which the Lord of the Isles had in 1475 forfeited to the Crown.

Many of the Macdonalds and their followers who escaped from the
field of battle perished in the River Conon. Flying from the close
pursuit of the victorious Mackenzies, they took the river, which
in some parts was very deep, wherever they came up to it, and were
drowned. Rushing to cross at Moy, they met an old woman - still
smarting under the insults and spoliations inflicted on her and
her neighbours by the Macdonalds on their way north - and asked her
where was the best ford on the river. "O! ghaolaich," she answered,
"is aon ath an abhuinn; ged tha i dubh, cha 'n eil i domhain," (Oh!
dear, the river is all one ford together; though it looks black,
it is not deep). In their pitiful plight, and on the strength of
this misleading information, they rushed into the water in hundreds,
and were immediately carried away by the stream, many of them
clutching at the shrubs and bushes which overhung the banks of
the river, and crying loudly for assistance. This amazon and a
number of her sex who were near at hand had meanwhile procured
their sickles, and now exerted themselves in cutting away the
bushes to which the wretched Macdonalds clung with a death grasp,
the old woman exclaiming in each case, as she applied her sickle,
"As you have taken so much already which did not belong to you,
my friend, you can take that into the bargain. The instrument
of the old woman's revenge has been for many generations, and
still is by very old people in the district, called "Cailleach na
Maigb," or the Old Wife of Moy.

The Mackenzies then proceeded to ravage the lands of Ardmeanach
and those belonging to William Munro of Fowlis - the former because
the young laird of Kilravock, whose father was governor of that