And now Ringan, blood flowing from a dozen gashes, was down on one knee, but still almost mechanically guarding head and body from the whirlwind final attack of the Highlander.  Sick at heart, the Lowland onlookers turned their looks aside; they hated to see such an end of a brave comrade, and they were too few to avenge him.  Suddenly, and with bent heads, they turned away from looking at the figure of the wearied Borderer, beaten down on to his knee, away from sight of the flashing claymore that was now so near to tasting their friend’s life-blood.  And then to their ears came a roar, as of the routing of some mighty bull of Bashan.  Glancing back quickly, their astonished eyes saw Rory Dhu Mhor standing rigidly erect and stiff, an expression of blank wonder on his hairy face, and the point of Ringan’s broadsword appearing out between the Highlander’s shoulders.  Then, with another mighty roar, as the sword was withdrawn, he sprang convulsively off the ground, and with a clatter fell heavily on his target, dead.  It was a spent man that he was dealing with, he had rashly thought.  Too well he knew the game; he had played it successfully so often before.  It needed but to go in now and slay.  In his over confidence the Highlander neglected for one moment to be cunning of fence, and during that moment he exposed his body.  It was enough for a swordsman so skilled as Ringan Oliver.  Exhausted as he was, like a flash his weapon leapt forward, and the great Highland champion had fought his last fight.

It was near to being a dearly bought victory.  Murder was in the hearts of the Highlanders, as for the moment they stood in savage silence, hungering for the life of their champion’s overthrower.  And Ringan was fainting from loss of blood, unable to raise himself from the trampled, muddy ground on which he had fallen.  Things indeed looked ill for him and for his friends.  And ill, no doubt, it would have fared with them, if just then it had not chanced that the certain news reached the Highlanders in Dunkeld of the death of him they called “Ian Dhu nan Cath” (Black John of the Battles), John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, slain the previous day in Killiecrankie fight.  Thus it happened that, instead of falling sword in hand on the little party of Lowlanders, the dismayed clansmen began to slip away, and Ringan’s friends succeeded in getting their sorely wounded comrade into safety.

It was some time after this, when life had become less stormy, that Ringan again took up his residence at Smailcleuchfoot.  Here he continued to live till he was quite an old man.  It was here, too, that the incident befell which gave rise to the ballad written by Mr. James Telfer early in last century.