FOOTLOOSE
The Duke of Cumberland’s men didn’t have it all their own way as they raped, pillaged and murdered their way through the Highlands and Islands after Culloden in 1746. Isolated groups of Government troops were sometimes ambushed. The “Wild Macraes” of Kintail managed to kill an English cavalry trooper in an ambush. One of the clan pipers took a fancy to the trooper’s fine leather boots but could not get them off the dead man’s feet. Rather than hang around the ambush scene wrestling to get the boots off, the piper cut off the trooper’s legs. Later the piper stopped at a local inn and was allowed to sleep in the barn. By morning he had managed to pry the feet out of the boots and left with his booty but without saying any goodbyes. When a local girl went to milk a cow in the barn all she found were the feet. She ran to the inn screaming that the cow had eaten the piper; leaving only his feet behind. The inn keeper promptly killed the cow and buried it, along with the trooper’s feet, to conceal the “crime”.
Next Week - MODEL PRISONERS