A Scottish legend that collided with the American Revolutionary War inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write the haunting story of Ticonderoga, writes DAVID TURNBULL
There is a small hamlet in New York State called Ticonderoga. The area was once famous for producing pencils called ‘Ticonderoga’. Nearby, next to a stretch of fast-flowing river connecting Lake Champlain and Lake George, is a star-shaped fort built by the French in 1755 at the start of their seven-year war with Native American tribes. Today the fort bears the same name as the hamlet, but originally it was called Fort Carillon. The area and the fort have direct links to a haunting ghost story that has its origins over 3,000 miles away in Inverawe in the West Scottish Highlands.
By the 1780s, Fort Carillon was under the control of the British Army. On May 10, 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, a local militia known as the Green Mountain Boys captured the garrison. The guns seized from the fort were then transported to Boston and used as artillery to drive the British from the city.
Three years later the British, led by General John Boroyne, returned to reclaim the fort. Serving in the campaign was Major Duncan Campbell of the Scottish Black Watch Regiment. Eighteen years earlier, Campbell had been woken late one night at home in Inverawe by a panicked knock on his front door. Upon investigation, he discovered a distraught, blood-soaked stranger telling how he had gotten into a fight with another man and eventually killed him. He begged for Campbell’s help. When armed men came looking for the killer, Campbell hid him in his home and then helped him escape.
Later that night, Campbell was visited in a dream by the ghost of his recently deceased cousin, who revealed himself as the murder victim and berated Campbell for sheltering the man who had taken his life and sent him to an untimely grave . His cousin left the dream with the ominously creepy words “Farewell Inverawe – until we meet again in Ticonderoga.”
Not having heard the name before and being unable to find such a name anywhere in Scotland, Campbell dismissed this as nothing more than a nightmare fueled by his imagination and the visit of the blood-covered stranger.
But almost twenty years later, on the eve of the attack on Fort Carillon, Campbell’s ghostly cousin visited him again in a dream. This time a second revelation was made. One that left Campbell staggering out of his tent the next morning ashen. What the cousin had revealed was that the Native American, Iroquois, name for the area was Ticonderoga, meaning the place where two bodies of water meet.
In the ensuing battle, Campbell was seriously injured and his right arm was fatally crushed. He survived eight painful days, but died on the ninth. He was buried at the British base at Fort Edward, after meeting his cousin again at Ticonderoga, as foretold in his ghostly dream that fateful night in Inverawe.
Robert Louis Stevenson, author of The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had never heard of the legend of Ticonderoga, despite being born in Edinburgh and raised in Scotland. That changed when it was presented to him in London by his friend Alfred Nutt. Born in London in 1856, Nutt was a renowned Victorian folklorist who specialized in Arthurian and Celtic lore. His books on the Holy Grail and Gaelic folktales were extremely popular and highly regarded at the time he told the story of Campbell and Ticonderoga to Stephenson.
The story fired Stevenson’s fertile imagination in a way that might be said to be akin to some of the evocative lines of the narrative Gothic poem he composed. I’ll sing in your sleeping ears / I’ll hum in your waking mind / The name Ticonderoga / And the warning for the dead.
Ticonderoga – A legend of the Western Highlands was first published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1887. For dramatic effect, Stephenson made Campbell the brother of the murdered man rather than the cousin. The poem sets the mood perfectly by starting with the ominous lines This is the story of a man who heard a word at night and builds up the tension with the following lines On the terrible lips of the dead / he heard the bizarre name and further, The name – Ticonderoga / The expression of the dead.
The poem then tells the atmospheric legend in three parts.
- Saying the name – which tells of the murder and the prophecy of the spirit visiting Campbell’s dream and first uttering the name Ticonderoga.
- Searching for the name – in which Campbell fights many battles and campaigns around the world during his military career, but never encounters a place that bears the name Ticonderoga.
- The place of the name – in which, on the eve of the attack on Fort Carillon, Campbell encounters a ghostly figure with features of his own. This apparition then speaks the words that reveal the name of the place where he has come to meet his foreshadowed fate with death – It was called Ticonderoga / In the Days of the Great Dead.
Following the poem’s publication, a public dispute broke out between Alfred Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell over whether or not the story was about a Cameron ancestor rather than someone from the Campbell line. However, it seems that the Campbell version is still preferred. A short piece on The Tale of Ticonderoga and Stephenson’s poem are on the Black Watch Museum website.
A folk song called Ticonderoga, inspired by the story, has been recorded by Isla St Claire and others. It starts with the lines Campbell left his homeland to fight across the sea / Driven by a vision that intertwined his fate / He won’t stay there a warning came from the dead / Ticonderoga sang it in his head.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers also have a song called “This Ticonderoga,” referring to the “element that shines and is “connected by the great unknown.”
Fort Ticonderoga was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior and now serves as a tourist attraction and U.S. military museum.
Ticonderoga is also the name given to a class of U.S. Navy missile ships from which the deadly Tomahawk cruise missile can be launched, bringing new terrifying meaning to Stephenson’s poetic lines. The name Ticonderoga / And the warning of the dead.
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