THE LOCHABER AXE. 241 



" Jeddart staff " could be had to-day in its proper locality ? "We 

 recollect that during Her Majesty's first visit to Scotland in 1842, 

 when she was received by such a splendid gathering of the Clans 

 at Dunkeld, there was a company of a hundred men, commanded 

 by the Honourable Captain James Murray, brother of Lord Glen- 

 lyon, the biggest men that could be got in Athole and the surround- 

 ing districts, all armed with Lochaber axes, and a very fine sight 

 they were as they poised and swung about their ponderous and 

 terrible weapons. We were then but a boy at school, just entering 

 upon our teens, but the appearance of these kilted giants, with 

 their dreadful battle-axes, is as fresh and vivid as if, since that 

 bright and beautiful September noon, hardly thirty days had 

 elapsed, instead of upwards of thirty years. We doubt, however, 

 if the Lochaber axe, so called, as seen at Dunkeld on the occasion 

 referred to, and as usually shown in our collections of weapons, is 

 at all a true representative of the ancient arm so formidable in 

 many a dour conflict in the hands of the Camerons, Macmartins, 

 Macmillans, and Macphees of Lochielside, Glenarkaig, and Glen- 

 lochy, and of the Macdonalds of the Braes, and Mackenzies of 

 Lochlevenside. The weapon as now shown is decidedly too big, 

 too ponderous and unwieldy ever to have been used in actual fight. 

 Only a Clan Samson or Clan Goliath, and all of them of ancestral 

 stature and strength, could hope to wield such an arm in the heat 

 and hurry of conflict with anything like dexterity and ease. Like 

 the immense two-handed " Wallace " style of sword that is sometimes 

 shown to you as having been the favourite weapon of some cele- 

 brated warrior of the middle ages and subsequent centuries, but 

 which it is simply impossible that any mere man could ever have 

 wielded with effect in actual fight, the modern Lochaber axe is too 

 gigantic for use, and must have been manufactured, a big pattern 

 of a lesser weapon, merely for parade and show. That a weapon of 

 the kind, however, once existed, and was a favourite arm with the 



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