Haunted Battlefields: The Ghosts of Culloden

On the road from Uig to Portree, there is a well. Used regularly by the locals, there were a few people around when the phantom appeared.

Blood-soaked and desperate, it looked around them with a stare that had peered into the abyss. Pure horror was there, in his expression, and that was what they remembered most, the thing that haunted their nightmares.  

"Defeat!"  He gushed, shock tinging his tone. "Defeat! Defeat!"  The last was lost in a wail of desolate anguish. There was no hope left in his aspect. Nothing but devastation and terror.

Then he vanished. Simply faded from view.  

Stunned beyond measure themselves, the group of witnesses had barely time to recover their wits from the apparition, before there were more.  The distant sound of drummers, coming rapidly near, started first. Then the swords, clashing, steel on steel. One moment far away, the next it was on top of them. Like a ghostly army passing through, rushing on their way to who knew where.

Finally it was over and silence stung the day.  "What was it?"  Somebody asked. "What just happened?" But he knew. They all knew. They were just waiting for someone to articulate it; say it out loud to make it real.

"It was an omen."  Came the shaken voice of one of his companions; and he elicited no dissent.

The next day, they knew what the omen had been about.  The next day was Culloden.

It's said to be bad luck to see the Scree.  Death will surely follow.  It comes as darkness; a great, black, screaming bird, too big to be anything natural to these shores. 

That day, it rose up from the heather, its mighty wings beating slowly as it surveyed the three men on the moors.  George Murray saw it, frozen to the spot, knowing what he saw.  The sheer size of it, larger than anything his imagination could supply.  It blocked out the evening sky.  It saw them in blackness and shadow.

Then it was off, flying once over Drummossie Moor, its low caw shrieking growing wildly as it soared; and was gone.  Disappeared in mid-air, before their very eyes.

This was also the eve of Culloden.

Nor has the Great Scree truly gone away.  It was last seen by a tourist on the same battlefield in July 2005. It's not recorded what happened next.

She must be the only avian creature making a sound there, because the birds don't sing. They nest in the heather and the trees; they fly over the moor and the graves.  But they never make any noise, but the whisper of their wings in the wind.

People still go to St Mary's Well, to do the ritual and tie the cloutie tight.

Everyone knows the score. You pass around the well head, three complete circles, then crouch to drink the water deep, cupped in your bowled hands. Then you take the rag (a strip of your own clothing for protection; that of an ailing loved one for healing), and you tie it to the tree.

It only works on May Eve.  Beltane.  Two weeks too late for the clansmen on Culloden, yet they still come. Too many have seen them to doubt that they come.

St Mary once lived in Culloden Woods, doing her rounds with her bucket in hand. Overlooking the moor, with her well water to cure all ills. She healed the sick. She made them well; and she has to be there still, rendering holiness to her Well in the Woods.

Yet it wasn't always named after her.  Tobar n’Oige was its ancient name.  Well of Youth, in Scots Gaelic; but sounding too much like Tír na nÓg, the place of the dead, the Island of the Young.  Or was that after the battle, when the connection was made?  The battle which took place just through the trees beyond.

St Mary has it now.  Mary - not the famous Mother of God - to heal the sick, protect the weak and shelter the endangered. 

The ghosts of Culloden Battlefield still come to seek the protection of Mhairie.  They encircle the well three times, but cannot drink the water and cannot tie the cloutie on the tree.  But they try. They try; and people see them, but cannot help them. And nor can Mhairie and her blue well in the woods.

Every April 16th, the locals tense, knowing what they will hear.  Someone in the vicinity will discern the yells, and weapons clashing; the drummers beating a tattoo, until they suddenly stop.

And somehow that's worse.  When it stops.  When it's over.

It's said that every year, without fail, the battle happens again upon Drummossie Moor.  For the most part it's sounds, a clairaudient cacophony filling the air.  But then there's the wandering highlander too.

Nobody knows who he is.  He seems lost, heading shell-shocked, stopping, staring, moving on a step, then stopping again.  There's never anyone close enough to speak with him. They just watch his dazed progress from a distance. 

Then, as they draw near, he's gone.  That's April 16th too.  Every year.

One thing that most of the psychics who've visited there (and made their feelings known) all agree upon is that the ghosts aren't really there.

Oh!  They're real enough to be seen and heard, but there's nothing sentient about the spirits on Drummossie Moor.  It's residual energy, replaying events, as a haunting.

So much emotion was felt on the moor that day, and during the endless, horrific night which followed.  These were men who knew that the cost of losing was everything. Not just for themselves, but for their families, their clan, their language, their culture, their history and their land.

There were horrors enough in the heat of battle.  Highlanders bogged down in the mud, the momentum of their charge expended before they even got close.  The English employed a new musket manoeuvre, with all the effect of a modern day machine gun.  The group of clansmen, who fled for shelter in a barn, only for the English to burn it down; and them still trapped inside.

There were rules in battle, which didn't apply that day.  At the end of the fighting, all should be allowed to tend their sick and wounded in safety.  The surviving Scots could not. The English shot them down.

So men lay throughout the night, knowing the worst, fearing the future, in the most dreadful pain. Then came the dawn and the improbably slow waiting for death to come at the end of a bayonet.

Against all precedent and war etiquette, the English fanned out across the moor and stabbed to death any Highlander still alive.  Any who hadn't perished in that cold April night.  And those further up could see the English coming. They knew what they were doing and they could not move away.

Too injured to move away.

It's the high emotion of this, neurons flashing with hopeless adrenaline, trapped forever in that terrible atmosphere, which haunts Drummossie Moor.  Those with the right kind of eyes still see them there, awaiting an English bayonet and the loss of it all.

But there's absolutely nothing to be done to help them. They are not there. Except maybe at St Mary's Well.