Trek led to new insight on Fighting Mac
A WRITER who climbed a hill as a curious schoolboy to check out a monument to one of Ross-shire’s most famous sons is set to launch a book on the military hero in Dingwall some 65 years after that first encounter.
The life and times of Sir Hector Macdonald have inspired a number of books on the martial career and tragic death of the Black Isle crofter’s son who was born in 1853 and rose through the army ranks from a teenaged private to the heady heights of major general.
Knighted for his services in the Second Boer War, the man nicknamed Fighting Mac died in 1903 in a Paris hotel at his own hand in controversial circumstances.
Dingwall author Ewan McVicar, whose book, Hector the Hero of the North will be launched in the town this weekend, first became aware of Macdonald while "trudging home from Dingwall Academy 65 years ago and looking up at Mitchell Hill", where a 100ft tower to commemorate the soldier’s life was erected in 1907.
He decided to climb up and look at the tower, pausing to admire the old cannons and puzzle over the brief message that the tower was a national monument. He said he then thought no more of the matter until last year when he found himself wanting to know more, which ultimately led to him writing the book.
He said: "I had been idly thinking about a favourite traditional tune called Hector The Hero. Having always assumed it was in praise of Hector of Troy. I was astonished to learn it was in fact a coronach, a lament, composed in 1902 by famous fiddler J Scott Skinner for Hector Macdonald of Mulbuie, made ‘for immediate publication’ just two days after Hector shot himself in a Paris hotel. I thought it was high time I learned more about him."
Local bookseller Bill Anderson lent Ewan several biographical books about Hector. These concentrated on his martial career and tragic death, but Ewan’s interest was caught by references to his crofter birth and his triumphal tour of the North after he had won fame at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan.
Most of the accounts finished with a discussion of his death, a few mentioned the Mitchell Hill tower, and one recounted strange tales of Hector not dying, but subsequently being recognised serving in foreign armies in Manchuria, Russia and Japan.
Ewan began to wonder and to learn about how the monument was built. Reading further, he learned that another monument stands at Hector’s Mulbuie birthplace, a telescope-shaped tower across the road from the school he attended. The inscription there details all Hector’s military career, and was "erected by the friends of his youth".
Pondering who were these neighbours, Ewan delved into online archives "and learned about the landowners who helped themselves to the common land, the Commonty of Mulbuie, then planted evicted crofters from Strathconon and other glens on the wild scrub land to reclaim it – and on occasion to evict them again when they had tamed the land and sell it on to farmers with money".
