seventie-three punds. Item, thair wes eaten and destroyed the tyme forsaid be the said armie, of oats, beir, and peis, the number of four hundred and fourty aikers, estimat to fyve bolls victuall each aiker at 13 lib. 6s. 8d. per aiker, inde two thousand punds. And, farder, Wee find there wes eaten and destroyed of meidow to the said Sir James, the number of three hundreth aikers estimat to 6 lib. 13s. 4d. per aiker, inde two thousand punds. Item, that the late Usurper Oliver Cromwell did fyne the said Sir James in anpo, 1655, f°r his loyaltie and affection to the King’s Majestie in the sume of one thousand punds sterline, whilk the said Oliver, with the advice of his Councill, did mitigate and diminish to the sume of eight hundreth punds money forsaid, inde Scots money, the sume of nyne thousand sex hundreth punds, whilk sume he was forced to pay. Item, the arent thairof from the terme of Whitsunday last, being sex yeers Extends to the sume of three hundreth seventie-sex punds. And als wee find that the said Sir James had his house burnt the second time he those who wer under the command of my Lord Commissioner, his Grace, and my Lord Chancellor in his Majestie’s Service, least the same might have been planted with ane garrison be the enemy, the said Sir James and his servants being then prisoners at Edinburgh, Whairthrow and throw the losse of his plenishing he sustained the losse Extending to the sume of sex thousand sex hundreth sextie-sex punds, threttein shillings, four pennies. Whilk hail losses, suffer* ings, and fynes Wee find sufficientlie instructed and proven by Acts of Parliament, discharges, and be testificates under the hands of ministers, and diverse famous persons upon oath, and whilk hail articles of the said compt being calculate this wee find by and attour the arent therof (except the arent of two of the said articles for payed otit money for fynes), and als by and attbur his large share of burdens more generallie imposed upon the Cuntrie, and of the great losse the said Sir James and his tennents sustained by transient quarters. In regaird his said lands lys upon the roadway betwixt Edinburgh and Glasgow, all whilk losses in our opinion Wee humbly conceive ought to be recordit as losses sustained be him and his tennents in maner forsaid. And this is a true report of our procedar and opinion in the said matter as witnesse our hands at Edinburgh, the eight of July, 1661, sur. Calander, S. Ard: Stirling, Duncane Nairne, Williame Cunyghame
[viii] Book of Job 6:20-26