THE RED MACGREGOR.
"History," says a noble author, "is a romance which is believed;
romance, a history which is _not_ believed." Hence so much that is
fabulous surrounds the name of Rob Roy, that, like Macbeth, his real
history and character become almost lost; but I shall endeavour to
tell the reader who and what he actually was. Rob Roy MacGregor,
otherwise compelled by law (for reasons which shall be given
elsewhere) to call himself _Campbell_, was in his twenty-fifth year
at the time our story opens.
He was the second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Donald MacGregor, of
Glengyle, in Perthshire, who commanded a regiment of infantry in the
Scottish army of King James II. of England and VII. of Scotland. His
mother was a daughter of Campbell of Glenfalloch, a powerful Highland
chieftain, nearly related to the House of Breadalbane; consequently
his birth was neither obscure nor ignoble. His elder brother was
named John, and he had two sisters. His patrimony was the small
estate of Inversnaid, near the head of Loch Lomond, and, through his
mother, he had a right to a wild territory of rock and forest, named
Craig-Royston, on the eastern shore of that beautiful loch, under the
shadow of vast mountains; but, in virtue of the arbitrary Act of the
Scottish Parliament, which abolished the name of MacGregor, he was
always designated, in legal documents, Robert Campbell, of Inversnaid.
After the bloody clan-battle of Glenfruin, which led to the
proscription of the whole of his surname, "few of the MacGregors were
permitted to die a natural death," says the historian of the clan.*
"As an inducement to murder, a reward was given for every head of a
MacGregor that was conveyed to Edinburgh, and presented to the
Council; and those who died a natural death were interred by their
friends, quietly and expeditiously, as even the receptacles of the
dead were not held sacred. When the grave of a MacGregor was
discovered, it was common for the villains employed in this trade of
slaughter, to dig him up, and mutilate the remains, by cutting off
the head, to be sold to the Government, which seemed to delight in
such traffic."
* Dr. MacLeay.
The historian proceeds to narrate that the chief purveyor of such
goods was a certain petty Laird of Glenlochy, named Duncan Campbell,
but more usually known as Duncan _nan Cean_--_i.e._, "of the heads."
It chanced one night that Lieutenant-Colonel MacGregor (the father of
Rob Roy), accompanied by three soldiers of his surname, was passing
near the ruins of the old castle of Cardross (wherein Robert Bruce
breathed his last, and which were then visible, a little to the
westward of the Leven, in Dumbartonshire), when, in a narrow pathway,
they met a man leading a horse, on each side of which a pannier was
swung.
The path was rough, as well as narrow, and on meeting four armed men
suddenly in the dark, the man shrunk from the bridle of his horse,
which reared, and caused the contents of the panniers to make a
strange noise among the straw in which they were packed.
"Be not alarmed, good fellow," said Glengyle; "we are not thieves,
but soldiers in the King's service. What have you in the panniers?"
The man hesitated, and endeavoured to pass on.
"Speak!" said the Colonel, whose suspicions became aroused; "is it
plunder?"
"Heaven forbid--I am an elder of the kirk, sir."
"What then?"
"Heads for the Lords of Council at Edinburgh," replied the stranger,
gathering courage.
"Heads of whom?"
"The King's enemies."
"Mean you gipsies, or westland Whigs?"
"Nay; of the clan Gregor."
"He is Duncan nan Cean! He is Duncan of the Heads!" exclaimed
Glengyle, with ferocious joy, as he drew his sword. "Villain, I have
sought thee long, and now _thy_ head shall keep them company!" and,
by a single stroke, he, in an instant, decapitated him. The panniers
were examined by his followers, who, with rage and horror, found
therein several ghastly heads, packed in straw. These they
immediately buried in a secret place, and resumed their way before
dawn.
Rob Roy's father received the tribute called black-mail, for
protecting, in arms, all who were unwilling or unable to protect
themselves. This tribute was, in every sense, a legal tax, which the
justices of the peace, in the counties along the Highland border,
enforced upon the heritors and householders. We know not when the
Laird of Glengyle died; but, on one occasion, he led three hundred of
his clan against the Macphersons, who had given offence to his
friend, the Earl of Moray, and, in marching through the forest of
Gaich, he slew the deer, and the forester of Cluny, who had resented
their passage.
Red Robert, his second son, was about the middle height, but had a
frame possessed of vast strength and great powers of endurance and
activity. His shoulders were broad, his chest ample, and his arms
were so long that it was commonly said he could garter his hose,
below the knee, without stooping. This, no doubt, is exaggeration;
but he possessed
A wondrous length and strength of arm,
which gave him great advantage in combats with the broadsword. Of
these he is said to have fought no less than _twenty-two_.
Even in boyhood he excelled in the use of the claymore and all other
weapons; for this he was, no doubt, indebted to the tutelage of his
father, old Donald of Glengyle, who had handled his sword in the wars
of the Covenanters and Cavaliers.
No man was ever known to _wrench_ anything from Rob's hands; and so
great was his muscular power that he would twist a horse's shoe, and
drive his dirk, to the hilt, through a two-inch deal board; and on
more than one occasion he has seized a mountain stag by the antlers,
and held it fast, as if it had been a little kid. He never, save
once, refused a challenge. This was when a peasant, named Donald
Bane, drew a sword upon him.
"Beware, fellow," said Rob; "I never fight a duel but with a
gentleman."
His character was open and generous, and it was ever his proudest
boast that "he had never been known to turn his back _either on a
friend or a foe!_"
His lands were frequently wasted, and his cattle carried off, by
bands of caterans from the mountains of Ross-shire and Sutherland;
hence, for his own protection, he was compelled to maintain a party
of well-armed and resolute followers, who, like himself, acquired
great experience in war, with habits of daring.
With an open and manly countenance, his features, in youth, are said
to have been pleasing and cheerful in expression; but, by the course
of life upon which unjust laws and adverse fortune hurried him, they
gradually acquired that grave, and even morose, aspect, which we find
depicted in the portrait of him possessed by Buchanan of Arden; the
brows are knit, the eyes stern, and the firm lips compressed. He has
a moustache, well twisted up, and a short curly beard, neither of
which were then worn in England, or the Scottish Lowlands. He wears
a round, blue bonnet, with a black cockade, and has his
weather-beaten neck without collar or cravat.*
* Two other portraits of Rob Roy are in existence. One belongs to
the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh; the other to the Duke of Argyle,
and it had a narrow escape from the fire which consumed the castle of
Roseneath in 1802.
His hair, from the colour of which he obtained his sobriquet of Roy
(a corruption of _ruadh_, or red), was of a dark, ruddy hue, with
short frizzly locks, which he wore without powder--a foolish fashion
that was seldom found among the Highlanders, who usually tied their
hair in a club behind. The circumstance that MacGregor was named
_Red_ Robert, to distinguish him from others, is sufficient to show
how false is the popular error which bestows hair of that colour upon
every Highlander.
"In his conflicts," says Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to the
novel which bears our hero's name, "Rob Roy avoided every appearance
of cruelty; and it is not averred that he was ever the means of
unnecessary bloodshed, or the actor of any deed that could lead the
way to it. 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 be policy; but the universal tradition of the
country speaks of it to have arisen from a better motive. All whom I
have conversed with--and in my youth I have seen some who knew Rob
Roy personally--gave him the character of _a humane and benevolent
man_."
As yet, however, he was neither a robber nor an outlaw; but simply a
Highland country gentleman, a chieftain of a broken clan, living
under the protection of his mother's name and kindred; farming his
little estate of Inversnaid; dealing in cattle, then the chief wealth
of our northern mountains; and, being of a warlike disposition,
occupying himself as the collector of black-mail--the local tax then
paid by proprietors, whose estates lay south of the Highland
frontier, to certain warlike chiefs and chieftains, northward of that
line, for the armed protection of their lands and goods from the
irruption of such caterans as those MacRaes, who had stolen the
cattle from Inversnaid, and of whom we left Rob and his men in hot
pursuit.
And it was the collection of this duty, _black-mail_, which, in 1729,
ultimately led to the embodiment of the Black Watch, or 42nd Highland
Regiment; and it was continued to be levied by certain chieftains so
lately as the middle of the _last_ century--certainly until 1743. At
the time we have introduced him to our readers Rob had been married
for some time, to a daughter of MacGregor, the Laird of Comar.
Far from being the fighting amazon and fierce virago whom Sir Walter
Scott has portrayed, Helen Mary, the goodwife of Inversnaid, was a
kind, gentle, and motherly woman, who never flourished abroad with
breast-plate, bonnet, and broadsword, as we see her on the stage,
when opposing the bayonets of the redcoats; but who attended to her
frugal household, her spinning, baking, and brewing; and who wore the
simple kerchief and _tonnac_, or short plaid, which, until the close
of the last century, formed the usual female costume in the
Highlands; and never, save once, and then on a trifling occasion, did
she act a stern and resolute part, in an episode to be narrated in
its place.
The reader must bear in mind that Rob Roy was not a chief at the head
of a clan, but merely the second son of a chieftain (the _second_
rank) at the head of a branch of the Clan Alpine, called the line of
Dugald Ciar Mhor (or Dugald with the mouse-coloured hair), and the
men of this branch adhered to him, as being his immediate kinsmen and
tenants.
Deeply in the heart of Rob Roy MacGregor rankled the story of the
wrongs and oppression to which his clan had been subjected by the
Scottish Government--wrongs which, after the accession of William
III., were rather increased than diminished; and thus he burned for
an opportunity of avenging them at the point of his sword, on their
chief enemies, the Grahames of Montrose, the Colquhouns of Luss, and
others; and ere long an ample opportunity came. But meanwhile let us
return from this necessary digression, lest Duncan of the Forays
escape with his spoil.