I had forgotten that I published this once before on Friday, December 9, 2016. BUT...it's such a good story it's worth publishing again.

Sandy McTavish...Oh, my! Can I make up a story.

While looking for something I had written awhile back, I came upon this story. I wrote it in March of 2007. Whatever possessed me to create such a tale? I don't know, but I think it is pretty darn good! How the story came about, is true. Sandy McTavish on the other hand......

Sandy McTavish

It was the summer of 1973. The family was at our camp in upstate New York, on Lake Bonaparte. That year we met a bagpipe player who was on his way to Ontario for the Highland Games and bagpipe competition. This laddie (don’t remember his name) knew someone, who knew someone who suggested he look up someone on the lake and would possibly have a place to stay over. I seem to recall he stayed with the Stuyvesant family.

As evening flowed into pitch black night, someone suggested it would be great fun to canoe across the lake to Charlie and Nadine’s place accompanied by the bagpipes. And so, a flotilla of canoes set out. We were without running lights, but the theory was, with the bagpipes skirling out such mournful tunes, we didn’t need them.

The skirling of the pipes could be heard echoing and bouncing off several high rock walls bordering the lake. When we got to Charlie and Nadine’s everyone got out of the canoes and formed a line behind the piper. We proceeded to march through their house to the tune of The Campbells are Coming—in the back door and out the front—around the house and back to the canoes without so much as a “Hi, Charlie. Hi, Nadine.” Before we could get back to our camp the phone was ringing off the hook.

“What the hell was that all about?” you could hear Charlie yelling. We calmed him down and let him in on the joke. He and Nadine are good sports and, in the end, had a good laugh over the unusual event.

The next day, I went to the little general store in town, the one by the railroad tracks, and overheard a conversation up at the cash register about hearing bagpipes on the lake last night. “That was the eeriest thing I’ve ever heard,” said one matron. “We were out on our boat and there was not one thing moving on the lake that we could see,” said the other. 

We had owned our camp at Lake Bonaparte for 2-3 years by then and everyone in town knew how interested I was in local history. They all knew I had borrowed just about every book I could lay my hands on and knew the area pretty well.

When I came to cash out, they all looked at me and asked if I had heard the bagpipes on the lake last night. Keeping a straight face, I admitted that, indeed I had. “What do you think it was?

There is this devil in me that just would not be still. Keeping a straight face, “Have you not heard the story of Sandy McTavish?” I asked.

“No.” was the response. “What is it? Tell us.”

“Well,” I said a little hesitantly (only because I had to start making up the story), “it goes like this.”

“When Joseph Bonaparte escaped France at the end of his brother, Napoleon’s reign as Emperor, he took as much of the Crown Jewels and servants as he could. One of the servant girls, Elyne Balfour, was engaged to a bagpiper in the Royal Guard named Sandy McTavish. Joseph escaped under the cloak of darkness and was well away from Paris before anyone knew he was gone. When Sandy McTavish found out his beloved Elyne was headed for the Americas, he was inconsolable. Able to follow their trail, he booked passage to the United States and followed sweet Elyne to New Jersey where Joseph had set up his lavish community. They were reunited in secrecy, but had only moments together.

“One day, Sandy went to the usual meeting place in the woods, by the waterfall, but Elyne never came. It took several days for him to find out she had gone into the wilds of upper New York state where Joseph had built a hunting lodge on a lake he had named after the family—Lake Bonaparte. The sentries at the compound in New Jersey told Sandy that Joseph had betrothed Elyne to one of his guards and once they were married, the couple would be the caretakers of the lodge.

“Sandy was so distraught, he headed for the lodge vowing there was going to be no more secrecy. He was going to tear the hunting lodge log from beam until he had his sweet Elyne and return with her to Scotland. 

“Elyne had begged Joseph not to do this. She was betrothed to another and would kill herself before she married his guard. Joseph ordered her put under guard for the trip to New York until the wedding should take place. Three days after arriving at the Lodge, Elyne escaped. To this day no one has ever found her. Some say she threw herself off Indian Rock out by Green Pond. Most folks think she hid in the cave folks call Bonaparte’s Cave today—only to be eaten by some wild animal making its home there.

“By the time Sandy reached the lodge Elyne was already gone five days. He searched the woods himself even though he was told Bonaparte’s men had searched them just days ago. 

“Saddened beyond belief, Sandy began a slow, melancholy parade along the shores of Lake Bonaparte, skirling his bagpipes hoping his lost love would hear him and return to his side. Sandy died of a broken heart. They found him clutching his pipes just this side of the cave. On certain nights, when the wind is just right you can still hear Sandy as he parades and skirls looking for Elyne, his lost love.”

“Oh, how sad,” said one of the women. “I had never heard that story before. I really should do more reading about my own home-town.”

Before I burst out laughing and/or they caught on, I picked up my bag of groceries and left the store. Apparently, I did a good job. I never heard of anyone refuting my story of Sandy McTavish.