Robert Campbell of Glen Lyon

In 2006, a succession of visitors to Scotland's National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, reported sudden bouts of nausea and dizziness. Assistants noticed that the attacks all occurred in the vicinity of David Scougall's portrait of Robert Campbell, fifth Laird of Glenlyon*, best remembered as the captain of the regiment responsible for the slaughter at Glencoe. The suspicion that some previously unsuspected power inherent within the canvas had caused the spate of illnesses was compounded by the insistence of one stricken tourist that Campbell's ashen features had subsequently appeared at her bedside. A delegation from the Ghost Society's Verification Department, excitedly pronounced the area "haunted"**, most probably by the guilty spirit of the infamous laird. "He feels genuinely misunderstood," said Valerie Cuthbert, failing to explain how he thought associating himself with sudden illness might repair his damaged reputation. "He wants people to realise that he wasn't responsible for what happened at Glencoe."

Cuthbert is partially correct: a Captain of Foot on a salary of eight shillings a day, Campbell would doubtless argue that he was merely following orders issued far from the desolate glen, most likely in London. One can only admire the cynical genius by which responsibility was deflected onto such a plausible cat's paw as Campbell. The grandson of Mad Colin, a brain damaged psychopath who once hanged thirty-six Macdonald raiders, his youth was marred by the sporadic terror of retribution. In 1645, the MacDonalds of Glencoe, accompanied by MacNabs and MacGregors, were responsible for a murderous raid into the Campbell heartland of Breadalbane. The next year, they repeated their depredations, taking advantage of a wedding at which the most prominent Campbells and their allies had drunk themselves into a state of near incapacity. This, co-incidentally, was the condition in which Robert spent much of his adult life.

Typical of dissolute young men, shocked by the sudden realisation of middle-age, Campbell was fifty before he married. The next decade was punctuated by a succession of ignominies, each providing a red flag en route to the culminative horror at Glencoe. Having squandered his inheritance, he was compelled to lease Glen Lyon's fir woods to a company of lowland merchants. Prompted, perhaps, by the chastening spirits of his ancestors, he subsequently raided his tenants' mills, menacing their employees and stealing their equipment. Threatened with Letters of Fire and Sword, he was compelled to sign a bond, effectively ceding the management of his affairs to the Earls of Argyll and Caithness. The death of Argyll five years later released him from his obligation and he resumed his demented accumulation of debt, selling his family's assets until only Chesthill remained. This property, inherited from his wife, was raided by MacDonalds returning to Glencoe from the Jacobite triumph at Killiecrankie. In desperation, Campbell was reduced to reiving cattle from Strathfillan and, finally, accepting a commission in the regiment of the Argyll Regiment. At sixty years old, then, the Laird of Glen Lyon became a mere captain of Foot. His debasement was almost complete.

*Campbell stares self-consciously from Scougall's portrait as if anticipating the judgement of posterity. The artist does him few favours: the golden curls cascading on either side of his face create a sinister contrast to the singular irregularity of its features. The prissily compressed lips and flushed cheeks combine to indicate weakness, disippation and a capacity for cruelty. Even his dark armour creates the impression of some scuttling insect. Decades before Glencoe, Scougall sensed the imminence of Campbell's eternal disgrace.

** Museum assistants have suggested that the phenomena may have less to do with Campbell's ghost than chemicals used in a recent refurbishment.