At daggers drawn

Once essential elements of every brave Highlander’s armoury, deadly dirks and sgiandubhs provided protection against foes, the elfin race and broken oaths, reveals Joe Gibbs

- Joe Gibbs

IN 1910, there appeared in Inverness a catalogue for the auction of stock from John Munro’s Old Curiosity Shop in Castle Street. Lot 377a was ‘an old dirk with ivory handle inlaid with gold’. A colourful tale is attached to this weapon. It had, so the story went, belonged to Alexander Fraser, son of Thomas, Lord Lovat, a local clan chieftain. In about 1700, Fraser had attended a wedding at Teawig, a farm that still sits on a sharp bend in the road near the village of Beauly in Inverness-shire. The property was an island of Clan Chisholm ownership amid vast Fraser landholdings. A young Miss Chisholm was to marry and a piper was engaged for the nuptials, one MacThòmais. Seeing Fraser there and fond of a tease, the piper struck up a tune that insulted his family. In response, Fraser drew his dirk and, although later claiming only to have wanted to rip the bag of the pipes, pierced the heart of MacThòmais, which lay behind it, mortally wounding him. Fraser fled to concealment in Wales, from whence one of his descendants later claimed back the Lovat lands and title. The same story was attached to Fraser’s brother John, whose descendant brought a separate, but similar, earlier action in the House of Lords.

Had Fraser heeded the old Scots saying ‘never draw your dirk when a blow will suffice’, he might have saved his family no end of trouble and expense in the centuries that ensued. Happily, at least the tale gave rise to the reel ‘Thomson wears a Dirk’.