The Gaïck Catastrophe (_Mort Ghàthaig_)

On the last night of last century[94] a disastrous casualty, in which six persons lost their lives, occurred in the deer forest of Gaïck in Badenoch. The wild tract of mountain land, to which the name is given, was not formally made into a deer forest till 1814, but its loneliness made it a favourite haunt of wild game at all times. There was not a house in the large extent of near thirty square miles beyond a hut for the shelter of hunters. Captain MacPherson of Ballychroän, an officer in the army, with some friends and gillies were passing the night of the 31st December, 1800, in this hut, when an avalanche, or whirlwind, or some unusual and destructive agency came upon them, and swept before it the building and all its inmates. When people came to look for the missing hunters they found the hut levelled to the ground, and its fragments scattered far and wide. The men’s bodies were scattered over distances of half a mile from the hut; the barrels of their guns were twisted, and over all there was a deep covering of snow, with here and there a man’s hand protruding through it. The whole Highlands rang with the catastrophe, and it is still to be heard of in the Hebrides as well as in the district in which it occurred. Popular superstition constructed upon it a wild tale of diabolical agency.

Captain MacPherson was popularly known as “The Black Officer of Ballychroän” (_Ofhichier du Bailechrodhain_). He is accused of being a “dark savage” man (_dorcha doirbh_), who had forsaken his wife and children, and had rooms below his house, whence the cries of people being tortured were heard by those who passed the neighbourhood at night. About the end of 1800 he was out among the Gaïck hills with a party of hunters, and passed the night in the hut mentioned. Late at night strange noises were heard about the house, and the roof was like to be knocked in about the ears of the inmates. First came an unearthly slashing sound, and then a noise as if the roof were being violently struck with a fishing rod. The dogs cowered in terror about the men’s feet. The captain rose and went out, and one of his attendants overheard him speaking to something, or some one, that answered with the voice of a he-goat. This being reproached him with the fewness of the men he had brought with him, and the Black Officer promised to come next time with a greater number.

Of the party who went on the next hunting expedition not one returned alive. The servant who said he had heard his master speaking to the devil refused positively to be one of the party, neither threats nor promises moved him, and others followed his example. Only one of the previous party, a Macfarlane from Rannoch, a good and pious man it is said, went. It was observed that this day the officer left his watch and keys at home, a thing he had never been known to do before. Macfarlane’s body was not found on the same day with the rest. It was carried further from the hut than the searchers thought of looking, and a person who had found before the body of one lost among the hills, was got to look for his remains. There is a saying that if a person finds a body once he is more apt to find another. When the melancholy procession with the dead bodies was on the way from the forest, even the elements were not at peace, but indicated the agency that had been at work. The day became exceedingly boisterous with wind and rain, so much so, when the Black Officer’s body was foremost, that the party was unable to move on, and the order had to be changed.