Battle of Cromdale
The ballad gets almost everything wrong. The Haughs of Cromdale celebrates a great Jacobite victory led by Montrose over twenty thousand of Cromwell's men, complete with Highland blows and fleeing Roundheads. In reality, the Battle of Cromdale was a Jacobite defeat, Montrose had been dead for forty years, and Cromwell had been in his grave for thirty-two. The poet James Hogg, who included the song in his Jacobite Reliques, called it 'the worst specimen of the truth of Scottish song that is to be met with.' He suspected it was two different ballads -- one about an earlier victory, one about the 1690 disaster -- stitched together as propaganda. The battlefield, on a hillside near the village of Cromdale in Strathspey, tells a more sober story.
An Army Running Out of Reasons
After the Jacobite victory at Killiecrankie in 1689 and the costly stalemate at the Battle of Dunkeld, the Highland clans had returned home in low spirits. Their charismatic commander, Viscount Dundee, was dead. Sir Ewen Cameron assumed control of the remnant, and the chiefs wrote to the exiled King James in Ireland, begging for aid. James was preoccupied with his own war and sent what he could: clothing, arms, ammunition, and provisions, along with Major-General Thomas Buchan to take command. Buchan arrived to find a movement losing momentum. Some clans proposed to submit to the government. Sir Ewen argued for continuing the fight. The compromise was characteristically Highland: they would keep fighting, but not until the spring planting was finished. War could wait for the harvest.
A General Who Would Not Listen
Buchan advanced through Badenoch with 1,200 men, intending to march down Speyside into the Duke of Gordon's territory to gather reinforcements. Desertion whittled his force to 800. His Scottish officers warned him not to advance past Coulnakyle, near modern Nethybridge, but Buchan ignored them and pushed on to Cromdale. He chose to camp in view of Freuchie Castle, seat of Clan Grant, hoping that a show of Jacobite strength would win Grant support. His officers warned him of the danger. He encamped anyway. The gesture backfired: the Grants were not impressed, and the government garrison at Inverness was paying attention.
Cavalry Across the Spey
Sir Thomas Livingstone, commander of the Inverness garrison, moved fast. Accompanied by local Grant guides who knew every ford, his larger government force approached Cromdale from the opposite bank of the Spey. When the Jacobites saw them coming, they began to retreat. Livingstone's cavalry crossed the river and intercepted the retreating Highlanders at the foot of the hill of Cromdale. The Jacobites made a brief stand, but they were outnumbered, outpositioned, and caught in the open. Then a thick fog rolled down the mountainside and enveloped both armies. Livingstone was forced to halt his pursuit. When the fog lifted, the battle was over. Four hundred Jacobites had been killed or captured. Livingstone's casualties were reported as somewhere between none and a hundred -- accounts varied depending on who was telling the story.
The Pursuit to Loch an Eilein
About a hundred men who had separated from the main Jacobite force crossed the Spey the following day. Pursued by Livingstone's troops, they were overtaken and dispersed on the moor of Granish near Aviemore, where some were killed. The survivors attempted to seize the island castle of Loch an Eilein but were repelled by the proprietor and his tenants. The defeat at Cromdale effectively ended the 1689 Jacobite rebellion in Scotland. The battlefield is now included in the Inventory of Historic Battlefields in Scotland. The village of Cromdale sits quietly on the banks of the Spey, near what is now Grantown-on-Spey. There is no monument to match the ballad's boasting. The Haughs of Cromdale endures as a folk song, its cheerful inaccuracy serving as a reminder that the stories people choose to tell are not always the ones that actually happened.
From the Air
Located at 57.33N, 3.49W near the village of Cromdale in Strathspey. The battlefield is on a hillside above the River Spey, included in Scotland's Inventory of Historic Battlefields. Inverness Airport (EGPE) is approximately 25 miles northwest. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 ft AGL. Grantown-on-Spey is visible nearby, and the Spey valley stretches in both directions.