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 a 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 it’s 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.
