The Last Wolf in Scotland

In Scotland the honour of slaying the last wolf is contested by Clan Cameron and Clan Mackintosh, the former attributing it to Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, who killed his wolf in 1680, while the Mackintoshes recall how, when about the same period the huge primeval forest of Duthill was destroyed by fire, all the surviving wolves sought refuge on the wooded knoll which somehow escaped the general conflagration, and were thence driven out and slain by the people, except one very large gaunt grey wolf, which escaped and fled across the hills to the neighbourhood of Moy hall. On his way thither, the wolf encountered a woman with two children, both of whom he killed, and the horrified woman, half dead with terror, fled, while the monster was devouring his prey. Great, was the alarm throughout the district, for the wily wolf eluded every attempt to circumvent them. Then the Mackintosh chief summoned his clansmen and vassals to combine in hunting down this murderer; so from far and near, they assembled in the grey dawn. Only one clansman failed to appear, but that was the one on whom the chief specially relied upon. This was Macqueen of Polloc-haugh, a small property at the Streens, above Dulsie Bridge on the Findhorn river. Macqueen was a powerful and gigantic man, said to have been nearly 7 feet in height, and possessed amazing strength and energy. After some delay he appeared, considerably disheveled. The chief received him with words of reproach as a laggard, the staunch rugged Highlander advanced and, throwing back his plaid, revealed the bleeding head of the grizzly brute, which he laid at the feet of his chief, saying: “it would have ill become Clan Mackintosh that more than one man should be required to dispatch one wolf; and that as he had chanced to foregather with the beast on his way, he had buckled with him, and just dirkit him, and syne whittled his craig, for fear he might come alive again!” The fact that Macqueen was still alive in his old house at Polloc-haugh just two hundred years ago, brings the incident and the wolf’s presence in the province of Moray strangely near to us.