 Introduction Part 1 of Rob Roy This is LibriVox Recording, while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rowan Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott Volume 1 For why? Because the good old rules suffice with them. The simple plan, that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can. Rob Roy's Grave, Wordsworth Advertisement to the First Edition When the editor of the following volumes published, about two years since, the work called Antiquary, he announced that he was, for the last time, intruding upon the public in his present capacity. He might shelter himself under the plea that every anonymous writer is, like the celebrated genius, only a phantom, and that therefore, although an apparition, of a morbid nine, as well as much mean a description, he cannot be bound to plead, to a charge of inconsistency. A better apology may be found in the imitating the confession of honest Benedict, that, when he said he would die a bachelor, he did not think he should live to be married. The best of all would be if, as has eminently happened in the case of some distinguished contemporaries, the merit of the work, in the readestimation, form an excuse for the author's breach of promise. Without presuming to hope that this may prove the case, it is only further necessary to mention, that his resolution, like that of Benedict, fill a sacrifice, to temptation at least, if not to stratagem. It is now about six months since the author, through the medium of his respectable publishers, received a parcel of papers containing the outlines of his narrative, with a permission, or rather a request, couched in highly flattering terms, that they might be given to the public, with such alterations as should be found suitable. Begin footnote. As it may be necessary, in the present edition, 1829, to speak upon the square, the author thinks it proper to own, that the communication alluded to is entirely imaginary. End footnote. These were, of course, so numerous that, besides the suppression of names and of incidents approaching too much to reality, the work may, in a great measure be, said to be new written. Several anachronisms have probably crept in during the course of these changes, and the motos for the chapters have been selected without any reference to the supposed date of the incidents. For these, of course, the editor is responsible. Some others occurred in the original materials, but they are of little consequence. In point of minute accuracy, it may be stated, that the bridge over the fourth, or rather the Avondieu, or Black River, near the hamlet of Aberfoil, had not an existence that years ago. It does not, however, become the editor to be the first to point out these errors, and he takes his public opportunity to thank the unknown and nameless correspondent, to whom the read will owe the principal share of any amusement which he may derive from the following pages. 1st of December, 1871. Introduction, 1829. When the author projected this further encroachment on the patience of an indulgent public, he was at some loss for a title, a good name being very nearly of as much consequence in literature as in life. The title of Rob Roy was suggested by the late Mr. Constable, whose sagacity and experience foresaw the German popularity which it included. No introduction can be more appropriate to the work than some account of the singular character whose name is given to the title page, and who, through good report and bad report, has maintained a wonderful degree of importance in popular recollection. This cannot be ascribed to the distinction of his birth, which, though that of a gentleman, had in it nothing of high destination, and gave him little right to command in his clan. Neither, though he lived a busy, restless and enterprising life, were his feats equal to those of other free-booters, who have been less distinguished. He owed his fame in great measure to his residing on the very verge of the Highlands, and playing such pranks in the beginning of the eighteenth century as they usually ascribed to Robin Hood in the Middle Ages. And that, within forty yards of Glasgow, a great commercial city, the seat of a learned university. Thus the character like his, blending the wild virtues, the subtle policy, and unrestrained license of an American Indian, was flourishing in Scotland during the Augustan age of Queen Anne and George I. Addison, it is probable, or Pope, would have been considerably surprised if they had known that there, existed in the same island with them, a personage of Rob Roy's peculiar habits and profession. It is this strong contrast between the civilized and cultivated mode of life on the one side of the Highland line, and the wild and lawless adventure which were habitually undertaken and achieved by one who dwelt on the opposite side of that ideal boundary, which creates the interest attracted to his name. Hence it is that even yet, far and near, through Vale and Hill, are faces that attest the same, and kindle like a fire-new sturd at sound of Rob Roy's name. There were several advantages which Rob Roy enjoyed for sustaining to advantage the character which he assumed. The most prominent of these was his descent from, and connection with, the clan McGregor. So famous for them is Fortunes, and the indomitable spirit with which they maintained themselves as a clan, linked and banded together in spite of the most severe laws, executed with unheard of rigor against those who bore this forbidden surname. The history was that of several other of the original Highland clans, who were suppressed by more powerful neighbours, and either extirpated or forced to secure themselves by renouncing their own family appellation, and assuming that of the conquerors. The peculiarity in the story of the McGregors is their attaining with such tenacity, their separate existence, and union as a clan, and as circumstances of the utmost urgency. The history of the tribe is briefly as follows. But we must promise that the tale depends in some degree on tradition. Therefore, accepting when written documents are quoted, it must be considered as in some degree dubious. The sceptre of McGregor claimed a descent from Gregor, or Gregorius, third signage is said of Alpin King of Scots, who flourished about 787. Hence the original patronymic is Macalpine, and they are usually termed the clan Alpine. An individual tribe of them retains the same name. The heir recounted one of the most ancient clans in the Highlands, and it is certain they were people of original Celtic descent, and occupied at one period very extensive possessions, in Perthshire and Argyleshire, which they imprudently continued, by the Cora Glave, that is, the right of the sword. Their neighbours, the Earl of Argyle and Breedleblane, in the meanwhile, managed to leave the lands occupied by the McGregors, engrossed in those charters which they easily obtained from the crown, and thus constituted a legal right in their own favour, without much regard to its justice. As opportunity occurred of annoying or extrapating their neighbours, they gradually extended their own domains, by usurping, under the pretext of such royal grants, those of their more uncivilised neighbours. A Ser Duncan Campbell of Lochow, known in the Highlands by the name of Donach Dunann, Courier Kid, that is, Black Duncan with the cowl, it being his pleasure to wear such a headgear, is said to have been peculiarly successful in those acts of spoilation upon the clan McGregor. The devoted sept, ever finding themselves iniquitously driven from their possessions, defended themselves by force, and occasionally gained advantage, which they used cruelly enough. This conduct, though natural, considering the country and time, was studiously represented at the capital, as arriving from an untameable and innate ferocity, which nothing, it was said, could remedy save cutting off the tribe of McGregor, Root and Branch, in an act of privy council at Sterling 22nd September 1563, in the reign of Queen Mary. Commission is granted to the most powerful nobles and chiefs of the clans to pursue the clan McGregor with fire and sword. A similar warrant in 1563, not only grants the like powers to Ser John Campbell, of Glanochie, the descendant of Duncan with the cowl, but discharges the legers to receive or assist any of the clan McGregor, or afford them, under any colour whatever, meat, drink or clothes. An atrocity which the clans McGregor committed in 1589, by the murder of John Drummond of Drummond, Ernoch, a Forrester of the Royal Forest of Glanochie, is elsewhere given, with all its horrid circumstances. The clans were upon the severed head of the murdered man, that they would make common cause in avowing the deed. This led to an act of the privy council, directing another crusade against the wicked clan McGregor, so long continuing in blood, slaughter, theft and robbery, in which letters of fire and sword are denounced against them for the space of three years. The reader will find this particular fact illustrated in the introduction to the legend of Montrose, in the present edition of these novels. Other occasions frequently occurred in which the McGregors testified contempt for the laws, from which they had often experienced severity, but in ever protection. Though they were gradually deprived of their possessions, and of all ordinary means of procuring substance, they could not, nevertheless, be supposed likely to starve for famine, while they had the means of taking from strangers, what they considered as rightfully their own. Hence they became first in predatory forays and accustomed to bloodshed. Their passions were eager, and, with a little management on the part of some of their most powerful neighbours, they could easily be hounded out to use an expressive Scottish phrase to commit violence, of which the wily instigators took the advantage, and left the ignorant McGregors an undivided portion of blame and punishment. This policy of pushing on the fierce clans of the highlands and borders to break the peace of the country is accounted by the historian one of the most dangerous practices of his own period, in which the McGregors were considered as ready agents. Notwithstanding these severe denunciations which were acted upon in the same spirit in which they were conceived, some of the clans still possessed property, and the chief of the name in 1592 is designed Alastair McGregor of Glenstree. He is said to have been a brave and active man. But the manner of his confession at his death appears to be an engage in many in desperate feuds, one of which finally proved fatal to himself and many of his followers. This was the celebrated conflict at Glenfruin, near the south-western extremity of Loclemonde, in the vicinity of which the McGregors continued to exercise much authority by their core aglave or right at the strongest which we have already mentioned. There had been a long and bloody feud betwixt the McGregors and the layered of lusts, head of the family of Cahun, a powerful race in the lower part of Loclemonde. The McGregors a tradition of firms that the quarrel began on a very trifling subject. Two of the McGregors being benighted asked shelter in a house belonging to a dependent of the Cahuns and were refused. They then retreated to an outhouse took a wedder from the fold, killed it and sucked off the carcass, for which, it is said, they offered payment to the proprietor. The layered of lusts seized on the offenders and, by the summary process which feudal barons had at their command, had them both condemned and executed. The McGregors verify this account of the feud by appealing to a proverb current amongst them, execrating the hour. Malthur on Cabelgill that the black wedder with the white tail was ever lambed. To avenge this quarrel, the layered of McGregor assembled his clan to the number of three or four hundred men and marched towards lust from the banks of Loclemonde by a pass called Raidenagile or the Highlandman's Pass. Sir Humphrey Cahun received early notice of this incursion and collected a strong force more than twice the number of that of the invaders. He had within the gentlemen of the name of Buchanan with the Graham's and other gentry of the Lennox and a party of the citizens of Dombarton under command of Tobias Smollett a magistrate or baili of that town an ancestor of the celebrated author the parties met in the valley of Glen Frun which signifies the Glen of Sorrow a name that seemed to anticipate the event of the day which fatal to the conquered party was at least equally so to the victors. The babe unborn of Clan Alpine having reason to repent it the McGregors somewhat discouraged by the appearance of a force much superior to their own were cheered on to the attack by a seer or second-sighted person who professed that he saw the shrouds of the dead wrapped around their principal opponents The Clan charged with great fury on the front of the enemy while John McGregor, with a strong party made an unexpected attack on the flank a great party the Calhoun's force consisted in cavalry which could not act in the boggy ground they were said to have disputed the field manfully but were at length completely routed and a merciless slaughter was exercised on the fugitives of whom betwixt two and three hundred men fell on the field and in the pursuit if the McGregors lost as is a word only two men slain in the action they had slight provocation for an indiscriminate massacre it is said that their fury extended itself to a party of students for clerical orders who had imprudently come to see the battle some doubt is thrown on this fact from the indictment against the chief of the Clan Gregor being sent to the battle against the chief of the Clan Gregor being silent on the subject as is the historian Johnston and a professor Russ who wrote an account of the battle twenty-nine years after it was fought it is however constantly avert by the tradition of the country and a stone where the deed was done is called Lecha Minster the Minster or Clerks Flagstone the McGregors by a tradition which is now found to be inaccurate imputed this cruel action to the ferocity of a single man of their tribe renowned for size and strength called Dullgard Kai War or the Great Mouse Coloured Man he was McGregor's foster brother and the chief committed the use to his charge with directions to keep them safely till the affray was over whether fearful of their escape or incensed by some sarcasm which they threw on his tribe or whether out of mere thirst of blood this savage while the other McGregors were engaged in the pursuit poignarded his helpless and defenceless prisoners when the chieftain on his return demanded where the youths were the Ker War drew out his bloody dirk saying in Gaelic ask that and God save me the latter words alluded to the exclamation which his victims used when he was murdering them it would seem therefore the horrible part of the story is founded on fact though the number of the youths so slain is probably exaggerated in the lowland accounts the common people say that the blood of the Ker War victims can never be washed off the stone when McGregor learnt their fate he expressed the utmost horror at the deed and upgraded his foster brother with having done that which would occasion the destruction of him and his clan this supposed homicide was the ancestor of Rob Roy the tribe from which he was descended he lies buried at the church of Fortingle where his sepulchre covered with a large stone is still shown and where his great strength and courage are the theme of many traditions McGregor's brother was one of the very few of the tribe who was slain he was buried near the field of battle and the place is marked by a rude stone called the Grey Stone of McGregor so Humphrey Cahoon being well mounted escaped for a time to the castle of Bannacore or Bannacar it proved no sure defence however for he was shortly after murdered in the vault of the castle the family annals say by the McGregors the other accounts charged the deeds upon the McFarlane's this battle of Glenfruin and the severity which the victors exercised in the pursuit was reported to King James the Sixth in a manner the most unfavourable to the clan McGregor whose general character being that of lawless though brave men could not much avail them in such a case that James might fully understand the extent of the slaughter the widows of the slain to the number of eleven score in deep mourning ride upon white polfries and each bearing a husband's bloody shirt on a spear appeared at sterling in presence of a monarch peculiarly accessible to such sites of fear and sorrow to demand vengeance for the death of their husbands upon those by whom they had been made desolate the remedy resorted to was at least as severe as the cruelties which it was designed to punish by an act of the privy council dated 3 April 1603 the name of McGregor was expressly abolished and those who had Hitherow born it were commanded to change it for other surnames the pain of death being denounced against those who should call themselves Gregor or McGregor the names of their fathers under the same penalty all who had been at the conflict of Glenfruin or accessory to other marauding parties charged in the act were prohibited from carrying weapons except a pointless knife to eat their victals by a subsequent act of council 24th June 1613 death was announced against any persons of the tribe formerly called McGregor who should presume to assemble in greater numbers than four again by an act of parliament 1617 chapter 26 these laws were continued and extended to the rising generation in respect that greater numbers of the children of those against whom the acts of privy council had been directed was stated to be then approaching to maturity who if permitted to resume the name of their parents would render the clan as strong as it was before the execution of those severe acts was chiefly entrusted in the west to the Earl of Argyle and the powerful clan of Campbell and to the Earl of Athel and his followers in the more eastern highlands of Perthshire the McGregors failed not to resist with the most determined courage and many a valley in the west and north highlands and many a valley in the west and north highlands retains memory of the severe conflicts in which the prescribed clan sometimes obtained transient advantages and always sold their lives dearly at length the pride of Alastor McGregor the chief of the clan was so much lowered by the sufferings of his people that he resolved to surrender himself to the Earl of Argyle with his principal followers on condition that they should be sent out of Scotland if the informed of the clan of Scotland if the unfortunate chief's own account to be true he had more reasons than one for expecting some favour from the Earl who had in secret advised and encouraged him to many of the desperate actions for which he was now called to so severe a reckoning but Argyle as old Birrol expresses himself kept a Highlandman's promise with them fulfilling it to the ear and breaking it to the scents McGregor was sent under a strong guard to the frontier of England and being thus in the literal scents sent out of Scotland Argyle was judged to have kept faith with him though the same party which took him there brought him back to Edinburgh in custody McGregor of Glanstree was tried before the Court of Justice Erie, 20th of January 1604 and found guilty he appears to have been instantly conveyed from the bar to the gallows for Birrol of the same date reports that he was hanged at the cross and for distinction's sake was suspended higher by his own height than two of his kindred and friends End of Introduction Part 1 Introduction Part 2 of Rob Roy This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Rowan Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott Volume 1 Introduction Part 2 On the 18th of February following more men of the McGregors were executed after a long imprisonment and several others in the beginning of March The Earl of Argyle's service in conducting to the surrender of the insolent and wicked race Sineon McGregor notorious common malefactors and in the bringing in of McGregor with a great many of the leading men of the clan worthily executed to death for their offences is thankfully acknowledged by an Act of Parliament 1607, Chapter 16 and rewarded with the grant of 20 Childers of Victual out of the learns of Kintyre The McGregors not withstand in the letters of fire and sword and orders for military execution repeatedly directed against them by the Scottish Legislator who apparently lost all the calmness of conscious dignity and security and could not even name the outlawed clan without recuperation showed no inclination to be blotted out of the role of clanship They submitted to the law Indeed, so far as to take the names of the neighbouring families amongst whom they happened to live nominally becoming, as the case might render it most convenient drummers, cambels, grahams, buccanons, stewarts and the like but to all intents and purposes of combination of mutual attachment they remained the clan Gregor united together for right or wrong and menacing with the general vengeance of their race all who committed aggressions against any individual of their number they continued to take and give offence with as little hesitation as before the legislative dispersion which had been attempted as appears in the preamble to statute 1633, Chapter 30 settling forth the clan Gregor which had been suppressed and reduced to quietness by the great care of the late King James of eternal memory had nevertheless broken out again in the counties of Perth, Stirling, Clarkmanon, Montef, Lennox, Angus and Merrens for which reason the statute re-establishes the disabilities attached to the clan and grants a new commission for enforcing the laws against that wicked and rebellious race notwithstanding the extreme servitudes of King James I and Charles I against the unfortunate people who were rendered furious by proscription and then punished for yielding to the passions which had been willfully irritated the Magregas to a man attached themselves during the civil war to the cause of the latter monarch their bards have ascribed this to the native respect of the Magregas for the crown of Scotland which their ancestors once wore and have appealed to their memorial bearings which display a pine-tree to cross south air-wise with a naked sword at the point of which supports a royal crown but without denying that such motives may have had their weight we are disposed to think that a war which opened the low country to the raids of the clan Grega would have more charms for them than any inducement to espouse the cause of the Covenanters which would have brought them into contact with Highlanders as fiercest themselves and having as little to lose Patrick Magrega, their leader was a son of a distinguished chief named Duncan Abirac to whom Montrose wrote letters as to his trusty and special friend expressing his reliance on his devoted loyalty with an assurance that when once his majesties affairs were placed upon a permanent footing the grievances of the clan Magrega should be readdressed at a subsequent period of these melancholy times we find to the clan Grega claiming the immunities of other tribes when summoned by the Scottish Parliament to resist the invasion of the Commonwealth's army in 1651 on the last day of March in that year a supplication to the king and parliament from Callum McCondacky Vitch Ewen and Ewen McCondacky Ewen in their own name and that of the whole names of Magrega set forth that while in obedience to the orders of Parliament in joining all clans to come out in the present service under their chieftains for the defence of religion king and kingdoms the petitioners were drawing their men to guard the passes at the head of the river Forth set forth that while in obedience to the orders of parliament in joining all clans to come out in the present service under their chieftains for the defence of religion king and kingdoms the petitioners were drawing their men the passes at the head of the river forth. They were interfered with by the Earl of Athol and the Laird of Buchanan, who had required the attendance of many of the clan Gregor upon their arrays. This interference was doubtless, owing to the change of name, which seems to have given rise to the claim of the Earl of Athol and the Laird of Buchanan, to muster the McGregors under their banners, as Murrays or Buchanans. It does not appear that the petition and the McGregors to be permitted to come out in a body as other clans received any answer. But upon the restoration, King Charles, in the first Scottish Parliament of his reign, Statute 1661, Chapter 195, annulled the various acts against the clan Gregor, and restored them to the full use of their family name, and the other privileges of liege subjects, setting forth as a reason for this leniency, that those who were formally designed McGregors, had, during the late troubles, conducted themselves with such loyalty and affection to his majesty, as might justly wipe off all memory of further miscarriages, and take away all marks of reproach for the same. It is singular enough that it seems to have aggregated the feelings of the non-conforming Presbyterians, when the penalties which were most unjustly imposed upon themselves were relaxed towards the poor McGregors. So little are the best men, any more than the worst, able to judge with impartiality of the same measures as applied to themselves or to others. Upon the restoration, an influence inimical to this unfortunate clan, said to be the same with that which after was dictated the massacre of Glencoe, occasioned the re-enaction of the penal statutes against the McGregors. There are no reasons giving why these highly penal acts should have been renewed, nor is it alleged that the clan had been guilty of late irregularities. Indeed, there is some reason to think that the cause was formed of set purpose, in a shape which deluded observation. Four, though continuing conclusions fatal to the rights of so many Scottish subjects, it is neither mentioned in the title, nor in the rubric of the Act of Parliament in which it occurs, and is thrown briefly into the close of the statute, 1693, chapter 61, entitled, An Act for the Justiciary in the Highlands. It does not, however, appear that after the Revolution the acts against the clan were severely enforced, and in the latter half of the 18th century they were not enforced at all. Commissioners of supply were named in Parliament by the prescribed title of McGregor, and decrees of courts of justice were pronounced, and legal deeds entered into, under the same appellative. The McGregors, however, while the laws continued in the statute book, still suffered under the deprivation of the name which was their birthright, and some attempts were made for the purpose of adopting another. McAlpine or Grant being proposed as the title of the whole clan in future. No agreement, however, could be entered into, and the evil was submitted to as a matter of necessity, and a full of address was obtained from the British Parliament, by an act of abolishing forever the penal statutes which had been so long imposed upon this ancient race. This statute, while merited by the services of many a gentleman of a clan in behalf of their king and country, was passed, and the clan proceeded to act upon it with the same spirit of ancient times, which had made them suffer severely, under a deprivation that would have been deemed of little consequence, by a great part of their fellow subjects. They entered into a deed, recognizing John Mario Vlanerec Esquire, afterwards Sir John McGregor Baronet, representative of the family Glen Caronock, as lawfully descended from the ancient stock and blood of the lads and lords of McGregor, and therefore acknowledged him as their chief on all awful occasions and causes whatsoever. The deed was subscribed by 826 persons of the name of McGregor, capable of bearing arms. A great many of the clan during the last war formed themselves into what was called the clan Alpine Regiment, raised in 1799, under the command of their chief and his brother Colonel McGregor. Having briefly noticed the history of this clan, which presents a rare and interesting example of the indelible character of the patriarchal system, the author must now offer some notices of the individual who gives name to these volumes. In given in the count of a Highlander, his pedigree is first to be considered. That of Rob Roy was deduced from Kea Hoor, the great mouse-colored man, who is accused by tradition of having slain the younger students of the Battle of Glenfruin. Without puzzling ourselves and our readers with the intricacies of Highland genealogy, it is enough to say that, after the death of Alistair McGregor of Glanstree, the clan, discouraged by the unremitting persecution of their enemies, seemed not to have had the means of placing themselves under the command of a single chief. According to their places of residence and immediate descent, the several families were led and directed by chieftains, which in the Highland Acceptation signifies the head of a particular branch of a tribe, in opposition to chief, who is the leader and commander of the whole name. The family and descendants of Doug Old Kea Hoor lived chiefly in the mountains between Loch Lomond and Loch Crotrine, and occupied a good deal of property there, whether by sufferance by the right of the sword, which it was never safe to dispute with them, or by the legal titers of various kinds, it would be useless to inquire on unnecessary to detail. Enough. There they certainly were, a people whom their most powerful neighbours were desirous to conciliate, their friendship in peace being very necessary, to the quiet of the vicinity, and their assistance in war equally prompt and effectual. Rob Roy McGregor Campbell, whose last name he bore in consequence of the acts of Parliament abolishing his own, was the younger son of Donald McGregor of Glingisle, said to have been in Lieutenant Colonel, probably in the service of James II. By his wife, a daughter of Campbell of Glenfalloch, Rob's own designation was of Inversonhead, but he appears to have acquired a right of some kind or other to the property or possession of Craig Royston, a domain of rock and forest lying on the east side of Loch Lomond, where the beautiful lake stretches into the dusky mountains of Glenfalloch. The time of his birth is uncertain, but he is said to have been active in the scenes of war and plunder which succeeded the revolution, and tradition affirms him to have been the leader in a predatory incursion into the parish of Kippin in the Lennox, which took place in the year 1691. It was of almost a bloodless character, only one person losing his life. But from the extent of the depredation it was long distinguished by the name of Hairship or Devastation of Kippin. The time of his death is also uncertain, but he is said to have survived the year 1733 and died an aged man. It is probable he may have been 25 about the time of the Hairship of Kippin, which would assign his birth to be the middle of the 17th century. In the more quiet times which succeed the revolution, Rob Roy or Red Robert seems to have exerted his active talents, which were of no mean order, as a drover or trader in cattle, to a great extent. It may well be supposed that in those days no lowland much less English drovers ventured to enter the highlands. The cattle, which were the stable commodity of the mountains, were escorted down to fares on the borders of the lowlands, by a party of highlanders, with their arms rattling around them, and who dealt, however, in all honour and good faith with their southern customers. A fray indeed would sometimes arise when the lowland men, chiefly borderers, who had to supply the English market, used to dip their bonnets in the next brook, and wrapping them round their hands, opposed their cudgels to the naked broadswords, which had not always a superiority. I have heard from aged persons, who had been engaged in such a fray, that the highlanders used remarkably fair play, never using the point of the sword, far less their pistols or daggers, so that, with many a stiff fac and many a bang, hard creptury and cold iron rang. A slash or two, or a broken head, was easily accommodated, and as the trade was a benefit to both parties, trifling skirmishes were not allowed to interrupt its harmony. Indeed, it was of vital interest to the highlanders, whose income, so far as derived from their estates, depended entirely on the sale of black cattle, and as sagacious an experienced dealer benefited not only himself, but his friends and neighbours by his speculations. Those of Rob Roy were, for several years, so successful as to inspire general confidence, and raise him in the estimation of the country in which he resided. His importance was increased by the death of his father, in consequence of which he succeeded to the management of his nephew, Gregor McGregor, of Glengar's property. And, as his tutor, to such influence with the clan and following as was due to the representative of doggled care. Such influence was the more uncontrolled, that this family of the McGregors seemed to have refused adherence to McGregor of Glengkarnock, the ancestor of the present Sir Ewan McGregor, and asserted a kind of independence. It was at this time that Rob Roy acquired an interest by purchase, wadset or otherwise, to the property of Craig Royston already mentioned. He was in particular favour, during this prosperous period of his life, with his nearest and most powerful neighbour, James, first Duke of Montrose, from whom he received many marks of regard. His grace consented to give his nephew and himself a right of property on the estates of Glengar and Invisnid, which they had till then only held as kindly tenants. The Duke also, with a view to the interest of the country and his own estate, supported our adventurer by loans of money to a considerable amount, to enable him to carry on his speculations in the cattle trade. And fortunately that species of commerce was, and is liable to sudden fluctuations. And Rob Roy was, by a sudden depression of markets, and, as a friendly tradition adds, by the bad faith of a partner named Macdonald, whom he had imprudently received into his confidence, and entrusted with a considerable sum of money, rendered totally insolvent. He absconded, of course. Not empty-handed, if it be true, as stated in an advertisement for his apprehension, that he had in his possession sums to the amount of a thousand pounds sterling, obtained from several noblemen and dental under pretense of purchasing cows from them in the Highlands. The advertisement appeared in June 1712, and was several times repeated. It fixes the period when Rob Roy exchanged his commercial adventures for speculations of a very different complexion. Footnote. Sea appendix number one. Close footnote. He appears at this period, first to have removed, from his ordinary dwelling at Invisnid, ten or twelve Scots miles, which has doubled the number of English, farther into the Highlands, and commenced the lawless sort of life which he afterwards followed. The Duke of Montrose, who conceived himself deceived and cheated by McGregor's conduct, employs legal means to recover the money lent to him. Rob Roy's landed property was attached by the regular form of legal procedure, and his stock and furniture made the subject of arrest and sale. It is said that this diligence of the law, as it is called in Scotland, which the English more bluntly termed distress, was used in this case with uncommon severity, and that the legal satellites, not usually the gentlest persons in the world, had insulted McGregor's wife, in a manner which would have aroused a milder man than he, to thoughts of unbounded vengeance. She was a woman of fierce and haughty temper, and it is not unlikely to have disturbed the officers in the execution of their duty, and thus to have incurred ill-treatment, though, for the sake of humanity, it is to be hoped that the story sometimes told as a popular exaggeration. It is certain that she felt extreme anguish at being expelled from the banks of Locke-Lomond, and gave vent to her feelings in a fine piece of pipe music, still well known to amateurs by the name of Rob Roy's lament. The fugitive is thought to have found his first place of refuge in Glendochat, under the Earl of Bredlebane's protection. For, though that family had been active agents in the destruction of the McGregor's informer times, they had of late years sheltered a great many of the name in their old possessions. The Duke of Argyle was also one of Rob Roy's protectors, so far as to afford him, according to the Highland phrase, wooden water. The shelter, namely, that is afforded by the forests and lakes of an accessible country. The great men of the Highlands in that time, besides being anxiously ambitious to keep out what was called their following, or military retainers, but also desires to have at their disposal men of resolute character, to whom the world and the world's law were no friends, and who might at times ravish the lands or destroy the tenants of a feudal enemy, without bringing responsibility on their patrons. The strife between the names of Campbell and Graham, during the Civil Wars of the 17th Century, had been stamped with mutual loss and inveterate enmity. The death of the great Marquess of Montrose on one side, they defeated in Velocchi, and the cruel plundering of lawn on the other, were reciprocal injuries not likely to be forgotten. Robro was, therefore, sure of refuge in the country of the Campbells, both as having assumed their name, as connected by his mother with the family of Glen Falloch, and as an enemy to the rival house of Montrose. The extent of Argyll's possessions, and the power of retreating Vither in any emergency, gave great encouragement to the bold schemes of revenge which he had adopted. This was nothing short of the maintenance of a predatory war against the Duke of Montrose, whom he considered as the author of his exclusion from civil society, and of the artillery to which he had been sentenced, by letters of horning and caption, legal writ so called, as well as a seizure of his goods, and adjudication of his landed property. Against his grace, therefore, his tenants, friends, allies, and relatives, he disposed himself to employ every means of annoyance in his power. And though this was the circle sufficiently extensive for active depredation, Rob, who professed himself a Jacobite, took the liberty of extending his sphere of operations against all whom he chose to consider as friendly to the revolutionary government, or to that most obnoxious of measures, the Union of the Kingdoms. Under one or other of these pretexts, all his neighbours at the lowlands, who had anything to lose, or were unwilling to compound for security by paying him an annual sum for protection or forbearance, were exposed to his ravages. The country in which his private warfare, or system of depredation was to be carried on, was, until opened up by roads, in the highest degree favourable for his purpose. It was broken up into narrow valleys, the habitat part of which bore no proportion to the huge wilderness of forest, rocks, and precipices by which they were encircled, and which was, moreover, full of inextricable passes, morasses, and natural strengths, unknown to any but the inhabitants themselves, where few acquainted with the ground were capable, with ordinary address, of baffling the pursuit of numbers. The opinions and habits of the nearest neighbours to the Highlands line were also highly favourable to Robroy's purpose. A large proportion of them were of his own clan of McGregor, who claimed the property of Balhuida, and other Highland districts, as having being part of the ancient possessions of their tribe. Though the harsh laws, under the severity of which they had suffered so deeply, had assigned the ownership to other families. The civil wars of the 17th century had accustomed these men to the use of arms, and they were peculiarly brave and fierce for remembrance of their sufferings. The vicinity of a comparatively rich lowland district gave also great temptations to incursion. Many belonging to other clans habituated to contempt of industry, and to the use of arms, drew towards an unprotected frontier, which promised facility of plunder, and the state of the country, now so peaceable and quiet, verified at that time the opinion which Dr. Johnson heard, with doubt and suspicion. The most disorderly and lawless districts of the Highlands were those which laid nearest to the lowland line. There was therefore no difficulty in Robroy, descended of a tribe which was widely dispersed in the country you have described, collecting any number of followers whom he might be able to keep in action, and to maintain by his proposed operations. He himself appears to have been singularly adapted for the profession which he proposed to exercise. His statue was not of the tallest, but his person was uncommonly strong and compact. The great peculiarities of his frame were the breadth of his shoulders, and the great and almost disproportionate length of his arms. So remarkable indeed, that it was said that he could, without stooping, tie the garters of his Highland hose, which are placed two inches below the knee. His countenance was open, manly, stern and periods of danger, but frank and cheerful in his hours of festivity. His hair was dark red, thick and frizzled, and curled short around the face. His fashion of dress showed, of course, the knees and upper part of the leg, which was described to me as resembling that of a Highland bull, hearsuit, with red hair and invinsing muscular strength similar to that animal. To these personal qualifications must be added a masterly use of the Highland sword, in which his length of arm gave him great advantage, and a perfect and intimate knowledge of all the recesses of the wild country in which he harboured, and the character of the various individuals, whether friendly or hostile, with whom he might come in contact. His mental qualities seemed to have been low-less adapted to the circumstances in which he was placed. Though the descendant of the bloodthirsty Care Whore, he inherited none of his ancestors' ferocity. On the contrary, Rob Roy avoided every appearance of cruelty, and it was not a word that he was ever the means of unnecessary bloodshed, or the act of any deed which could lead the way to it. His schemes of plunder were contrived and executed with equal boldness and sagacity, and were almost universally successful, from the skill with which they were laid, and the secrecy and rapidity with which they were executed. Like Robin Hood of England, he was a kind and gentle robber, and while he took from the rich, was liberal in relieving the poor. This might in part be policy, but the universal tradition from the country speaks it to have arisen from a better motive. All whom I have conversed with, and I have in my youth seen some who knew Rob Roy personally, gave him the character of a benevolent and humane man in his way. His ideas of morality were those of an Arab chief, being such as naturally arose out of his wild education. Supposing Rob Roy to have argued on the tendency of the life which he pursued, whether from choice or from necessity, he would doubtless have assumed to himself the character of a brave man, who, deprived of his natural rights by the partiality of laws, endeavored to assert them by a strong hand of natural power. And he is most felicitously described as reasoning thus, in the high-toned poetry of my gifted friend Wordsworth, say then that he was wise as brave, as wise in thought as bold indeed, for in the principle of things he sought his moral creed. Said generous Rob, what need of books, burn all the statutes and their shells. They stir us up against our kind, and worst against ourselves. We have a passion, make a law, to false to guide us or control, and for the law itself we fight in bitterness of soul. And puzzled, blinded, then we lose, distinctions that are plain and few. These find I, graven on my heart, that tells me what to do. The creatures see a flood and field, and those that travel on the wind, with them no strife can last, they live in peace and peace of mind. For why? Because the good old rules suffice with them, the simple plan, that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can. A lesson which is quickly learned, a signal through which all can see, thus nothing here provokes the strong to wanton cruelty. And freakishness of mind is checked, he tamed who foolishly aspires, while to the measure of his might, each fashions his desires. All kinds and creatures stand and fall, by strength of prowess or of wit, to his God's appointment whom I sway, and who is to submit. Since then, said Robin, write his plain, and longest life is but a day, to have my ends maintain my rights, I'll take the shortest way. And thus among these rocks he lived, through summer's heat and winter's snow, the eagle he was lured above, and rob was lured below. We are not, however, to suppose the character of this distinguished outlaw, to be that of an actual hero, acting uniformly and consistently on such moral principles, as the illustrious Bard Who, standing by his grave, has vindicated his fame. On the contrary, as is common with barbarous chiefs, Rob Roy appears to have mixed his professions of principle with a large alloy of craft and dissimulation, of which his conduct during the civil war is sufficient proof. It is also said, and truly, that although his courtesy was one of the strongest characteristics, yet sometimes he assumed an arrogance of manner, which was not easily endured by the high-spirited men to whom it was addressed, and drew the daring outlaw into frequent disputes, from which he did not always come off with credit. From this it has been inferred that Rob Roy was more of a bully than a hero, or at least that he had, according to the common phrase, his fighting days. Some aged men who knew him well, have described him also as better at attack to Luzi, or scuffle within doors, than immortal combat. The tenor of his life may be quoted to repel this charge, while at the same time it must be allowed that the situation in which he was placed rendered him prudently adverse to maintaining quarrels, when nothing was to be had to save blows, and where success would have raised up against him new and powerful enemies, in a country where revenge was still considered as a duty rather than a crime. The power of commanding his passions on such occasions, far from being inconsistent with the part which McGregor had to perform, was essentially necessary, at the period when he lived, to prevent his career from being cut short. End of introduction part two. This is the story of my late friend John Ramsey of Octor Tyre, a like, eminent as a classic scholar, and as an authentic register of the ancient history and manners of Scotland, informed me that on occasion of a public meeting at a bonfire in the town of Doane, Rob Roy gave some offense to James Edmund Stone of Newton, the same gentleman who was unfortunately concerned in the slaughter of Lord Rolo. See McLauren's criminal trials, number nine. When Edmund Stone compelled McGregor to quit the town on pain of being thrown by him into the bonfire, I broke one off your ribs on a former occasion, said he, and now, Rob, if you provoke me further, I'll break your neck. But it must be remembered that Edmund Stone was a man of consequence in the Jacobite party, as he carried the royal standard of James VII at the Battle of Sheriffmure, and also that he was near the door of his own mansion house and probably surrounded by his friends and adherents. Rob Roy, however, suffered in reputation for retiring under such a threat. Another well-vouched case is that of Cunningham of Balkan. Henry Cunningham, a squire of Balkan, was a gentleman of Starlingshire, who, like many exquisites of our own time, united a natural high spirit and daring character with an affectation of delicacy of address and manners amounting to phoppery. Note his courage and affectation of phoppery were united, which is less frequently the case, with a spirit of innate modesty. He is thus described in Lord Binning's satirical verses entitled Argyle's Levy. The Duke then, turning round well pleased, said, Sure you've been in France. A more polite and taunting man I never saw before, then Henry bowed and blushed and bowed and strutted it to the door. See a collection of original poems by a Scottish gentleman, Vol. 2, page 125. He chanced to be in company with Rob Roy, who, either in contempt of Balkan's supposed effeminacy or, because he thought him a safe person to fix a quarrel on, the point which Rob's enemies alleged he was wont to consider, insulted him so grossly that a challenge passed between them. The good wife of the clock and had hidden Cunningham's sword, and while he rummaged the house in quest of his own or some other, Rob Roy went to the Shaling Hill, the appointed place of combat, and paraded there with great majesty, waiting for his antagonist. In the meantime, Cunningham had managed to rummage out an old sword and, entering the ground of contest in all haste, rushed down the outlaw with such unexpected fury that he fairly drove him off the field, nor did he show himself in the village again for some time. Mr. McGregor's Sterling has a softened account of this anecdote in his new edition of Nimo's Sterling Share. Still, he records Rob Roy's discomforture. Occasionally, Rob Roy suffered disasters and incurred great personal danger. On one remarkable occasion, he was saved by the coolness of his lieutenant, Macon Alster of Fletcher, the little John of his band, a fine active fellow, of course, and celebrated as a marksman. It happened that McGregor and his party had been surprised and dispersed by a superior force of horse and foot, and the word was given to split and squander. Each shifted for himself, but a bold ragoon attached himself to pursuit of Rob, and overtaking him struck at him with his broadsword. A plate of iron in his bonnet saved the McGregor from being cut down to the teeth, but the blow was heavy enough to bear him to the ground, crying as he felt, Oh, Macon Alster, is there nithin' in there, are ye in the gun? The troop were at the same time exclaiming, Damn ye, your mother never wrought your nightcap, had his arm raised for a second blow, when Macon Alster fired, and the ball pierced the ragoon's heart. Such as he was, Rob Roy's progress in his occupation is thus described by a gentleman of sense and talent, that resided within the circle of his predatory wars, had probably felt their effects, and speaks of them, as might be expected, with little of the forbearance with which, from their peculiar and romantic character, they're now regarded. This man, Rob Roy McGregor, was a person of sagacity and neither wanted stratagem nor address, and having abandoned himself to all his sensuousness, set himself at the head of all the loose, vagrant, and desperate people of that clan, in the west end of Perth and Sterlingshires, and infested those whole countries with thefts, Rob Roy's, and depredations. Very few who lived within his reach, that is, within the distance of an octernal expedition, could promise to themselves security, either for their persons or effects, without subjecting themselves to pay him a heavy and shameful tax of blackmail. He at last proceeded to such a degree of audaciousness that he committed robberies, raised contributions, and resented quarrels, at the head of a very considerable body of armed men, in open day, and in the face of the government. Now, from Mr. Graham of Gartmore's causes of the disturbances in the Highlands, see Jamison's edition of Bert's Letters from the North of Scotland appendix, volume 2, page 348. The extent and success of these depredations cannot be surprising when we consider that the scene of them was laid in a country where the general law was neither enforced nor respected. Having recorded that the general habit of cattle stealing had blinded even those of the better classes to the infamy of the practice, and that as men's property consisted entirely in herds, it was rendered in the highest degree precarious, Mr. Graham adds. On those accounts there is no culture of ground, no improvement of pastures, and from the same reasons, no manufacturers, no trade, in short, no industry. The people are extremely prolific and therefore so numerous that there is not business in that country, according to its present order and economy, for the one-and-a-half of them. Every place is full of idle people accustomed to arms and lazy and everything but rapines and depredations. As buttle or acavitae houses are to be found everywhere throughout the country, so in these they saunter away their time and frequently consume there the returns of their illegal purchases. Here the laws have never been executed, nor the authority of the magistrate ever established. Here the officer of the law neither dare nor can execute his duty, and several places are about thirty miles from lawful persons in short. There is no order, no authority, no government. The period of the rebellion, 1715, approached soon after Rob Roy had attained celebrity. His Jacobite partialities were now placed in opposition to his sense of the obligations which he owed to the indirect protection of the Duke of Argyle. But the desire of drowning his sounding steps amid the din of general war induced him to join the forces of the Earl of Marr, although his patron, the Duke of Argyle, was at the head of the army opposed to the Highland insurgents. The McGregor is a large sect of them, at least that of Sien-Mor. On this occasion were not commanded by Rob Roy but by his nephew, already mentioned, Gregor MacGregor, otherwise called James Graham of Glengail, and still better remembered by the Gaelic epithet Glendu, i.e., Black Knee, from a black spot on one of his knees which his Highland garb rendered visible. There can be no question, however, that being then very young, Glengail must have acted on most occasions by the advice and direction of so experienced a leader as his uncle. The McGregors assembled in numbers at that period and began even to threaten the lowlands toward the lower extremity of Loch Lomond. They suddenly seized all the boats which were upon the lake and, probably with a view to some enterprise of their own, drew them overland to inverse snade in order to intercept the progress of a large body of west country wigs, who were in arms for the government and the moving in that direction. The wigs made an excursion for the recovery of the boats. Their forces consisted of volunteers from Paisley, Kilpatrick, and elsewhere, who, with the assistance of a body of seamen, were towed up the River Levin in long boats, belonging to the ships of war, then lying in the Clyde. At Luss they were joined by the forces of Sir Humphrey Colokhan, and James Grant, his son-in-law, with their followers, attired in the Highland dress of the period which is picturesquely described. At night they arrived at Luss, where they were joined by Sir Humphrey Colokhan of Luss and James Grant of Plecander, his son-in-law, followed by forty or fifty stately fellows in their short-hose and belted plads, armed each of them with a well-fixed gun on his shoulder, a strong, handsome target with a sharp pointed steel of above half an L in length, screwed into the navel of it on his left arm, a sturdy claymore by his side, and a pistol at two with a dirken knife in his belt, that description from Ray's history of the rebellion, page 287. The whole party crossed to Craig Royston, but the McGregors did not offer combat. If we are to believe the account of the expedition given by the historian Ray, they leaped on shore at Craig Royston, with the utmost intrepid, no enemy appearing to oppose them, and by the noise of their drums, which they beat incessantly, and the discharge of their artillery and small arms, terrified the McGregors, whom they appear never to have seen, out of their fastnesses, and caused them to fly in a panic to the general camp of the Highlanders at Strathfillan, the low countrymen succeeded in getting possession of the boats at a great expenditure of noise and courage, and little risk of danger. After this temporary removal from his old haunts, Rob Roy was sent by the Earl of Mar to Aberdeen to raise its belief a part of the clan McGregor, which is settled in that country. These men were, of his own family, the race of Searmour. They were the descendants of about three hundred McGregors whom the Earl of Murray, about the year 1624, transported from his estates and men teeth to oppose against his enemies the Macintoshes, a race as hardy and restless as they were themselves. Ah, but while in the city of Aberdeen, Rob Roy met a relation of a very different class and character, from those he was sent to summon to arms, this was Dr. James Gregory, by descent of McGregor, the patriarch of a dynasty of professors distinguished for literature and scientific talent, and the grandfather of the late eminent physician and accomplished scholar, Professor Gregory of Edinburgh. This gentleman was at the time Professor of Medicine in King's College, Aberdeen, and son of Dr. James Gregory distinguished in science as the inventor of the reflecting telescope. With such a family it may seem our friend Rob could have had little communion, but civil war is a species of misery which introduces men to strange bedfellows. Dr. Gregory thought it a point of prudence to claim Kindred at so critical a period, with a man so formidable and influential. He invited Rob Roy to his house and treated him with so much kindness that he produced in his generous bosom a degree of gratitude, which seemed likely to occasion very inconvenient effects. The Professor had a son about eight or nine years old, a lively stout boy of his age, with whose appearance our Highland Robin Hood was much taken. On the day before his departure from the house of his learned relative Rob Roy, who had pondered deeply how he might requite his cousin's kindness, took Dr. Gregory aside and addressed him to this report. My dear Kinsman, I have been thinking what I could do to show me sense of your hospitality. Here you have a fine spirited boy of a son whom you are ruining by cramming him with your useless book-learned, and I am determined by way of manifest in my great good will to you and yours to take him with me and make a man of him. The learned Professor was utterly overwhelmed when his warlike Kinsman announced his kind of purpose in language which implied no doubt of its being a proposal which would he and ought to be accepted with the utmost gratitude. The task of apology or explanation was of a most delicate description, and there might have been considerable danger in suffering Rob Roy to perceive that the promotion with which he threatened the son was in the father's eyes, the ready row to the gallows. Indeed every excuse which he could at first think of, such as regret for putting his friend to trouble with a youth who had been educated in the lowlands and so on, only strengthened the chieftain's inclination to patronize his young Kinsman as he supposed they arose entirely from the modesty of the father. He would for a long time take no apology and even spoke of carrying off the youth by a certain degree of kindly violence, whether his father consented or not. At length the perplexed Professor pleaded that his son was very young and an infirm state of health and not yet able to endure the hardships of a mountain life, but that in another year or two he hoped his health would be firmly established and he would be in a fitting condition to attend on his brave Kinsman and follow out the splendid destinies to which he opened the way. This agreement being made, the cousins parted, Rob Roy pledging his honor to carry his young relation to the hills with him on his next return to Aberdeen Chire and Dr. Gregory doubtless praying in his secret soul that he might never see Rob's highland face again. James Gregory, who thus escaped being his Kinsman's recruit and in all probability his henchman, was afterwards Professor of Medicine in the college and, like most of his family, distinguished by his scientific acquirements. He was rather of an irritable and pertenacious disposition and his friends were wont to remark when he showed any symptom of these foibles. Huh! This comes from not having been educated by Rob Roy. The connection between Rob Roy and his classical Kinsman did not end with the period of Rob's transient power. At a period considerably subsequent to the year 1715 he was walking in the castle street of Aberdeen arm in arm with his host, Dr. James Gregory, when the drums in the barracks suddenly beat to arms and soldiers were seen issuing from the barracks. Of these lads are turning out, said Rob, taking leave of his cousin with great composure. It's time for me to look after my safety. So, saying he dived down a close and, as John Bunyan said, went upon his way and was seen no more. The first of these anecdotes, which brings the highest pitch of civilization so closely in contact with the half-savage state of society, I've heard told by the late distinguished Dr. Gregory and the members of his family have had the kindness to collate the story with their recollections and family documents and furnish the authentic particulars. The second rests on the recollection of an old man who was present when Rob took French leave of his literary cousin on hearing the drums beat and communicated the circumstance to Mr. Alexander Forbes, a connection of Dr. Gregory by marriage who is still alive. We've already stated that Rob Roy's conduct during the insurrection of 1715 was very equivocal. His person and followers were in the Highland Army, but his heart seems to have been with the Duke of Argyles. Yet the insurgents were constrained to trust to him as their only guide when they marched from Perth toward Dunblane, with a view of crossing the forth at what are called the Fords of Fru, and when they themselves said he could not be relied upon. This movement to the westward on the part of the insurgents brought on the battle of Sheriff Muir, indecisive indeed in its immediate results but of which the Duke of Argyle reaped the whole advantage. In this action it will be recollected that the right wing of the Highlanders broke and cut to pieces Argyle's left wing, while the clans on the left of Mars Army, though consisting of Stuart's, Mackenzie's, and Cameron's, were completely routed. During this medley of flight and pursuit Rob Roy retained his station on a hill in the center of the Highland position, and though it said his attack might have decided the day he could not be prevailed upon to charge. This was the more unfortunate for the insurgents, as the leading of a party of the MacPherson's had been committed to McGregor. This, it is said, was owing to the age and infirmity of the chief of that name, who unable to lead his clan in person objected to his heir apparent, MacPherson of Nord, discharging his duty on that occasion, so that the tribe or a part of them were brigaded with their allies, the McGregors. While the favorable moment for action was gliding away unemployed, Mars positive orders reached Rob Roy that he should presently attack, to which he coolly replied, Na, na, the cannot door without me, the cannot door with me. One of the MacPherson's named Alexander, one of Rob's original profession, the Delacet, a drover. But a man of great strength and spirit was so incensed at the inactivity of this temporary leader, that he threw off his plaid, drew his sword, and called out to his clansmen, Let us endure this no longer. Feel not, legia, I will. Rob Roy replied with great coolness, where the question about Drive and Highland's thoughts are kylo, Sandy. I'd yield to your superior skill, but as it respects the leading a man, I must be allowed to be the better judge. Did the matter respect Drive and Glen Eagle's stouts, answered the MacPherson? The question with Rob would not be which was to be last, but which was to be foremost. Incensed at this sarcasm, a Gregor drew his sword, and they would have fought upon the spot if their friends on both sides had not interfered. But the moment of attack was completely lost. Rob did not, however, neglect his own private interest on the occasion. In the confusion of an undecided field of battle, he enriched his followers by plundering the baggage and the dead on both sides. The final satirical ballad on the Battle of Sheriff Muir does not forget to stigmatize our hero's conduct on this memorable occasion. Rob Roy he stood watch on a hill for to catch the booty for art that I saw a man, for he ne'er advanced from the place where he stands till ne'er was to do there at a man. Notwithstanding the sort of neutrality which Rob Roy had continued to observe during the progress of the rebellion, he did not escape some of its penalties. He was included in the act of attaining Dick, and the house in Bredelbane, which was his place of retreat, was burned by General Lord Cadogan. When, after the conclusion of the insurrection, he marched through the Highlands to disarm and punish the offending clans. But upon going to Inverary, with about forty or fifty of his followers, Rob obtained favor by an apparent surrender of their arms to Colonel Patrick Campbell of Finno, who furnished them and their leader with protections under his hand. Being thus in a great measure secured from the resentment of government, Rob Roy established his residence at Craig Royston near Loch Lomond, in the midst of his own kinsmen, and lost no time in resuming his private quarrel with the Duke of Montrose. For this purpose he soon got on foot as many men and well-armed too as he had yet commanded. He never stirred without a bodyguard of ten or twelve picked followers, and without much effort could increase them to fifty or sixty. The Duke was not wanting in efforts to destroy this troublesome adversary. His grace applied to General Carpenter commanding the forces in Scotland, and by his orders three parties of soldiers were directed from the three different points of Glasgow, Stirling and Finlorrig near Killen. Mr Graham of Killen, the Duke of Montrose's relation and factor, Sheriff Depute also of Dumbartonshire, accompanied the troops that they might act upon the civil authority and have the assistance of a trustee guide well acquainted with the hills. It was the object of these several columns to arrive about the same time in the neighbourhood of Rob Roy's residence, and surprise him and his followers. But heavy rains, the difficulties of the country, and the good intelligence which the outlaw was always supplied with, disappointed their well-concerted combination. The troops finding the birds were flown avenged themselves by destroying the nest. They burned Rob Roy's house, though not with impunity, for the McGregors concealed among the thickets and cliffs, fired on them, and killed a grenadier. Rob Roy avenged himself for the loss which he sustained on this occasion by an act of singular audacity. About the middle of November, 1716, John Graham of Killen, already mentioned as factor of the Montrose family, went to a place called Chapel Erich, where the tenants of the Duke were summoned to appear with their termly rents. They appeared accordingly, and the factor had received ready money to the amount of about 300 pounds when Rob Roy entered the room at the head of an armed party. The steward endeavored to protect the Duke's property by throwing the books of accounts and money into a garret, thrusting they might escape notice. But the experienced freebooter was not to be baffled where such a prize was at stake. He recovered the books and the cash, placed himself calmly in the receipt of custom, examined the accounts, pocketed the money, and gave receipts on the Duke's part, saying he would hold reckoning with the Duke of Montrose out of the damages, which he had sustained by his graces means, and which he included the losses he had suffered as well by the burning of his house by General Cadogan, as by the later expedition against Craig Royston. He then requested Mr. Graham to attend him, nor does it appear that he treated him with any personal violence or even rudeness, although he informed him he regarded him as a hostage, and menaced rough usage in case he should be pursued or in danger of being overtaken. Few more audacious feats had been performed. After some rapid changes of place, the fatigue attending which was the only annoyance that Mr. Graham seems to have complained of, he carried his prisoner to an island on Loch Catron and caused him to write to the Duke to state that his ransom was fixed at 3400 mercs pounds, being the balance which McGregor pretended remained due to him after deducting all that he owed to the Duke of Montrose. However, after detaining Mr. Graham five or six days in custody on the island, which is still called Rob Roy's prison and could be no comfortable dwelling for November nights, the outlaw seems to have disfaired of attaining further advantage from his bold attempt, and suffered his prisoner to depart uninjured with the account books and bills granted by the tenants taking special care to retain the cash. The reader will find two original letters of the Duke of Montrose with that which Mr. Graham of Killain dispatched from his prison house by the outlaw's command and the appendix. About 1717 our chieftain had the dangerous adventure of folding into the hands of the Duke of Atoll, almost as much his enemy as the Duke of Montrose himself, but his cunning and dexterity again freed him from certain depth. See a contemporary account of this curious affair in the appendix number five. Other pranks are told of Rob, which argue the same boldness and sagacity as the seizure of Killain. The Duke of Montrose weary of his insolence procured a quantity of arms and distributed them among his tenetry in order that they might defend themselves against future violences, but they fell into different hands from those they were intended for. The McGregors made separate attacks on the houses of the tenants and disarmed them all one after another, not as was supposed without the consent of many of the persons so disarmed. As a great part of the Duke's rents were payable and kind, there were Gernel's granaries, established for storing up the corn at Moulin, and elsewhere on the Buchanan estate. To these storehouses Rob Roy used to repair with a sufficient force, and of course when he was least expected, and insist upon the delivery of quantities of grain, sometimes for his own use and sometimes for the assistance of the country people, all was giving regular receipts in his own name and pretending to reckon with the Duke for what sums he received. In the meantime a garrison was established by government, the ruins of which may still be seen about halfway between Lock Lomond and Lock Cantron, upon Rob Roy's original property of Inversnade. Even this military establishment could not bridle the restless McGregor. He contrived to surprise the little fort, disarm the soldiers, and destroy the fortification. It was afterwards re-established, and again taken by the McGregors under Rob Roy's nephew, Clyndu, previous to the insurrection of 1745-6. Finally the fort of Inversnade was a third time repaired, after the extinction of civil discord, then when we find the celebrated General Wolfe commanding in it, the imagination is strongly affected by the variety of time and events which the circumstance brings simultaneously to recollection. It is now totally dismantled. About 1792 when the author chanced to pass that way, while on a tour through the Highlands, a garrison consisting of a single veteran was still maintaining. At Inversnade the venerable warder was reaping his barley-croft in all peace and tranquillity, and when we asked admittance to repose ourselves, he told us we would find the key to the fort under the door. It was not strictly speaking as a professed depredator that Rob Roy now conducted his operations, but as a sort of contractor for the police. In Scottish phrase, a lifter of black nail. The nature of this contract has been described in the novel of Waverly and in the notes on that work. Mr. Graham of Gartmore's description of the character may be here transcribed. The confusion and disorders of the country were so great, and the government so absolutely neglected it, that the sober people were obliged to purchase some security to their effects by shameful and ignominious contracts of black mail. A person who had the greatest correspondence with the thieves was agreed with to preserve the lands contracted for from thefts, for certain sums to be paid yearly. Upon this fund he employed one half of the thieves to recover stolen cattle, and the other half of them to steal in order to make this agreement in black mail contract necessary. The estates of those gentlemen who refused to contract, or give countenance to that pertinicious practice, are plundered by the thieving part of the watch in order to force them to purchase their protection. Their leader calls himself the Captain of the Watch, and his banditty go by that name, and as this gives them a kind of authority to traverse the country, so it makes them capable of doing any mischief. These core, through the Highlands, make altogether a very considerable body of men, enured from their infancy to the greatest fatigues, and very capable to act in a military way when occasion offers. People who are ignorant and enthusiastic, who are in absolute dependence upon their chief or landlord, who are directed in their consciousness by Roman Catholic priests or non-juring clergymen, and who are not masters of any property, may easily be formed into any mold. They fear no dangers as they have nothing to lose, and so can with ease be induced to attempt anything. Nothing can make their condition worse. Confusions and troubles do commonly indulge in such licentiousness that by these they better it. That from Letters from the North of Scotland, Volume 2, pages 344, 345. End of Volume 1, Section 3, Introduction, Recording by Mike Harris. Volume 1, Introduction, Part 4 of Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, Recording by Mike Harris. Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott, Volume 1, Introduction, Part 4. As the practice of contracting for blackmail was an obvious encouragement to rapine and a great obstacle to the course of justice, it was by the Statute of 1567, Chapter 21, declared a capital crime, both on the part of him who levied and him who paid this sort of tax. But the necessity of the case prevented the execution of this severe law, I believe, in at least one instance, and men went on submitting to a certain unlawful imposition rather than run the risk of utter ruin, just as it is now found difficult or impossible to prevent those who have lost a very large sum of money by robbery from compounding with the felons for restoration of a part of their booty. At what rate Rob Roy levied blackmail I never heard stated, but there is a formal contract by which his nephew, in 1741, agreed with various landlords of estates in the counties of Perth, Stirling and Dumbarton to recover cattle stolen from them or to pay the value within six months of the loss being intimated if such intimation were made to him with sufficient dispatch, in consideration of a payment of five pounds on each 100 pounds of valued rent, which was not a very heavy insurance. Patty thefts were not included in the contract, but the theft of one horse or one head of black cattle or of sheep exceeding the number of six fell under the agreement. Rob Roy's profits upon such contracts brought him in a considerable revenue in money or cattle of which he made a popular use, for he was publicly liberal as well as privately beneficent. The minister of the parish of Bulkheader, whose name was Robertson, was at one time threatening to pursue the parish for an augmentation of his stipend. Rob Roy took an opportunity to assure him that he would do well to abstain from this new ex-action, a hint which the minister did not fail to understand, but to make him some indemnification, McGregor presented him every year with a cow and a fat sheep, and no scruples as to the mode in which the donor came by them, I said to have affected the Reverend Gentleman's conscience. The following amount of the proceedings of Rob Roy on an application to him from one of his contractors had in it something very interesting to me, as told by an old countryman in the Lennox who was present on the expedition. But as there is no point or market incident in the story, and as it must necessarily be without the half-frightened half bewildered look with which the narrator accompanied his recollections it may possibly lose its effect when transferred to paper. My informant stated himself to have been a lad of fifteen, living with his father on the estate of a gentleman in the Lennox, whose name I have forgotten, in the capacity of Herd. On a fine morning in the end of October, the period when such calamities were almost always to be apprehended, they found the Highland Thieves had been down upon them, and swept away ten or twelve head of cattle. Rob Roy was sent for, and came with a party of seven or eight armed men. He heard with great gravity all that could be told him of the circumstances of the Crach, and expressed his confidence that the Herd Whittyfous, or Mad Birdsman, a name given to cattle-stealer, properly one who deserves to fill a witty or a halter. Anyway, the Herd Whittyfous could not have carried their booty far, and that he should be able to recover them. He desired that two lowlanders should be sent on the party as it was not to be expected that any of his gentlemen would take the trouble of driving the cattle, when he should recover possession of them. My informant and his father were dispatched on the expedition. They had no good will to the journey, nevertheless provided with a little food and with a dog to help them to manage the cattle. They set off with McGregor. They traveled a long day's journey in the direction of the mountain, Ben Vorlich, and slept for the night on a ruinous, hotter boffing. The next morning they resumed their journey among the hills, Rob Roy directing their course by signs and marks on the heath which my informant did not understand. About noon Rob commanded the armed party to halt and to lie couched in the heather, where it was the thickest. "'Do you and your son,' he said to the oldest lowlander, "'go boldly over to the hill you'll see beneath you, and again on the other side you're a master's cattle feeding. It may be with others. Gather your own together, take and care to disturb no one else, and drive them to this place. If anyone speak to you or threaten you, tell them that I am here at the head of twenty men.' "'But what if they abuse us or kill us?' said the lowland peasant, by no means delighted at finding the embassy imposed on him and his son. "'If they do you any wrong,' said Rob, "'I'll never forgive them as long as I live.'" The lowlander was by no means content with this security, but did not think it saved to dispute Rob's injunctions. He and his son climbed the hill, therefore, found a deep valley where they grazed, as Rob had predicted, a large herd of cattle. They cautiously selected those which their master had lost, and it took measures to drive them over the hill. As soon as they began to remove them they were surprised by hearing cries and screams, and, looking around in fear and trembling, they saw a woman, seeming to have started out of the earth, who flighted at them, that is, scolded them in Gaelic. When they contrived, however, in the best Gaelic they could muster, to deliver the message Rob Roy told them she became silent, and disappeared without offering them any further annoyance. The chief heard their story on their return, and spoke with great complacency for the art which he possessed of putting such things to write without any unpleasant bustle. The party were now on their road home, and the danger, though not the fatigue of the expedition, was at an end. They drove on the cattle with a little repose until it was nearly dark. When Rob proposed to halt for the night upon a wide moor, a cross which a cold northeast wind with frost on its wing was whistling to the tune of the hypers of Stray the Deer, the winds which sweep a wild glen in Badenacher, so called. The Highlanders, sheltered by their plads, lay down on the heath quite comfortably enough, but the Lowlanders had no protection, whatever. Rob Roy, observing this, directed one of his followers to afford the old man a portion of his plaid. Brother Callant, the boy, he may, said the freebooter, keep himself warm by walking about and watching the cattle. The informant heard this sentence with no small distress, and as the frost wind grew more and more cutting it seemed to freeze the very blood in his young veins. He'd been exposed to weather all his life, he said, but never could forget the cold of that night, and so much that in the bitterness of his heart he cursed the bright moon for giving no heat, with so much light. I'd like the sense of cold and weariness became so intolerable that he resolved to desert his watch to seek some repose and shelter. For that purpose he couched himself down behind one of the most bulky of the Highlanders, who acted as lieutenant to the party. Not satisfied with having secured the shelter of the man's large person, he coveted a share of his plaid, and by imperceptible degrees drew a corner of it round him. He was now comparatively in paradise and slept sound till daybreak, when he awoke and was terribly afraid, on observing that his nocturnal operations had all together uncovered the Duhenwassel's neck and shoulders, which lacking the plaid, which should have protected them, were covered with Koranarik, i.e. wharf frost. The young land rose in great dread of a beating, at least, when it should be found how luxuriously he had been accommodated at the expense of the principal person of the party. Good Mr. Lieutenant, however, got up and shook himself, rubbing off the wharf frost with his plaid and muttering something of a card-net. They then drove on the cattle which were restored to their owner without further adventure. The above can hardly be termed a tale, but yet it contains materials both for the poet and the artist. It was perhaps about the same time that by a rapid march into the Balkidder Hills at the head of a body of his own cemetery, the Duke of Montrose actually surprised Rob Roy and made him prisoner. He was mounted behind one of the Duke's followers named James Stewart, and made fast to him by a horse-girth. The person who had him, thus in charge, was grandfather of the intelligent man of the same name, now deceased, who lately kept the inn in the vicinity of Loch Catering, and acted as a guide to visitors through their beautiful scenery. From him I learned the story many years before. He was either a public in-aura guide except to more foul shooters. It was evening to resume the story, and the Duke was pressing on to lodge his prisoner so long sought after in vain in some place of security when, in crossing the teeth or fourth, I forget which, my Gregor took an opportunity to conjure Stewart by all the ties of old acquaintance and good neighborhood to give him some chance of an escape from an assured doom. Stewart was moved with compassion, perhaps with fear. He slipped the girthbuckle and Rob, dropping down from behind the horse's crop, dived, swam, and escaped, pretty much as described in the novel. When James Stewart came on shore, the Duke hastily demanded where his prisoner was, and as no distinct answer was returned, instantly suspected Stewart's connivance at the escape of the outlaw, and drawing a steel pistol from his belt struck him down with a blow on the head, from the effects of which his descent and setting ever complete to recover it. In the success of his repeated escapes from the pursuit of his powerful enemy, Rob Roy at length became a wanton and facetious. He wrote a mock challenge to the Duke which he circulated among his friends to amuse them over a bottle. The reader will find this document in the appendix, number three. It's written in a good hand and not particularly deficient in grammar or spelling. Our southern readers must be given to understand that it was a piece of humor, a quiz, in short, on the part of the outlaw, who was too sagacious to propose such a ret, contra in reality. This letter was written in the year 1719. The following year Rob Roy composed another epistle very little to his own reputation, as he therein confesses having played a booty during the Civil War of 1715. It's addressed to general Wade at that time engaged in disarming the Highland clans and making military roads through the country. The letter is a singular composition. It sets out the writer's real and unfaigned desire to have offered his service to King George, but for his liability to be thrown into jail for a civil debt at the instance of the Duke of Montrose. Being thus debarred from taking the right side, he acknowledged he embraced the wrong one upon false staff's principle that since the King wanted men and the rebels' soldiers, it were worse shame to be idle in such a stirring world than to embrace the worst side where it as black as rebellion could make it. The impossibility of his being neutral in such a debate Rob seems to lay down as an undeniable proposition. At the same time, while he acknowledges having been forced into an unnatural rebellion against King George, he pleads that he not only avoided acting offensively against his Majesty's forces on all occasions, but on the contrary, sent to them what intelligence he could collect from time to time, for the truth of which he refers to his grace the Duke of Argyle. What influence this plea had on General Wade we have no means of knowing. Rob Roy appears to have continued to live very much as usual. His fame in the meanwhile passed beyond the narrow limits of the country in which he resided. A pretended history of him appeared in London during his lifetime under the title of the Highland Rogue. It is a catch-punny publication bearing in front the effigy of a species of ogre with a beard of a foot in length, and his actions are as much exaggerated as his personal appearance, some fuel of the best-known adventures of the hero I told, though with little accuracy, but the greater part of a pamphlet is entirely fictitious. It is a great pity so excellent a theme for a narrative of the kind had not fallen into the hands of Defoe, who was engaged at the time on subjects somewhat similar, though inferior in dignity and interest. As Rob Roy advanced in years he became more peaceable in his habits, and his nephew, Chlun Dhu, with most of his tribe renounced those peculiar quarrels with the Duke of Montrose by which his uncle had been distinguished. The policy of that great family had laterly been rather to attach this wild tribe by kindness than to follow the mode of violence which had been hitherto ineffectually resorted to. Leases at a low rent were granted to many of the McGregors, who adhered to forheld possessions in the Duke's Highland property merely by occupancy, and Glenn Guile, or Black Knee, who continued to act as collector of blackmail, managed his police as a commander of the Highland Watch, arrayed at the charge of government. He is said to have strictly abstained from the open and lawless depredations which his kinsmen had practiced. It was probably after this state of temporary quiet had been obtained that Rob Roy began to think of the concerns of his future state. He had been bred and long professed himself a Protestant, but in his later years he embraced the Roman Catholic faith, perhaps on Mrs. Cole's principle that it was a comfortable religion for one of his calling. He is said to have alleged, as the cause of his conversion, a desire to gratify the noble family of Perth, who were then strict Catholics. Having, as he observed, assumed the name of the Duke of Argyle, his first protector, he could pay no compliment worth the earl of Perth's acceptance, save complying with his mode of religion. Rob did not pretend, when pressed closely on the subject, to justify all the tenets of Catholicism, and acknowledged that extreme unction always appeared to him a great waste of ulzi, or oil. Such an admission is ascribed to the Robert Donald being lean and waverly. CHAPTER XXII. In the last years of Rob Roy's life, his clan was involved in a dispute with one more powerful than themselves. Stewart of Appen, a chief of the tribe so named, was proprietor of a hill farm in the braze of Bowkitter, called Invenente. The McGregors of Rob Roy's tribe claimed a right to it by ancient occupancy, and declared they would oppose to the uttermost the settlement of any person upon the farm, not being of their own name. The story came down with two hundred men well armed to do themselves justice by main force. The McGregors took to the field, but were unable to muster an equal strength. Rob Roy, fending himself the weaker party, asked to Parley, in which he represented that both clans were friends to the king, and that he was unwilling that they should be weakened by mutual conflict, and thus made a merit of surrendering to Appen the disputed territory of Invenente. Appen accordingly settled his tenants there at an easy quit rent, the McLarons, a family dependent on the Stewart's, and from whose character of strength and bravery it was expected that they would make their right good if annoyed by the McGregors. When all this had been amicably adjusted, in the presence of the two clans, drawn up in arms near the Kirk of Balkitter, Rob Roy, apparently fearing his tribe might be thought to have conceded too much upon the occasion, stepped forward and said that, where so many gallant men were met in arms, it would be shameful to part without a trial of skill. And therefore he took the freedom to invite any gentleman of the Stewart's present to exchange a few blows with him for the honor of their respective clans. The brother-in-law of Appen and second chieftain of the clan, Alastair Stewart, of Invernile, accepted the challenge and they encountered with broadsword and target before their respective kinsmen. Some accounts state that Appen himself was Rob Roy's antagonist on this occasion. My recollection from the accounts of Invernile himself was as stated in the text, but the period when I received the information is now so distant that it's possible I may be mistaken. Invernile was rather of low stature but very well made, athletic and an excellent swordsman. The combat lasted till Rob received a slight wound in the arm which was the usual termination of such a combat when fought for honor only, and not with a mortal purpose. Rob Roy dropped his point and congratulated his adversary, and having been the first man who ever drew blood from him. The victor generously acknowledged that without the advantage of youth and the agility accompanying it, he probably could not have come off with advantage. This was probably one of Rob Roy's last exploits and arms. The time of his death is not known with certainty, but he is generally said to have survived 1738 and to have died an aged man. When he found himself approaching his final change, he expressed some contrition for particular parts of his life. His wife laughed at these scruples of conscience and exhorted him to die like a man as he had lived. In reply he rebuked her for her violent passions and the counsel she had given him. "'You have footstripe,' he said, betwixt me and the best men of the country, and now you would place enmity between me and my God.' There's a tradition no way inconsistent with the former, if the character of Rob Roy be justly considered, that while on his deathbed he learned that a person with whom he was at enmity proposed to visit him. "'Rise me from my bed,' said the invalid. "'Throw me plowed round me and bring me a claymore or a dirk and pistols. It shall never be said that a foreman said Rob Roy McGregor is offenceless and unarmed.' His foreman, conjectured to be one of the McLaren's before and after mention, entered and paid his compliments inquiring after the health of his formidable neighbour. Rob Roy maintained a cold, haughty civility during their short conference, and so soon as he had left the house. "'Now,' he said, "'all is over to let the piper play. "'Hartil me tolech!' we returned no more. And he is said to have expired before the dirge was finished.' This singular man died in bed in his own house in the parish of Bal-Kitter. He was buried in the churchyard of the same parish where his tombstone is only distinguished by a rude attempt at the figure of a broadsword. The character of Rob Roy is, of course, a mixed one. His sujacity, boldness, and prudence, qualities so highly necessary to success in war, became, in some degree, vices from the matter in which they were employed. The circumstances of his education, however, must be admitted as some extenuation of his habitual transgressions against the law, and for his political interrogations he might in that distracted period plead that example of men far more powerful and less excusable in becoming the sport of circumstances than the poor and desperate outlaw. On the other hand he was in the constant exercise of virtues, the more meritorious as they seem inconsistent with his general character. Pursuing the occupation of a predatory chieftain, in modern phrase a captain of Van Ditti, Rob Roy was moderate in his revenge and humane in his successes. No charge of cruelty or bloodshed unless in battle is brought against his memory. In like manner the formidable outlaw was the friend of the poor, and to the utmost of his ability the support of the widow and the orphan kept his word when pledged, and died lamented in his own wild country where they were hearts grateful for his beneficence, though their minds were not sufficiently instructed to appreciate his errors. The author perhaps ought to stop here, but the fate of a part of Rob Roy's family is so extraordinary as to call for a continuation of this somewhat prolix account as affording an interesting chapter, not on highland manners alone but on every stage of society in which the people of a primitive and half civilized tribe are brought into close contact with a nation in which civilization and polity have attained a complete superiority. Rob had five sons, Carl, Ronald, James, Duncan, and Robert. Everything occurs worth notice concerning three of them, but James, who was a very handsome man, seemed to have had a good deal of his father's spirit, and the mantle of Duggled Siarmour had apparently descended on the shoulders of Robbanoig, that is, young Robin, shortly after Rob Roy's death, the ill-will which the McGregors entertained against the McLaren's again broke out, at the instigation it was said of Robb's widow, who seems thus far to have deserved the character given to her by her husband, as an ate, stirring up to blood and strife. Robbanoig, under her instigation, swore that as soon as he could get back a certain gun which had belonged to his father, and had been lately adorned to be repaired, he would shoot McLaren for having presumed to settle on his mother's land. This fatal piece was taken from Robbanoig when he was seized many years afterwards. It remains in possession of the magistrates before whom he was brought for examination, and now makes part of a small collection of arms belonging to the author. It was a Spanish-barreled gun marked with the letters R-M-C for Robert McGregor Campbell. He was as good as his word, and shot McLaren when between the stilts of his plough, wounding him mortally. The aid of a Highland Leech was procured, who probed the wound with probe made out of a cast stock, i.e. the stock of a cold-watered cabbage. This learned gentleman declared he would not venture to prescribe, not knowing with what shot the patient had been wounded. McLaren died, and about the same time his cattle were often his livestock destroyed in a barbarous manner. Robbanoig, after this feat which one of his biographers represents as the unhappy discharge of a gun, retired to his mother's house to boast that he had drawn the first blood in the quarrel aforesaid. On the approach of troops and a body of the stilts who were bound to take up the cause of their tenet, Robbanoig absconded and escaped all search. The doctor already mentioned by name of Callum McInleaster, with James and Ronald Brothers to the actual perpetrator of the murder, were brought to trial. But as they contrived to represent the action as a rash deed committed by the daft, callant robber, to which they were not accessory, the jury found their accession to the crime was not proven. The alleged acts of spoil and violence on the McLaren's cattle were also found to be unsupported by evidence. As it was proved, however, that the two brothers Ronald and James were held and reputed thieves, they were appointed to find caution to the extent of two hundred pounds for their good behavior for seven years. Note D. authors expedition against the McLaren's. The spirit of clanship was at that time so strong that which must be added the which to secure the adherence of stout, able-bodied and, as the Scotch phrase then went, trety men, that the representative of the noble family of Perth condescended to act openly as patron of the McGregors, and appeared as such upon their trial. So at least the author was informed by the late Robert McIntosh, a squire, advocate. The circumstances may, however, have occurred later than in 1736, the year in which this first trial took place. Robin Oig served for a time in the forty-second regiment, and was present at the Battle of Fontanois, where he was made prisoner and wounded. He was exchanged, returned to Scotland, and obtained his discharge. He afterwards appeared openly in the McGregors' country, and, notwithstanding his outlawry, married a daughter of Graham of Drunke, a gentleman of some property. His wife died a few years afterwards. The insurrection of 1745, soon afterwards, called the McGregors to arms. Robert McGregor of Glencarnock, generally regarded as the chief of the whole name, and grandfather of Sir John, whom the clan received in that character, raised a McGregor regiment, with which he joined the standard of the Chevalier. The race of Siarmour, however, affecting independence, and commanded Black, Glenguile, and his cousin James Roy McGregor, did not join this kindred corps, but united themselves to the levies of the titular Duke of Perth, until William McGregor Drummond of Balhaldi, whom they regarded as head of their branch, of Clan Alpine, should come over from France. To cement the union after the Highland fashion, James laid down the name of Campbell, and assumed that of Drummond in compliment to Lord Perth. He was also called James Roy after his father, and James Moore, or Big James, from his height. His corps, the relics of his father's robbs band, behaved with great activity with only twelve men he succeeded in surprising and burning for the second time, the fort at Inversnade, constructed for the express purpose of bridling the country of the McGregors. What rank or command James McGregor had is uncertain he calls himself Major, and Chevalier Johnstone calls him Captain. He must have held rank under Hlendu, his kinsman, but his active and audacious character placed him above the rest of his brethren. Many of his followers were unarmed. He supplied the want of guns and swords with scyblades set straight upon their handles. At the battle of Preston Pans, James Roy distinguished himself. His company, said Chevalier Johnstone, did great execution with their size. They cut the legs of the horses in two, the rider through the middle of their bodies. McGregor was brave and intrepid, but at the same time somewhat whimsical and singular. When advancing to the charge with his company, he received five wounds, two of them from balls that pierced his body through and through, stretched on the ground with his head resting on his hand. He called out loudly to the highlenders of his company, my lads, I'm not dead, my God. I shall see if any of you does not do his duty. The victory, as is well known, was instantly obtained. In some curious letters of James Roy, published in Blackwood's magazine, Vol. 2, page 228, it appears that his thigh bone was broken on this occasion and that he nevertheless rejoined the army with six companies and was present at the Battle of Culloden. After that defeat the clan McGregor kept together in a body and did not disperse till they had returned into their own country. They brought James Roy with them in a litter, and without being particularly molested, he was permitted to reside in the McGregor's country along with his brothers. James McGregor drummed, was attainted for high treason with persons of more importance, but it appears he had hit into some communication with government, as in the letters quoted he mentions having obtained a pass from the Lord Justice Clark in 1747, which was a sufficient protection to him from the military. The circumstances obscurely stated in one of the letters already quoted, but may perhaps, joined to subsequent incidents, authorize the suspicion that James, like his father, could look at both sides of the cards. As the confusion of the country subsided, the McGregor's like foxes, which had baffled the hounds, drew back to their old haunts and lived unmolested, but an atrocious outrage in which the sons of Rob Roy were concerned, brought at length on the family the full vengeance of the law. James Roy was a married man and had fourteen children, but his brother, Robin O'Aig, now a widower, and it was resolved if possible that he should make his fortune by carrying off and marrying, by force if necessary, some woman of fortune from the Lowlands. The imagination of the half-civilized Highlanders was less shocked at the idea of this particular species of violence that might be expected from their general kindness to the weir sex when they make part of their own families. But all their views were tinged with the idea that they lived in a state of war, and in such a state, from the time of the siege of Roy to the moment when Parviza fell, child Harrell's pilgrimage counter to the wealthier slaughter the lovelier spared. The female captives are two uncivilized victors, the most valuable part of the booty. We need not refer to the rape of Sabines or to a similar instance in the Book of Judges for evidence that such deeds of violence have been committed upon a large scale. Indeed, this sort of enterprise was so common among the Highland line as to give rise to a variety of songs and ballads. Number 6. End of Rob Roy. Volume 1, Introduction Part 4. Recording by Mike Harris.