Dundee’s body, wrapped in a plaid, was carried to the castle, and a few days later buried in the old church of Blair.  In 1852 some bones, believed to be his, were removed from Blair to the Church of Saint Drostan in the parish of Old Deer, in Aberdeenshire; and eleven years later a window of stained glass was placed in the same church, bearing, on a brass plate in the window-sill, this inscription:  “Sacred to the memory of John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, who died in the arms of victory, and whose battle-cry was ’King James and the Church of Scotland!’”

As no stone was ever known to mark his first grave; there is, of course, ample room for the incredulous to smile over this late tribute to his memory.  But in truth the shadow of doubt broods over him in death as in life.  It is certain only that he received his death-wound on the field of battle, and in the moment of victory.  What else fell with him there was well expressed by William.  When the news from Killiecrankie came down, the King was urged at once to send a large army into the Highlands.  “It is needless,” he answered, “the war ended with Dundee’s life.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[90] See the sixth canto of “The Lady of the Lake.”

    “We’ll quell the savage mountaineer,
      As their tinchel cows the game.”

The tinchel was the name given to the circle of hunters which, gradually narrowing, hemmed the deer into a small space, where they could be easily slaughtered.

[91] Mackay complains bitterly in his Memoirs of “the unconcerned method of the Government in matters which touch them nearest as to their general safety, each being for his particular, and fixed upon his private projects, so as neither to see nor be concerned for anything else.”

[92] “When in front of Blair Castle their real destination was disclosed to them by Lord Tullibardine [the heir of Athole did not assume this style till 1695].  Instantly they rushed from their ranks, ran to the adjoining stream of Banovy, and, filling their bonnets with water, drank to the health of King James; and then, with colours flying and pipes playing, ’fifteen hundred of the men of Athole, as reputable for arms as any in the kingdom’ [Mackay’s words], put themselves under the command of the Laird of Ballechin and marched off to join Lord Dundee.”  Stewart’s “Sketches of the Highlanders of Scotland,” i. 67.  But this is not strictly true.  They joined neither Ballechin nor Dundee, but went off on their own account to the mountains to watch the issue of events.

[93] Probably Dundee wrote more confidently than he felt.  He owned that Murray might “have more to do to believe” Melfort’s assurance than James’s; but, in fact, there was too good reason to disbelieve both.  From the first letter written from Struan it appears that the despatch from James which had fallen into Hamilton’s hands was much more temperate and conciliatory than the