The Black Colonel — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Story from the Hills

The narrative voice is that of a man who has gathered his material from 'scraps of talk' and family tradition. He names his sources: a Forbes family 'long planted in the brave uplands of Deeside,' and a grandfather whose folk were on 'the no less brave uplands of Donside.' This is not a claim to documentary accuracy but to a kind of inherited truth. The author admits that oral transmission 'necessarily loses immediacy of phrase, even of fable,' yet he hopes that Jock Farquharson of Inverey, if he could return, 'might recognize it.' The story is thus presented as a reconstruction, coloured by 'romantic colour' and 'dancing atmosphere,' but anchored in specific geography and family memory.

Weather as Warfare

The thunderstorm sequence is the most detailed passage in the excerpts. The narrator watches from a height as 'a great thunderstorm on the march' advances 'like an army going to war.' The clouds are described in layered colours: 'inky black,' 'half-black, half-orange,' 'a depth of iridescence,' and finally 'a molten pot boiling and rolling in august wrath.' The storm 'eats up' a solitary figure in the valley, and the narrator descends into the 'black deluge,' where rainwater runs 'inches deep' and scours away gravel and rocks. This is not mere backdrop; the storm becomes 'an event in our local history' and a 'quick personal adventure,' linking natural spectacle to human narrative.

A Duel and a Trick

The excerpt includes a brief but vivid account of a duel among 'broken men'—outlaws or fugitives. One fighter, described as 'a slim fellow' with 'false doctrine,' proposes a handshake before the fight, then grips his opponent's right hand to strike a foul blow. Donald Oig, 'swift of instinct and eye,' catches out his dagger with his left hand and stabs the trickster. The witnesses 'had nothing to complain about,' and Donald goes his way. The episode is presented as a memory that 'wandered like that' while the narrator ate, suggesting a mind stocked with such tales. The contrast between the treacherous handshake and the swift, left-handed response underscores a code of honour that is tested and upheld in a single, brutal moment.

The Black Colonel does not offer a continuous plot in these excerpts but rather a series of vivid, self-contained scenes: a family tradition, a storm, a duel. Readers should attend to the narrator's framing—his insistence on the tale's imperfect transmission and his hope that some 'romantic colour' has survived. The landscape of Deeside and Donside is not just setting but a character in its own right, shaping both memory and action. Approach this as a work that values atmosphere and incident over linear narrative, and be prepared for digressions that circle back to the hills.

Reading about the Black Colonel’s stormlit duel, I remembered my grandfather’s quiet account of a family rift, and how Jesse Cliffe once held that same ache of belonging. Both books feel less like stories and more like weather—something that settles in the bones. I keep returning to that feeling, the way you revisit a hillside. Jesse Cliffe — Story, Setting & Ideas lingers the same way, unhurried, like an old photograph turning amber.