beneath the flood of Murraydom. The nucleus of Blair Castle is called
Comyn’s Tower, and appears to have been a stronghold of the Red Comyns
of Badenoch. The earldom of Atholl was long held by royal offshoots like
that truculent Wolf of Badenoch, whose skeleton has lately been turned
up in Dunkeld Cathedral; and their following went to dot the region with
Stewart graves. Another name to be read on its tombstones is Ferguson,
that might claim descent from more or less mythical kings; but sons of
Fergus are famed rather in the victories of peace. Their most
illustrious scion is perhaps the philosophic historian Adam Ferguson,
born at Logierait, though, as being a son of the manse, his root in the
soil may be questionable. The Menzies appear as intruders from the
South, like the Murrays; but very old inhabitants were the Mackintoshes
of Glen Tilt, who exalt themselves against the Macphersons as heads of
the Clan Chattan. The Macbeths are said, not by themselves, to have
fallen to become helots under later lords of Atholl. Then, all over this
district and far around, twinkle traditions of the Macgregors, that
famous broken clan, of whom I have much to say farther on. Murray itself
is a name not so common as distinguished in Perthshire; and we saw above
how a farmer who had taken it along with allegiance to Atholl, was by
blood a Macgregor.
In more than one foreign book one comes across a statement, the origin
of which I cannot trace, that early in last century a census was made of
Highland names, which brought out Macgregor at the head of the list with
a numeration of 36,000. One knows not how such a count could be
effectually made; and it would be surprising if this name, so long cut
down by law, should have sprung up again with such dominant vitality.
Signor Piovanelli, an Italian writer who quotes that estimate, tells us
how he whiled away one probably wet evening of Highland travel by
counting names in an Inverness Directory. The sum of his calculation was
that out of a little over 4000 names, 1320 had the prefix _Mac_, 240
being Macdonalds, but they were surpassed by 415 Frasers, a name strong
in that belt of the country; and forty Alexander Frasers made the most
solid phalanx of nomenclature among the Inverness citizens. Some years
later Mr. A. Macbain undertook the same task more seriously, analysing
the Inverness Directory in a little book which confirms the Italian
tourist’s rough calculation, except as showing the Macdonalds to have
gained on the Frasers; he finds the Macgregors coming in with the ruck,
only 44 of them, and John beating Alexander as the commonest Christian
name.
Half a century ago, “for want of other idleness,” I had counted the
names in an Edinburgh Directory, and my recollection is that Robertson
came out highest. I have now had a census taken in the current Edinburgh
Directory, the result being that Robertson still stands top with,
roughly, 500 entries. Smith, with 450, runs second, and might not be far
behind if the Gows were counted in, who have kept the Gaelic form of
their name. The next on the list is Thomson, including no doubt many
Celtic MacTavishes; then come Lowland stocks, Browns, Andersons, and
Wilsons. Stewarts or Stuarts (300) stand highest among names that
nowadays seem to fit tartans, then Campbells and Macdonalds are equal
(240), both a little above Murrays and Frasers, so far from the Fraser
country. Most Macs make a poorer show, the Macgregors here amounting to
only some 100, and other plaided names hardly deserving a place; while
one is surprised to find Jamiesons not so numerous as might be expected
from a long succession of royal godfathers.
In a Glasgow Directory, as might be guessed, the figures come out
differently. Here Brown heads the list (530), Smith a good second (500),
and Stewart third (450), while Robertson has fallen to 330. Campbell
(380) takes a rather higher place than in Edinburgh; Macdonalds (260)
and Macgregors (130), slightly increased here, bulk less in what is, of
course, a much larger population, of more miscellaneous antecedents. All
those estimates are made somewhat roughly, and serve only for comparison
between the prevalence of different names. On turning to a London
Directory, one finds the Smiths in full pre-eminence, with a tale of
nearly 1300 names, to which may be added a reinforcement of Smyths and
Smythes. Brown and Jones are each about half as strong. Robertsons here
have shrunk to under a hundred, who indeed might call cousins with more
than 500 Robinsons and Roberts and smaller bodies of Robsons, Robins,
and so forth. A slightly larger force of Stewarts and Campbells have
sought fortune in the capital, where Macgregors stand at a bare two
dozen. So much for the Commercial section; to more patient statisticians
I leave the task of searching the Court, Professional, and Suburban
Directories, and drawing a moral that may or may not appear from the
number of Scottish names they find there.
It were, indeed, a labour of Hercules truly to measure Celtic
nomenclature, which takes as many shapes as Proteus. My friend, Mr. D.
MacRitchie, who has given much attention to such matters, tells me of
his connection with the Mackintoshes, sons of a _Tosh_ or chief, who in
time came to be scattered under more _aliases_ than a mere Sassenach can
trace. One scion of it, being a Richard, perpetuated his Christian name
in a branch of MacRitchies who in the Lowlands might have become
Dicksons. A Davidson branch is also recognised in the Highlands, who
claim for their McDhai forbears the honour of having brought on that
quarrel fought out on the Inch of Perth. Another got to be McTavish,
from the Gaelic form of Thomas; but not to mention those who anglicised
themselves outright as Thompson or Thoms, there are also MacThomases,
and MacCombies, the latter from _Hombie_, which, it appears, is a
corruption of Thomas. In fact, so liquid are Gaelic consonants that the
Clan Chattan, which the Mackintoshes claim to head, is held by some
philologists to bear the _alias_ of Kay as a variant of Adam’s name,
whose ancestry we could all boast without question till higher criticism
came to disturb this pride. But in all questions of Highland descent we
do well to “ca’canny,” as Eve was bidden by that first chief of Clan
Chattan, when she seemed to be taking too large a bite at the apple. It
is not alone slippery syllables we have to deal with, but the custom of
whole clans being adopted or absorbed, and the frequent case of others
shooting out new names to grow up about the memory of some distinguished
hero, who may indeed have branded his descendants with a mark of no more
dignity than the sobriquet “wry mouth,” or “crooked nose.”
Let me show by an imaginary case how hard it may be to catch the
chameleon tints of Highland blood. There is a youth much at home in
Perthshire, as carrying on there, and elsewhere, the highest form of
sport, at which he seldom misses his aim, yet often puts his victims to
a great deal of needless pain. He was well known to Robertson of
Struan, and quite as familiar in the Georges’ Court. He appears not to
have worn the kilt, nor yet breeches, but he has as much right to a
tartan and a pibroch as many Highland clans once strangers here. Now if
he had settled down and founded a family in Atholl, it might have come
to be known as MacEros, or Vich Venus, or FitzZeus, if he chose to hark
back to the fame of his grandfather. His own birth, in strict Scottish
law, should have been registered under the presumed name of MacVulcan;
but Struan Robertson could tell us how there were family scandals
tending to fix on him that of MacMars or MacMercury, which could be
translated as FitzAres or FitzHermes; then one episode in his career
might have obfuscated his descendants as MacPsyches, which, on coming to
try their fortune in London, they would be well advised to translate
into Cupidson; or as the Earl of Bute’s butler transposed MacCall into
Almack, they might find it convenient to be known as Lovemakers, unless
they took a fancy for Lovell as a name found in Perthshire, and said to
be of gipsy origin. But then they never could be sure that one or other
of their forbears had not found good reason for altogether changing his
name, perhaps having been out in the ’45, where Cupid intrigued on both
sides, if we may trust Captain Waverley’s experiences.
Should the reader sniff at this flight of mine, let him know how it is
all taken on a single feather stolen from Sir Walter’s wing, who in the
famous romance that has Atholl for one of its scenes, makes the
prejudiced English colonel own that he “could not have endured Venus
herself if she had been announced in a drawing-room by the name of Miss
MacJupiter.” The history of Olympus, as of Atholl, is a little obscure;
but its celestial tartan, too, seems to have been a chequer of
jealousies and kisses, feuds and favours, with revolution as the most
outstanding stripe in the pattern. And those who suffer under the
thunderbolts and vulture beaks of the present, have always looked fondly
back to a golden age, when everything went well under the chieftainship
of some Saturn whose origin is lost in distance along with any unlovely
traits of conduct, such as dethroning his father or swallowing his own
children.
IV
BREADALBANE
By Loch Tay we pass into Breadalbane, that Broad Albin of hill and vale
where many names have struggled for a mastery falling to the clan whose
Highland mettle was best tempered by Lowland canniness. While the senior
branch of the house of Campbell spread its tartans to the west and along
the Clyde, cadets of the same stock pushed north-eastward from Kilchurn
Castle into Perthshire, there to take firm root like the foreign trees
it planted on the Tay. Among the names overshadowed or displaced was
that of forbears of mine, on whose behalf, however, I have no blood feud
against the Campbells, the dealings between them seeming to have been
fair sale and purchase, as was not always the way in old Breadalbane.
It was pointed out, in _The Highlands and Islands_, how this politic
clan throve in love as in war, by prudent marriages as well as by noting
which way the wind of the time blew. Sir Colin Campbell, the founder of
the Perthshire house, had four wives, the first of royal blood, the
second a Stewart of Lorne, the third a Robertson of Struan, the fourth a
Stirling of Keir; and to their
[Illustration: THE HEAD OF LOCH TAY]
tochers was added a royal grant of land on Loch Tay, in reward for his
helping to arrest the murderers of James I. A century after his death,
another Sir Colin built himself a castle at the foot of Loch Tay, then
called Balloch, the easternmost border of his property, with the view,
it is said, of making this a new centre of extension. Legend has it that
the site was fixed where first the chief heard a mavis sing. His son,
“Black Duncan,” built or rebuilt several other houses at a time when
house property was becoming a safe investment. He was a man of some
culture, even suspected of authorship; and in his long lairdship was
written, apparently by his grandson’s tutor, that family chronicle, the
_Black Book of Taymouth_, that has been copied by the _Red Books_ and
_White Books_ compiled at a later time for other families.
“Black Duncan,” for all his dark repute, seems to have been a missionary
of civilisation, who both built and planted, as shown by old chestnut
and walnut trees now adorning his domain. He was made one of James’s
baronets of Nova Scotia. His son Colin appears in the novel character of
a Highland patron of art, employing George Jameson to execute family
portraits still preserved. Twenty marks for a half-length was the charge
of this artist, the first famous portrait-painter, not only of Scotland,
but of Britain, who is believed to have studied under Rubens at Antwerp,
with Vandyck as fellow-pupil.
The alliances of the Perthshire Campbells went on with noble and lairdly
houses; and their wealth paved the way to peerage, while they came to
look on themselves as an independent stock; yet in 1633, the head of the
Breadalbane branch is found addressing Lorne as his “lord and chief,”
and getting back the style of “cousin.” Under Charles II. Sir John
Campbell secured a reversion to the title and lands of the Caithness
Earl, whose widow he married to “mak’ siccar.” But on the Earl’s death a
right Sinclair arose to dispute this settlement; and the Breadalbane men
marched all the way to Caithness on that private invasion already
mentioned in _Bonnie Scotland_. The Sinclairs got the worst of it in the
field; but the law pronounced against the Campbell baronet’s claim, who
was consoled by the new titles, Earl of Breadalbane and Holland,
Viscount Tay, Lord Ormelie and Glenorchy, with other lordships thrown
into the lump of dignity.
This was the politician, “as sly as a fox, wise as a serpent, and
slippery as an eel,” who earned an evil name for himself through his
part in the Glencoe massacre, carried out by his vassal, Campbell of
Glenlyon. King William’s Government had placed in his hands the large
sum--when there was not a million of money in all Scotland--of £20,000,
to be spent in pacifying the Highlands, which he accounted for in this
offhand manner: “The Highlands are quiet; the money is spent; and that
is the best way of accounting among friends.” Yet William’s agent lived
to turn out his clan for the Pretender, in 1715, when they came to blows
with their kinsmen of Argyll. In the ’45, however, the next Lord
Breadalbane threw his influence on the Hanoverian side, though some of
the Perthshire Campbells joined Prince Charlie. This earl, like the
contemporary Duke of Atholl, was the second son; the elder, Lord
Ormelie, having been set aside from the succession, apparently as
weak-minded.
The direct line of Breadalbane died out in George III.’s reign with the
third earl, whose son, Lord Glenorchy, had predeceased him, leaving a
widow, known, like the Countess of Huntingdon, as a patroness of
evangelical preachers, who came to end her life at Matlock. For an heir,
the family had to cast back more than a century to one of the collateral
branches. Campbell of Carwhin, who succeeded to the earldom in 1782, at
the age of twenty, had a long and prosperous tenure, swelling the family
wealth by his marriage with a great Scottish heiress. She was daughter
of David Gavin, whose father, a poor Angus weaver, had lamented over the
son as not taking to his own trade, consorting rather with smugglers,
Dutchmen, and such-like; but the family ne’er-do-weel, drifting abroad,
made a princely fortune at Hamburg, and came back to set up as a
Berwickshire laird.
This accession of wealth the earl used in carrying out improvements on
his large property, adding to it, and building the modern Taymouth
Castle. At William IV.’s coronation he was raised to the marquisate. His
son, the second marquis, could boast of being able to ride a hundred
miles on his own land westward, for, after all, it was towards their
native seas that the Campbells stretched out, getting no farther inland
than Aberfeldy, beyond the St. Petersburg of their possessions. He it
was who in 1842 sumptuously entertained Queen Victoria at Taymouth, when
she seems to have caught that love of the Highlands that went so far to
set a fashion, delighted with the display of kilts, reels, and pipers,
in a blaze of torchlight and a din of loyal salvos. Lord Breadalbane
then kept a prince of pipers, John Mackenzie, to whom he communicated
the Queen’s wish to find for her own service such an one as himself.
“Impossible, my lord!” was the proud musician’s answer.
The second marquis, who, while Lord Ormelie, had sat in the Reformed
Parliament as a Whig, lived in esteem and prosperity till 1862, but
would perhaps have given up half his possessions for a son. At his
death, the new marquisate became extinct; and once more the clan had to
look back some generations for an heir to the estate and the earldom,
this time with appeal to law in a trial not yet forgotten. There were
popularly said to be some fourscore competitors for the prize. One of
them was a schoolfellow of mine, who invited me to Taymouth, when he
should come into his kingdom, but that hospitality fell through. The
real contest lay between Campbell of Glenfalloch and Campbell of
Boreland, both descended from the nearest collateral, a Glenfalloch who
died 1791. The question arose in the liberal view of Scots law as to
proof of marriage. The elder son, while a subaltern in an English
regiment, had eloped with the wife of one Christopher Ludlow, grocer and
apothecary at Chipping Sodbury. This husband died three years later,
both before and after which date the lady had marched with Campbell’s
regiment as his wife. Her son, through whom the claim descended, was
born after she became legally free to marry again; and the dispute
mainly turned upon this delicate point: whether a union begun in
adultery could be confirmed by the usual evidence of habit and repute
marriage. It was shown that the lady had been received at Glenfalloch as
the heir’s wife, that she had drawn a pension as his widow when he died
Quartermaster of the Breadalbane Fencibles, and, what seemed much to
the purpose, that the younger branch had not contested her son’s
legitimacy as heir of Glenfalloch, nor till the tempting prize of the
Breadalbane succession came in view. On these grounds, the Courts
presumed that eloping couple to have taken themselves as husband and
wife, so taken by the world in their lifetime: then their descendant
must be recognised head of the family.
The successful claimant gained the old earldom, the marquisate becoming
extinct, but it was revived in the person of his son, who married a
daughter of the house of Montrose, hereditary enemy of his race. He now
has reigned for a generation at Taymouth Castle, one of the noblest
Scottish seats, among finely planted grounds and gardens, where, but for
the mountain background, one would hardly believe oneself in the
Highlands. The neat model village of Kenmore also suggests anything but
a Highland clachan. Some critics, indeed, have found fault with the
glories of Taymouth as out of keeping--“an artificial and drilled scene
that seems to have been modelled in a toyshop and transplanted hither by
a chain and a theodolite”; and the celebration of them in Burns’s verse
shows his Muse for the nonce in her Sunday clothes, cut after the
prevalent fashion. At least, most of the “Temples” and such-like have
disappeared, with which this oasis of grandeur was once adorned, after a
model shown in Kew Gardens and elsewhere by the “Capability” Browns,
Chamberses, Reptons, and other “improvers” of nature in the Georgian
period. More at home seem the ruins of a Priory hidden among old
sycamore trees, on a small island in the lake, where the Campbells had
a castle of refuge, bombarded from the shore by Montrose as he swept
through the Highlands. General Monk’s soldiery were quartered on this
island, and have the traditional credit of teaching the natives to smoke
tobacco; but snuffing, at least, was older in the Highlands.
It is whispered that the lord of this lake does not trust himself on the
water that, according to old prophecy, is to be fatal to a Breadalbane.
But for undoomed strangers a tourist steamer plies on Loch Tay, “an
immense plate of polished silver, its dark heathy mountains and thickets
of oak serving as arabesque frame to a magnificent mirror.” Like the
other Perthshire lakes, this is a deep trough set in slopes furrowed by
affluents of what appears a broad river fifteen miles long. Loch Tay’s
banks are well wooded and cultivated on the south side, while the north
shows more truly Highland features, “a clan of Titans,” as Scott calls
them, commanded by “the frowning mountains of Ben Lawers, and the still
more lofty eminence of Ben Mhor, arising high above the rest, whose
peaks retain a dazzling helmet of snow far into the summer season, and
sometimes during the whole year.” Ben Lawers is now recognised as the
chieftain of Perthshire summits, only a few hundred feet short of Ben
Nevis. From the lake this is easily ascended for what Macculloch extols
as the most varied and far-reaching Highland prospect.
To the south, we look down on the lake, with all its miniature
ornament of woods and fields, terminating westward in the rich vale
of Killin, and uniting eastward with the splendour of Strath Tay,
stretching away till its ornaments almost vanish among the hills
and in the fading tints of the atmosphere. Beyond the lake the
successive ridges of hills lead the eye over Strathearn, which is,
however, invisible, to the Ochills and the Campsie, and hence, even
to Edinburgh; the details of this quarter, from Perth, being
unexpectedly perfect and minute, and at the same time well
indicated by the marked characters of the Lowmont hills. The place
of Dunkeld and the peculiar style of its scenery are also
distinctly visible; and it is equally easy to make out the bright
estuary of the Tay, the long ridge of the Sidlaw, and the plain of
Strathmore. Westward, we trace, without difficulty, the hills of
Loch Lomond and Loch Cateran; and, in the same manner, every marked
mountain, even to Oban, Cruachan and Buachaille Etive being
particularly conspicuous. To the north, Glen Lyon is entirely
excluded; the first objects, in this direction, being Schihallien
and its accompanying mountains, leading us to the vale of the Tumel
and Loch Rannoch, and even to Loch Laggan, seen as a bright narrow
line: and thus, on one hand, to Glenco and Ben Nevis, and, on the
other, to Ben-y-Gloe, lifting its complicated summit above the head
of Ferrogon; beyond which the mountains at the head of Dee, of Marr
and Cairngorm, marked with perpetual snow, were the last objects
which I could satisfactorily determine. So great a range of view,
with so many and such marked objects, is unexampled in any other
spot in Scotland.
At the head of the lake, between the streams of the Dochart and the
Lochay that unite to fill it, stands the pretty village of Killin, whose
sojourners soon come upon names and relics of other clans overlaid by
the intruding Campbells. Near the pier are the ruins of Finlarig Castle,
for a time their chief seat, built by Black Duncan on the site of a
ruder stronghold he had acquired from the Drummonds, whose name is
preserved by Drummond Hill at the other end. When the Breadalbanes had
moved on to Taymouth, Finlarig became their last home, in the modern
mausoleum that has not yet gathered such gloomy note as the old
Doom-tree on which hung many a plaided offender, while a heading-stone
was provided for the shedding of gentle blood.
Black Duncan and his line did much stern work as “justiciars,”
especially on their neighbours, the Macgregors, then under James VI.
going down in a changed world, as the Campbells came up. Fetters and
shackles made an important part of the furniture at Finlarig, which has
comic as well as grim traditions of its rough-and-ready executions, like
that of the reluctant Highlander urged by his wife to more alacrity in
stepping up to be hanged “to pleasure the laird.” The axe is still shown
at Taymouth with which a Macgregor chief was executed; more than one,
indeed, coming to such an end, if all tales be true.
In one case the legend is that a Macgregor, invited to a friendly
conference, was ambushed by armed men, who dragged him to the block at
Kenmore, having killed his aged father on the way. But the stories make
some confusion of father and son; and it seems doubtful whether this
were the same victim as the “Red Macgregor” beheaded before the eyes of
his wife, herself a Campbell by birth, who cursed her kindred in a
celebrated Gaelic lament, with its burden of--
Ochain, ochain--sad my heart, my child!
Ochain, ochain--thy father hears not our moan!
On Lammas morn I rejoiced with my love; ere noon my heart was
pressed with sorrow.
[Illustration: THE DOCHART]
Under ban be the nobles and friends who pained me so: who unawares
came on my love, and overmastered him by guile.
Had there been twelve of his race and my Gregor at their head, my
eyes would not be dim with tears, nor my child without its father.
They laid his head upon an oaken block: they poured his blood on
the ground: oh had I there a cup I would drink of it my fill!
Oh that my father had been sick, and Colin in the plague, and all
the Campbells in Balloch wearing manacles!
I would have put Gray Colin under lock and Black Duncan in a
dungeon, though Ruthven’s daughter would be wringing her hands.
I went to the plains of Balloch, but rest found not there: I tore
the hair from my head, the skin from my hands.
Had I the wings of the lark, the strength of Gregor in my arms, the
highest stone in the castle would have been the one next the
ground.