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Weapon of deeds
Author(s): Ross Cowan
Source: Medieval Warfare , 2011, Vol. 1, No. 3, IN THIS ISSUE: The first Saracen
campaigns in Europe (2011), pp. 24-25
Published by: Karwansaray BV

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48577860

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 THE WEAPON
The two-handed Scottish Highland Sword
Weapon of deeds
At the close of the fifteenth century, the two-handed sword
became the weapon of choice for Scottish fighting men, particu-
larly the chiefs and gentlemen of the Highland clans.
© Ross Cowan
By Ross Cowan
The archetypal Highland two-handed
sword with quatrefoil quillons that
is popularly, but erroneously, known
as the ‘claymore’, makes its earliest
appearance on a sculpted grave-slab
in the chapel of Kirkapol on Tiree. It is
dated 1495. The sword debuts soon
after in the annals of Highland
warfare. In Ross in 1501, a
small band led by Hector
Roy MacKenzie of Gairloch
defeated a much larger force com-
manded by Sir William Munro of
Foulis. A number of Munro’s men
were trapped and massacred:
Most of Hector’s men being
armed with axes and two-
handed swords, they cut off in
that little space so many heads
as tumbling down to the well,
there were counted 19 heads
in it, whence to this day it is
named Tober nan Ceann, or
the Fountain of Heads.
History of the Family
MacKenzie 486
It has been suggested that the author
of this history, Sir George MacKenzie,
Earl of Cromartie (d. 1714), confused
a minor skirmish in the MacKenzie-
Munro feud with the battle of
Drumchatt (1497), when the two clans
actually fought together against the
MacDonalds. However, the Earl was
probably correct in attributing two-
handed swords to the MacKenzie gentle-
24 Medieval Warfare I-3
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Medieval Warfare nr3 2011.indd 24
Early sixteenth century two-handed sword
of Highland-type in the National Museum
of Scotland, Edinburgh. The sword’s total
length is 148.6 cm; the blade is 111.8 cm long.
Weighing 2.6 kg, it is one of the heavier exam-
ples of the type.
men of that era. The swords used by the
MacKenzies were presumably of the dis-
tinctive Highland-type.
Two-handed swords of Lowland
Scottish and Continental pat-
terns were not unknown in
the Highlands. These weap-
o n s were usually longer and heavier
than the Highland-type. However, some
two-handers were surprisingly short.
Kenneth MacKenzie, chanter of Ross,
carried a two-handed sword that the
Earl of Cromartie merrily calls the ‘pen
knife’. It was short enough to conceal
beneath a long robe, and the chanter
would produce the weapon to menace
his unfortunate bishop (History of the
Family MacKenzie 495).
Flodden
The next notable reference to two-handed
swords is at the battle of Flodden (1513).
The only Scottish success in the other-
wise disastrous conflict was achieved by
“the Earl of Huntly’s Highland men, [who]
with their bows and two-handed swords
wrought so manfully that they defeated
the Englishmen without any slaughter on
their side” (Pitscottie, Historie I, 270).
On account of its success against the
English right, Huntly’s division, on the left
of the Scottish army, was able to retreat in
good order. The Scottish centre, however,
was overwhelmed and James IV, King of
Scots, fell fighting. The Scottish right,
composed of more Highland levies, suf-
fered a similar fate. Archibald Campbell,
Earl of Argyll, was slain, as was his impor-
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tant kinsman Sir Duncan Campbell of
Glenorchy.
A portrait of Sir Duncan in The Black
Book of Taymouth, the early seventeenth
century family history of the Glenorchy
Campbells, shows him in plate armour
and holding a two-handed sword. This is
probably not an accurate representation
of Sir Duncan’s sword; it was presumably
lost on the battlefield. But it is notable
that the laird who commissioned the illus-
tration wanted his ancestor to be armed
with a two-hander, probably because of
the hierarchical and heroic associations
of the weapon in Highland society. It was
a weapon of deeds. Campbell tradition
venerated lairds like Ronald Campbell of
Barrichbeyan who, in 1602, avenged his
brother’s murder by slaying sixteen Shaws
with his two-handed sword (MS History of
Craignish 242-3).
Another Highland chief who fought in
Argyll’s division at Flodden, but somehow
© Ross Cowan
Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy with his
two-handed sword, as imagined by an early
seventeenth century artist. Sir Duncan was
one of the many lords slaughtered at Flodden
(1513), but Highlanders on the left wing of
the Scottish army cut their way clear with
two-handed swords. After The Black Book of
Taymouth.
08-09-2011 15:12:11

© Ross Cowan
The grave-slab of John MacIan of Ardna-
murchan. Both figures may represent John.
The figure in plate armour is armed with a
sword and buckler. The other warrior grips
a two-handed sword with a notably narrow
blade, perhaps a rare thrusting sword. After
J. Drummond, Sculptured Monuments in Iona
(1881).
managed to escape the slaughter, was
John MacIan of Ardnamurchan. MacIan
was eventually killed in 1518, in a bloody
encounter in Morvern with Sir Alexander
MacDonald of Lochalsh, pretender to the
Lordship of the Isles. MacIan was buried
on Iona and his grave-slab shows two fig-
ures side by side, one in a harness of plate
armour and holding a very small buck-
ler and a broad-bladed sword. The other
figure is in traditional Highland armour,
consisting of an aketon, mail pissane,
bascinet, and is grasping a two-handed
sword. On Drummond’s nineteenth centu-
ry sketch of the slab, the sword appears to
have a very narrow blade. This is notable
because actual surviving ‘claymores’, and
the two-handed swords depicted on other
175.107.220.47 on Mon, 12 Oct 2020 15:44:39 UTC
Medieval Warfare nr3 2011.indd 25
Highland funerary monuments, are cut-
ting weapons with relatively broad blades
(c. 5 cm wide), which taper only slightly to
rounded points. If the thin bladed sword is
a reasonably accurate depiction, it may be
a rare example of an estoc-type thrusting
sword. Highlanders normally resorted to
their long dirks when they wished to stab
opponents.
It has been suggested that the figure
in plate armour is John MacIan, and the
traditionally armoured figure represents
his father or some other notable forebear.
However, the aketon and pissane were
still employed in the seventeenth century,
and it may be that both figures portray
John: one in his guise as the agent of the
Scottish crown in the West Highlands, and
the other as a Gaelic chief.
Slaughter Swords
To the English, who had much experience
with fighting MacDonalds and Highland
‘redshank’ mercenaries in Ireland, the
Highland two-hander was the ‘slaughter
sword’. A graphic description of com-
bat in the era of the slaughter sword is
preserved in the manuscript history of
the Clan Fraser. In 1544, the Frasers and
MacDonalds of Clanranald met on the
shore of Loch Lochy:
There followed a hot engagement,
fought more like lions than men,
with slashes and strokes, their
arms two-handed swords and
Danish axes, front to front, forc-
ing upon each other, so fierce and
forward that they seemed to fell
one another like trees falling in
a wood, cutting and consuming
down each other till some room at
last was made. (…) Such as bore
armour, head pieces and coats of
mail, knocked down their opposites
without resistance like tender twigs
of shrubs, till at last they came
to close combating, and, fighting
hand to fist, hardly was any found
without his mate and marrow to
encounter him. Many were seen to
fall, none found to flee; all fought
for victory. (...) At length, in their
heat and fury they ran two and
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THE WEAPON
two into the loch, grappling like
wrestlers, and stabbed one another
with their dirks.
Chronicles of the Frasers 136
The Fraser chronicler goes on to note that
even the wounded lying on the ground
swung their swords at the legs of enemy
clansmen.
Notable surviving Highland-type
two-handed swords in the collections of
Glasgow Museums, the National Museum
of Scotland, and the British Museum, are
well-balanced and vary in weight from
c. 1.8 kg to 2.6 kg. At the battle of Glen
Livet (1594), some Highlanders appear to
have fought with two-handed swords and
targes, suggesting that the sword could
be used with one hand (Spottiswoode
Miscellany I, 264). On an early seventeenth
century grave-slab in the Old Kirk of
Weem, a Campbell of Murthlie is depicted
with a ‘claymore’ in one hand, and a targe
in the other. So much, then, for the popu-
lar notion that two-handed swords were
unwieldy and cumbersome. •
Dr. Ross Cowan is a Roman military
specialist, but a spell as a volunteer
in the European arms and armour
collection of Glasgow Museums
awakened an interest in medieval
and early modern warfare. He has a
particular interest in the organisation,
tactics and arms and armour of the
retinues of Highland lairds in the
sixteenth century. Special thanks
goes to Dr. David H. Caldwell and
Ralph Moffat.
Further reading:
The Campbell grave-slab in the Old
Kirk of Weem can be viewed on the
Canmore database (www.rcahms.
gov.uk). A modern photo of John
MacIan’s slab, now in the Iona Abbey
Museum, is on Canmore and can be
compared with Drummond’s sketch.
In the photo, it is difficult to dis-
tinguish the sword’s blade from the
folds of the aketon. For MacIan, and
the Kirkapol memorial, see also: K.
Steer & J. Bannerman, Late Medieval
Monumental Sculpture in the West
Highlands (1977).
Medieval Warfare I-3 25
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