prised, and, after desperate resistance and great slaughter, defeated by the Royalist forces under Colonel Livingstone on the Haughs of Cromdale (1690).
“Oh, sweet are Coila’s haughs an’ woods,”
said Robert Bums. And an old local couplet reminds us that Strathspey was famous for its rich, low-lying stretches of land, called “haughs.” “Dipple, Dundurcas, Dandaleith and Dalvey are the four bonniest haughs in the long run o’ Spey.” Not one of these, however, but honest Cromdale — which, with the ancient and adjacent parishes of Inverallan and Advie, has been held by the Grants from very early times — was the scene of the stem conflict for the supremacy of William of Orange over the tenacious Highland adherents of the Stuarts. An old Strathspey ballad — no doubt fairly reflecting the quaintly facetious sentiments of the time — thus commemorates the struggle:—
As I cam’ in by Auchendown —
A little wee bit fae the town —
Unto the Highlands I was boun’
To view the Haughs o’ Cromdale.
I met a man wi’ tartan trews,
I speir’d at him what was the news,
He said the Hielan’ army rues
The day it cam’ to Cromdale.’[1]
- ↑ Gaelic. Crom — crooked— and dail — meadow or plain. A crescent-shaped portion of the strath formed by the winding course of the Spey.
