Well of the Seven Heads Monument (Tobar nan Ceann)

DIFFERENT CATEGORY - found via a Historic Environment Scotland full-text search for 'murdered', this monument doesn't mark where the original murder victims died, nor their grave - it marks where the killers' own severed heads were washed after being hunted down and executed in revenge, before being presented to the clan chief. Included as a genre boundary case, in the same spirit as the John Breads gibbet cage and Muschat's Cairn entries already in this archive. On 25 September 1663, Alexander MacDonald, 12th of Keppoch, and his brother Ranald were killed during a brawl at the mansion of Insch, near Roybridge, Lochaber, by rival claimants to the clan chieftainship - their own cousin, Alexander MacDonald, Tacksman of Inverlair, and his six sons. The killers' identities were well known but went unpunished for two years until the Keppoch war poet Iain Lom persuaded the Privy Council to grant letters of fire and sword; men sent by MacDonald of Sleat hunted the seven down and killed them in 1665. Iain Lom is said to have personally decapitated them, using the same weapon that had killed Alexander MacDonald, then carried the seven heads to Invergarry Castle to show Lord MacDonell of Glengarry, who had failed to bring the killers to justice himself. The well where the heads were washed before that presentation is known in Gaelic as Tobar nan Ceann ('Well of Heads'). In the late 19th century the grave at Inverlair was opened and seven headless skeletons were found, corroborating the story. The current monument, an obelisk topped by the carved hand/dagger/heads sculpture, was erected in 1812 by Alexander Ranaldson Macdonell (a later Glengarry chief); it was moved a few yards from its original position in 1930 when the road (now the A82) was reconstructed. See also this archive's Appin Murder entry (if added) for a related Lochaber-area case.