Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford

colouring it in with small, rather dry brushes. It was careful work.
    When he saw Albert approaching he was very much embarrassed, knowing quite well the attitude of the professional artist to the painstaking amateur; so, to cover his own confusion and to save Albert from feeling obliged to make a polite criticism of his work, he began to talk very fast about the house and its history.
    ‘I love this part of the house, you know. That tower, and of course, the dungeons, were all that escaped the Great Fire in 1850. It is immensely old, probably eleventh century, and the walls are so thick that Lady Craigdalloch has been able to put two water-closets in the thickness alone.’
    ‘How jolly for her!’ said Albert, feeling that some remark was called for.
    ‘Yes, very. Of course you know the history attaching to that tower?’
    ‘No; do tell us, Mr Buggins. I was thinking that there must be some legends connected with the castle.’
    Jane and Albert sat down on the grass, and Mr Buggins, clearing his throat, began his story.
    ‘One of the Thanes of Dalloch,’ he said, ‘as they were then called, had a very beautiful daughter, the Lady Muscatel. Her apartment was in that tower, where she would sit all day spinning. At night, when the moon was full, she would often lean out of her window and gaze at it, and one night she was doing so when she heard from beneath her a faint noise of singing. Looking down, she beheld the handsome features of a young man of high degree, who told her that he had lost his way while out hunting.
    ‘ “Alas!” she said, “my father and brothers are from home, and I dare not open to you in their absence.”
    ‘He told her that he would not dream of trespassing on her hospitality and retired, fortified by a bottle of wine which she lowered to him in a basket.
    ‘The next night he came again, and the next, and soon they were passionately in love with each other. But little did the unfortunate Muscatel realize that her lover was the only son of Thane McBane, head of a clan which her father was even then planning to exterminate. The warlike preparations for this raid which were going forward in the castle left the Lady Muscatel more and more to her own devices, so that one day she was able to leave her tower and go with Ronnie McBane to the nearest priest, who married them. Even so they dared not fly, but thought it better to wait until they should hear of a ship bound for France. Poor children! They knew full well that both their fathers would see them dead sooner than married (for Ronnie had by now divulged his fearful secret).
    ‘At last Dalloch’s preparations were completed and he and hismen sallied forth, armed to the teeth, to wipe out the McBanes. The battle was a fearful one, but the conclusion was foregone. The unfortunate McBanes, taken unawares and overwhelmed by numbers, fought with the courage of desperation. One by one they fell, but each one that died accounted for three or four of the Dallochs. Ronnie McBane was the last to succumb, and when he did so, bleeding from forty desperate wounds, it was with the knowledge that no fewer than thirty-two of his enemies, slain by his own hand, had preceded him. It was one of the bloodiest fights in the history of the clans.
    ‘That evening the Lady Muscatel heard sounds of merrymaking in the great hall, where her father and the wild clansmen were celebrating their victory with wine and song. She went down to see what was happening and the first thing that met her eyes was Ronnie’s head, horribly mutilated, on a pike. The shock proved too much for her reason and she soon became insane, wandering about the house and crying for her lost love. When her child was born neither she nor it survived many days.
    ‘They say that at the full moon she can still be heard, wailing, wailing; and some even declare that they have seen her wan form, carrying the head of her lover.
    ‘But surely you have heard the
Lament of the Lady Muscatel
? No? It is