At daggers drawn

IN 1910, there appeared in Inverness a catalogue for the auction of stock from John Munro’s Old Curiosity Shop in Castle Street. Lot 377a was ‘an old dirk with ivory handle inlaid with gold’. A colourful tale is attached to this weapon. It had, so the story went, belonged to Alexander Fraser, son of Thomas, Lord Lovat, a local clan chieftain. In about 1700, Fraser had attended a wedding at Teawig, a farm that still sits on a sharp bend in the road near the village of Beauly in Inverness-shire. The property was an island of Clan Chisholm ownership amid vast Fraser landholdings.