In the days before universal communication, the battle for Scottish freedom was principally played out across the central belt of Scotland. Despite the basic lines of communication being stretched, many of the far-flung Scottish Clans supported Bruce in his long struggle.
Among the hard-fighting Highlanders added to the Scottish ranks by Christina McRuarie of Garmoran, were pipers, sent to stir the blood of the fighting Scots and pour dread into the enemy.
In the days of witches and other superstitions, who can imagine what the English foot soldiers thought when they heard the chorus of banshees above the din of battle?
A direct descendant of Somerled, King of the Hebrides, Christina first assisted Bruce by giving him shelter in the Islands when he was a fugitive and hunted by the forces of Edward I, King of England. Speculation suggests that when Robert mounted a counter offensive following Edward's demise, he received critical assistance from ‘an unnamed kinswoman,’ a woman who could be identical to Christina herself.
In Nigel Tranter’s trilogy ‘the Bruce’, during the time of Bruce’s enforced exile to the Isles, he and Christina became lovers. How much of an irony then, that Christina took the King’s wife Elizabeth de Burgh under her protection in one of his many attempts to keep her safe from his enemies.
