Macgregor historian shows to have been fairly fought and won by the
courage and strategy of the Macgregors and their allies, who had taken
the initiative against a hostile force advancing to attack them. As for
the legend of the slaughtered scholars, she justly insists that this
story does not enter into the legal charges formulated against her clan,
from which such an atrocity would hardly fail to be omitted if it could
be brought home to them. She quotes another tradition as to this crime
being the work of a monster or madman of uncertain name; and she is able
to show that a few years later a highlander of Glencoe was accused
before the Privy Council of having “with his own hand murdered without
pity the number of forty poor persons who were naked and without
armour,” probably those scholars or other sightseers who had come out
from Dumbarton to see the battle, and whom the Macgregor annals
represent the chief as placing in a church out of harm’s way; he is also
said to have expressed the utmost horror at their unhappy fate.
Furthermore, the Macgregors’ plea includes a charge, founded on the
dying declaration of their resentful chief, that sly Argyll had a hand
in the whole quarrel, who, while professing to keep the peace of the
Highlands, was not above secretly setting two hostile clans by the ears
that they might destroy one another like Kilkenny cats, at the same
time, perhaps, throwing into relief the need for the services of a
powerful lord-lieutenant on the Highland border. For myself, I will only
say that in the whole affair there appears no evidence to call a blush
to the cheek of modern Macgregors; and that I regret having hurt any
clan feeling by my slight account of this battle long ago. The
Colquhouns’ story has been set forth by Sir William Fraser; and that
clan counts among its daughters a distinguished author who might draw
the pen against the Macgregor historian, if so disposed. As for the
Argyll family of to-day, they are all authors, so I leave it to them to
controvert the many hard things that have been said against their
forbears.
Glenfinlas and Glenfruin, in one or both of which fights Dumbarton
citizens were involved, raised such a noise in the Lowlands that, for
the moment, anything would be believed against the Macgregors. James’s
parting legacy to them was a persecution that aimed at exterminating
the “viperous clan,” as a Campbell styles them in a letter to the king.
Their very name was prohibited. They were forbidden to carry any arms
but a pointless knife for eating their victuals. Not more than four of
them might be suffered to show themselves together. Other offenders were
offered pardon on condition of quelling Macgregors, whose heads, in one
instance at least, were put to a price like wolves’. Within a year after
Glenfruin, more than thirty of them had been executed at Stirling alone.
The chief was hanged at Edinburgh; after one daring escape from
treacherous arrest, he had fallen into the hands of Argyll, who is said
to have promised to send him to England, a promise kept to the letter by
taking the captive over the Border, but at once bringing him back to his
doom. Hostile clans were set to hunt down the sons of Alpin, as Uncle
Sam has employed Cheyenne scouts against the Sioux. As with runaway
slaves, bloodhounds were employed in the chase of the proscribed rebels,
some of whom took refuge on an island of Loch Katrine, no doubt the same
as figures in the _Lady of the Lake_. Severe penalties were denounced
against “resetters” of those outlaws, and all holding friendly
intercourse with them. They did not want for sympathisers as well as
persecutors. It had to be expressly forbidden to ferry any of the
fugitives across the lochs to the south of their country, where they
might else seek refuge in the wilds of Dumbarton and Argyll.
Under this proscription the Macgregors became broken men. Bands of them,
“wolves and thieves,” wandered here and there on dark errands of
violence and vengeance. But many let themselves be crushed into
submission, changed their names, found “caution” for quiet behaviour,
or put themselves under protection of other lords and chiefs. The ruined
state of the clan is shown, ten years after Glenfruin, by the Laird of
Lawers having on his hands three or four score Macgregor “bairns,” their
fathers slain or outlawed, as to whom he was urgent with the authorities
that other landlords should at least contribute to the expense of such a
troublesome charge, not ten of them above the age of five. What to do
with this nursery was a question of some difficulty. It was proposed to
apprentice them in the Lowlands, like that uncongenial pupil of Simon
Glover; also to distribute them among families who should be answerable
for their safe keeping. Any child venturing to run away was liable to be
scourged and burned on the cheek, and to be hanged if he tried it again;
but over the age of fourteen, a youth risked hanging for the first
attempt. Even in face of such penalties, Macgregor bairns must have been
hard to hold or to bind on their native heath; and it is likely that
some of them gave their keepers the slip. A few years later, His
Majesty’s Council in England were made aware of emboldened outlaws, who,
after lurking quietly for a time, had again “broken loose, and have
associated unto them a number of the young brood of that clan who are
now risen up, and with them they go in troops and companies athwart the
country, armed with bows, darlochs, hackbuts, pistols, and other armour,
committing a number of insolencies upon His Majesty’s good subjects in
all parts where they may be masters.” As the Sahara to-day is haunted by
veiled Touareg caterans, even so we can imagine how civilescent Murrays
and
[Illustration: THE HEAD OF LOCH LOMOND]
Menzies would be fain to keep a sharp lookout in crossing the wild moor
of Rannoch.
The moon’s on the lake, and the mist’s on the brae,
And the clan has a name that is nameless by day.
Like other dubious characters, the sons of Alpin are now found passing
under _aliases_. Fresh outrages charged on them provoked an Act of
Charles I., 1633, confirming the former proscription, and specially
enjoining, on pain of deprivation, that ministers of the Highland or
bordering counties should baptize no child by the name of Gregor, and
that no clerk or notary should draw any deed in this forbidden
patronymic. So late as 1745, when Prince Charlie’s army was at hand, the
conscientious minister of Drymen refused to give it to a child offered
for baptism as Gregor. It was the real name of that Gilderoy, “the red
lad,” precursor of Rob Roy, who came to a more untimely end, as told in
his sweetheart’s lament--
If Gilderoy had done amiss,
He might have banished been.
Ah! what fair cruelty is this,
To hang such handsome men!
This bandit was hanged at Edinburgh, 1636. Among the charges against him
was one of taking part in a feud in the Grant country, where the Forbes
and the Gordons were concerned; we hear of those Ishmaelites as having a
hand in various quarrels as well as those of their own country. The
fellest foes of the Macgregors could seldom accuse them of not being
ready to fight, unless, as at Sheriffmuir, when distracted by plunder.
James VI. had offered Elizabeth a levy of Highlandmen, including fifty
Macgregors, to put down her Irish rebels. Sundry members of the
bellicose stock were let out of prison to make recruits for Gustavus
Adolphus in Germany. The Earl of Moray enlisted three hundred
Highlanders from Menteith and Balquhidder to overawe the Clan Chattan in
the north: these auxiliaries are believed to have been Macgregors, and
they are reported not to have taken kindly to this police service, so
that their employer dismissed them; while another story makes some of
them refuse to be dismissed, settling down on the Deeside lands, whither
they had been rashly called in as bailiffs.
In their own fastnesses the Children of the Mist still held out
stubbornly. When Montrose set the heather on fire he was followed by
part of the proscribed clan, coming boldly forth from the islands and
the wild nooks in which they had taken sanctuary; and we may be sure
their tartans were made welcome for the nonce. That blaze extinguished,
again they rallied to Charles II.’s standard set up by Glencairn at
Killin, which soon went down before Cromwell’s soldiery; then when their
Argyll enemies were out of favour, the King’s gratitude for fruitless
loyalty availed them in the repeal of the act of proscription. Their
forfeited lands, however, were not restored, as Montrose had promised in
his master’s name; and for the most part they had to content themselves
with becoming tenants or dependents of more thriving names.
Here and there, indeed, we find Macgregors, helped by other lawless
bands, making bold to drive off the occupants of farms from which they
had been themselves evicted; now and then emerges a record of “the good
old rule, the simple plan,” leading one of them to the gallows; but at
this date their historian can also quote a number of marriage contracts,
wadsetts, sasines, bonds, and such-like deeds of Scots law going to show
how the clan, on its outskirts at least, began more or less willingly to
adapt itself to the conditions of modern life. In 1691, that old enemy
Colquhoun of Luss comes forward to testify to the Laird of Macgregor as
“a law-abiding man, regularly paying mail and duty,” while other members
of the clan are still denounced as lawless loons, “who have little
property or inheritance to be a pledge for them.”
A stumbling-block to those hereditary warriors in their new course was
the campaign of Killiecrankie. However much set against the law, the
Macgregors had always been ready to stand for the king when bloodshed
and plunder were in question; and now a body of them, though not the
chief, followed Dundee to his fatal victory. This defiance of the Whig
Government, and the general disturbed state of the Highlands, prompted a
renewal of the clan’s proscription. Perhaps at the instigation of
Breadalbane, the special penal act against it was re-enacted early in
William’s reign; then the Macgregors’ conduct in 1715 and 1745 did not
invite its repeal.
For nearly a century now it was illegal to use the name of Macgregor.
That had been a matter of less importance when every Highlander was
known as the son of his father and of his own deeds; but now that even
Macgregors had occasion to put their hands to documents and to be
specified in records, it behoved them to answer to some convenient
surname, while secretly cherishing their own proscribed patronymic. Some
disguised it as Gregory, Gregorson, Grierson, and so forth. Some, since
better might not be, took the names of neighbours or of the lords on
whom they were now more or less dependent. Dr. Johnson understood that
David Malloch, the poet, was a Macgregor by birth, that “beggarly
Scotchman” who softened his assumed name to Mallet for London ears. Most
of the clan seem to have submitted to adoption as Campbells, Drummonds,
Grahams, and Murrays, names borrowed from the ducal houses, that,
originally besetting the Macgregor country, had gradually squeezed
themselves over it, where room was left by such encroachers as the
Menzies and the Campbells of Breadalbane. Near the Trossachs country Rob
Roy had to do with both Atholl and Montrose, as landlords and superiors;
but, when on his good behaviour, he chose to call himself Campbell as
recognising Argyll for his special patron. A good deal later, it was not
uncommon to find Perthshire men who knew themselves as Macgregors, but
passed before the world by other names. In the middle of last century,
Professor Macdougall could tell how one of his Edinburgh students gave
his name as Macgregor, then being asked to spell it, unconsciously did
so as C-a-m-p-b-e-l-l.
Rob Roy’s life I propose to treat apart; and then something may be said
of his clan’s part in the rising of 1715. In 1745 also, it can be taken
as a matter of course that the Macgregors did not hold aloof from such a
congenial chance of bestirring themselves, and in the _débâcle_ after
Culloden, their contingent was the last to disband, after boldly
marching through the Highlands to Balquhidder. Two separate bodies of
them had joined Prince Charlie’s army, as Scott states; but they seem to
have run together in the heat of Prestonpans; then there arose a certain
jealousy as to which chief had the best right to be colonel. For the
clan, as well as the country, was distracted by a pretender, and by more
than one. A dispute as to headship seems almost essential to the dignity
of a Highland stock; and the troubled life led by the sons of Alpin for
two or three centuries had helped specially to tangle the line of
succession into knots which Miss Murray Macgregor is at much pains to
unravel, her history being twisted, not to say encumbered, by such
contentions. She is naturally concerned to exalt her own family, the
Macgregors of Glenstray, above rival branches that during a confused
time had usurped precedence in a name legally extinct.
The law of proscription, indeed, had now become a dead letter, the
Macgregors being practically free to bear their own name if they
pleased, though for a time not to wear their own or any tartan, unless
along with the king’s coat. If some sons of the race went into exile
after Culloden, some to the gallows, and some are already found seeking
fortune across the Atlantic, others gained scope for their warlike
energy in the new Highland regiments that did such good service to the
Georges. Half-way between the two Jacobite risings, negotiations had
been set on foot by the kindred clans Gregor and Grant for taking either
Grant or Macalpine as their common name. This proposal wrecked on the
question of which clan should supply the chief; but some gentlemen of
both appear to have then dubbed themselves Macalpine. Half a century
later, the name of Macgregor was no longer in disgrace, its loyalty so
well proved that the Government could be called on to redress what made
now a mere sentimental grievance.
“Gregor Macgregor, Cacique of Poyais,” whom I mentioned in _Bonnie
Scotland_ as no great credit to the clan, was grandson of Gregor,
bynamed “Boyac” (the beautiful), who under the _nom de guerre_ of
Drummond enlisted in the Black Watch, was presented to George II., won a
commission, and came to be adjutant of the West Middlesex Militia. He
has the credit of drawing up a petition for the repeal of the laws
against his clan, as was granted in 1774 by an act evoking warm
professions of gratitude and loyalty from the now fully pardoned
Macgregors. At the end of the century these sentiments were made good by
the raising of a Clan Alpine regiment that, with a brother of its chief
for colonel, fought abroad as bravely as at Glenfruin.
The dynastic question had then been settled in a deed signed by over 800
of the name, recognising as their true prince one long fain to lurk
under the disguise of a Murray, as to whose essential Macgregorship I
allowed myself to speak so lightly. The chief thus elected as
representing the main line, was son of Evan Murray or Macgregor, who had
been content to end his days as lieutenant of invalids at Jersey, far
from the ancestral Glenstray; and the fortunes of the family seem to
have been restored by that modern enterprise known as “shaking the
pagoda tree.” His granddaughter duly informs me that “high appointments
in India prevented Sir John Macgregor Murray, the first baronet, from
fully resuming his own patronymic, although he came under obligations to
his clan that his only son should do so at his death.” So the last four
generations of Red Macgregors have been free to look the whole world in
the face without _alias_ or _alibi_, and flaunt their tartans up to the
banks of Jordan, no man daring to make them afraid, an undertaking that
seems always to have been beyond the power of most men.
VII
ROB ROY AND HIS SONS
The name of Macgregor now basks in all respectability and renown both at
home and far from its native heath. A Buddhist monk, of British origin,
who lately undertook to convert us Occidentals, dubbed himself
Macgregor, a name that has little suggestion of Nirvana, but seems to
accentuate apostasy from the Shorter Catechism. On the other hand
Evangelical Christianity and philanthropy of no dreamy sort found a
staunch upholder in a “Rob Roy” Macgregor of the last generation, who
paddled that byname into fresh note. At South coast resorts, a few years
ago, a portly personage attracted much attention by going decked in
Macgregor kilt or hose; but scandal gave him out a mere Sassenach, of
quite undistinguished name and prosaic occupation, who had the strange
fad of posing as a belated chieftain in his holidays, and to intensify
that effect donned the most flaring of all tartans, which Rob Roy must
have been too canny to wear when his business brought him near excitable
bulls. John Bull rather admires the Macgregor tartan, as the most easy
to recognise. His sympathies can readily be called out for
[Illustration: SILVER STRAND, LOCH KATRINE]
“Wee Magregors” and such-like, once looked on as wolf cubs to be caged
or exterminated. And much of this favour and familiarity comes through
the figure cut by Rob Roy, to make famous a name he himself durst not
bear, unless by stealth, when his foot stood firm on his native heath.
As to the popular hero of her clan, Miss Murray Macgregor has not so
much to say as might be expected; she seems even inclined to belittle
his reputation, and to denounce his freebooting exploits as
discreditable anachronism in a day of “changing moral sense.” She would
have us know that he was by no means the chief of the clan, as has been
lightly said, but only uncle and tutor to the young chieftain of
Glengyle, a junior branch rooted at the head of Loch Katrine. But he is
by far the most widely celebrated son of Gregor; and we need turn to no
more recondite source than Scott for fact and fiction to illustrate a
career that in its own day made copy for a London hack writer. Sir
Walter, by the way, regrets that rare tract, _The Highland Rogue_, not
having fallen to be written by Defoe; but there now seems reason to
believe that this catchpenny piece was Defoe’s work. Better informed
biographies of Rob Roy have been written in our time, one decked out in
trappings of fiction by the novelist James Grant; but he is still best
known from the novel that bears his name, or from Wordsworth’s
humorously idealising verses. Not to swell out the following sketch of
his life with vain repetitions of such qualifying phrases as “it is
said,” “he is believed,” the reader will please understand that a writer
has here to pick out what seems most likely to be the fact from a mass
of deficient and sometimes contradictory materials more easily handled
by fiction than by history. Our critical generation has gleaned very
little to round off the presentment of his hero by a romancer who in
youth had opportunities to gather what passed for truth about the scenes
of Rob’s exploits.
Scott had spoken to men who knew the renowned freebooter, and could
describe him as hairy and strong like a Highland bull--not tall, but
remarkable for the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his arms,
so that he could untie his garters without stooping. It was his red hair
or complexion, of course, that gave him the well-known byname. He is
supposed to have been born early in Charles II.’s reign, a descendant of
Ciar Mhor, the “great mouse-coloured man,” whom tradition accused of the
murder of those scholars at Glenfruin. He would hardly have been out of
his teens when the Revolution gave him an opportunity of apprenticeship
to scenes of violence. He may have fought at Killiecrankie. His first
recorded exploit was the Hership of Kippen in 1691, when he swooped down
into the Lennox to carry off a herd of cows belonging to Lord
Livingstone, and while he was about it plundered the village of Kippen,
whose inhabitants had presumed to oppose him with such clumsy weapons as
they had at hand.
The young leader of this raid was no homeless outlaw. He had a farm of
his own at Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, the accommodation of which he may
now and then have exchanged for what is shown on the lakeside as Rob
Roy’s Cave, said to have given shelter to Robert Bruce also in his day.
When the country had settled down after the Revolution, Rob is heard of
as taking grazing lands in Balquhidder, and as acquiring further
property or holdings at Craig Royston, farther down Loch Lomond, where
again an arched cavern is called “Rob Roy’s Prison,” and rival “Rob
Roy’s Wells” are pointed out in this tourist-haunted vicinity. Now or
afterwards he combined the apparently incongruous professions of
cattle-robber and blackmailer or captain of a border “Watch.” In 1695 he
appears to have fallen into the hands of the Philistines, for there is a
record of his being ordered for exile to Flanders; but somehow he must
have escaped this sentence, perhaps owing to the protection of the Duke
of Montrose. It is of course possible that he may here be confused with
some other member of the clan, in which the agname Roy was not uncommon.
To this nobleman, his neighbour on Loch Lomond, he for a time attached
himself, receiving not only protection but loans of money with which to
carry on business as a drover. Another way of telling it is that the
duke became practically a partner with his enterprising client. For now,
putting his pride into his pocket, Rob took to dealing in cattle at the
Lowland markets, a trade, as Scott tells us, not altogether peaceful in
its incidents.
The cattle, which were the staple commodity of the mountains, were
escorted down to fairs, 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, oppose their cudgels to the naked broadswords, which
had not always the superiority. I have heard from aged persons, who
had been engaged in such affrays, 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 thwack, and many a bang,
Hard crabtree and cold iron rang.
A slash or two or a broken head was easily accommodated, and as the
trade was of benefit to both parties, trifling skirmishes were not
allowed to interrupt its harmony.
The area of such operations was extended by the Union allowing Highland
cattle to be driven over the Border; and for a time our hero seems to
have done a profitable business. By and by, however, it went ill with
him in overstocked markets. His losses are also blamed on the rascality
of a partner who absconded in 1712, when Rob himself had to keep out of
the way of a charge that he had treacherously made off with money
entrusted to him by several nobleman and gentlemen for buying cows. Such
an embarrassed state of his affairs he faced by withdrawing himself
deeper into the Highland wilds. The Duke of Montrose pressed for payment
of his advances; then his agents are said to have insulted Rob’s wife,
in distraining upon their home in the master’s absence. This outrage is
charged against Graham of Killearn, the Duke’s chamberlain, upon whom
Rob afterwards took stinted revenge by seizing him while collecting
rents, laying hands on the money, and carrying off the man of business
to an island on Loch Katrine, from which, however, he was released,
robbed but unharmed, after a few days’ imprisonment.