Series 1 > Grameid: an heroic poem descriptive of the campaign of Viscount Dundee in 1689, and other pieces

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PANURGI PHILOCABALLI [290-303
Arthurique fretum, turritaque culmina Nessi
Apparent longe, et caput inter nubila j actant.
Fama erat ingentes pro Rege instare phalanges
Monticolum, medios passimque errare per agros,
Agmina picta croco, Nessi hand segniter urbis
Ad portas mere, atque urbem obsidione tenere.
Gnaviter ergo premit ferrata calce citatos
Corripedes, levibusque immittit lora caballis.
Tandem in conspectu atque ipsis sub moenibus urbis
Constitit, atque oculis circumspicit agmina laetis.
Olli inter turmas equitum clamore frementes
Obvius occurrit Donaldi filius audax,
Quodlibet in facinus spoliorum impulsus amore,
Kapochus, et chlamyde et clypeo conspectus ahenis
of the unconquered Stuart,1 the yellow shore of Ross, the Firth of
Arthur,2 and the cloud-capped towers of Inverness.
Now there came intelligence that great bodies of mountaineers,
standing for the King, arrayed in saffron,3 were pressing forward
from all sides, and hurrying to the gates of Inverness, and were
even holding it in siege. Quickly Dundee gives the rein and
applies the spur. He stopped at length in sight of the town, and
under its very walls, and beheld, with glad eyes, the bands
gathered on every side. To meet him advances, amid the cheer¬
ing troopers, the bold Macdonald of Keppoch,4 a man whom
1 Castle Stuart, a house of the Earls of Murray. In 1762 Bp. Forbes says it
was uninhabited and going to ruin. In 1665 a correspondent of the Laird of
Cawdor tells him that Lord and Lady Duffus are at Castle Stewart, and they
are all good company.
2 * Arthuri fretum.’ The parish of Ardersier bounds on the south that part
of the Moray Firth lying between Fort George and Kessock Ferry, and gave it
the name of Firth of Arderseir. Arderseir was corrupted into Arthursire, and
appears in deeds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in that form.
Arthur was naturally suggested by this form of the word, and, when latinised,
the Firth would become ‘ Arthuri fretum.’ The learned author of Celtic Scotland
has supplied this explanation. The oldest form of the name was Ardrosser.
3 ‘ Agmina picta croco,’ alluding to the saffron dye with which the shirts of
the Highlanders were coloured. Camden says that the words of Sidonius,
describing a Goth, exactly described the Highlanders of his time: ‘ they shine
with yellow.’ See Preface.
4 It would seem from Lochiel’s Memoirs that Dundee had sent an express
from Gordon Castle to Lochiel informing him of the situation, and that, after
consultation with neighbouring chiefs, a detachment of 800 men, under Macdonald
of Keppoch, was sent to conduct Dundee into Lochaber. Keppoch was at feud