Everyone treated him as a fool, since foreigners rarely came to Eigg and the girl had no thoughts of going away. Martin was told the story in Edinburgh in September 1688 by Norman MacLeod of Grabany.
About a year and a half after the Revolution, Martin says, Major Ferguson was sent with six hundred men and frigates to reduce the islanders who had supported King James. Because a boat's crew of Eiggmen had killed one of his soldiers, he went to Eigg, where he took revenge. The girl was then forcibly carried on board one of the vessels by soldiers and ill-treated, and her hair cut off. Wikipedia independently records soldiers taking an Eigg girl aboard a navy ship in 1690 and returning her with her hair shorn.
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