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Jamie Scarlett, 2002
I do not usually indulge in flights of historical fancy, but the other day somebody asked me if I knew exactly where the Rout of Moy took place and so set me thinking.
Everybody in Strathdearn knows, or should know, the story of the Rout, how Lord Loudoun got word that the Prince was at Moy Hall and set off from Inverness to capture him, how old Lady Mackintosh got to hear of it and sent a boy to warn her daughter-in-law, and how the Moy blacksmith and four others so frightened 1200 soldiers that they did not stop running until they got to Ross- shire.
But where did it happen? The Inverness Field Club put up an information board in the lay-by at Aultmaslanach, but that is only a general location and contemporary reports are far from precise. The best reports are in Bishop Forbes’ manuscript, which was published by the Scottish History Society in 1895 (and reprinted in 1975). There are only two accounts and they differ in some particulars, which is all to the good, for too many identical reports usually only means that several authors have copied from each other inventing what they did not know and so concealing the truth.
So let us set the scene. The Military Road left Invemess by way of Hilton, Castle Heather (Castle Leather or, more correctl, leitir, on the slope of a hill), Milton of Leys and crossed the Nairn at Faillie; thence by Scatraig, Auchbain and Mid Lairgs, to follow roughly the line of the A9 but on the far side of Aultnaslanach and past Lynemore and Lynebeg to a point near Moy School and then to Dalmagarry. After that itis not very clear. From Mo Dhachaidh on the Tomatin road it climbs over the erstwhile Tomatin golf course, past Heights of Tomatin and down to Raigbeg where it crossed the River Findhorn. There are traces near Invereen an old track which Angus Dunbar called the Old Edinburgh Road; it does not fit easily into the layout but I would hesitate to call Angus’ knowledge in question. However it may have been, there was a track that led back towards Inverness over Tom-an-Inbhir (The hill of the confluence, the spur jutting out between the Free and the Fiuntach Burns), crossed the Fiuntach, passed Tullochchlury, Loch Moy and Moy Hall, and joined what is now the B9154 at the entrance to Brian MacGregor’s peat workings; there was an inn – the house is still there – close to Moy Station and a smithy, too, so there would have been a road of some kind, probably following the present line past Craggie and Daviot to reach Inverness from the East, along the line of the Old Perth Road. I have been unable to discover just where the soldiers started from. Close by the harbour, with ships handy to transport and victual them would have been a good place to camp, but they may have started from nearer the present Castle; it does not matter a lot. The Dowager Lady Mackintosh was living in Castie Street.
There is a slight puzzle about both of the accounts; the messenger Lachlan Mackintosh, a boy of about fifteen, had to conceal himself in a ditch while the troops passed and he should surely have either been ahead of them, or able to wait until they had gone before setting out. I think he probably slipped out the back way and along the river bank, climbed Castle Hill and, when the troops had passed, crossed their path and took the road by Daviot and Craggie, skirting the west side of Meall Mér just below the summit, so as to see without being seen, and joining the back route to Moy Hall. Beinn a’ Bheurlaich (the pinnacle of the English language) would be a place from which he could have heard, and probably seen, the troops – and heard their officers conversing in English.
It is apparent that young Lachlan’s arrival at Moy Hall, with the news that the enemy was only “five quarters of a mile away”, caused a bit of a stir. An eye witness reports the Prince walking about with his bonnet on top of his night cap and with his shoes down at heel (i.e., not properly on and not buckled) and young Lady Mackintosh dashing around in her petticoat. However, young as she was, Colonel Anne was a good general and she shoo’d His Royal Highness and his bodyguard away to the other end of Loch Moy, hid the evidence of his presence and generally restored calm.
Meanwhile, what was happening to the blacksmith Fraser and his merry men? They were out on the moor, “some distance from Moy towards Inverness” and, since Fraser’s smithy was on the road at Moy, we may assume that they would have set out from there. No action was expected and common sense would dictate that they would find themselves an advance guard-post where they could take it in turns to watch and rest. Aultnaslanach farmhouse would have filled the bill admirably and it is my guess that the engagement took place somewhere between there and the ford at The Living Man’s Grave. It is flat ground on which peat was stacked in recent times and in mist – one account speaks of a thunderstorm — troops emerging from between the hill would have been well situated for a real ambush.
Nothing more is heard of young Lachlan; he arrived at Moy Hall in “a top sweat”, as you or I might if we had run from Inverness to Moy, and one hopes that when he got his breath back he at least got a good supper and a pat on the back from his Prince.