Sketches of Perthshire. From this spot, Ewan Cameron, Donald M'Ian (alias Donachar) and Robert Dhu M'Gregor, might have seen, though of course they did not look, being occupied with the creagh, the church and ancient churchyard of Aberfoyle, and the high-pitched, two-arched bridge, under which runs the AvonDhu.

All this they might have seen as 'Ewan Cameron cohabited at Craiguchty,' near the Bridge of Aberfoyle. Had they but looked they would have seen the Clachan with its low, black huts, looking like boats set upside down, the smoke ascending from the wooden box-like chimneys, these they did not mark, quite naturally, as they were the only chimneys they had ever seen; nor did the acrid peat-reek fill their nostrils, accustomed to its fumes, with the same smell of wildness as it does ours to-day.

Craigmore and its White Lady was but a ruckle of old stones to them, and if they thought of any natural feature, it may have been the Fairy Hill to which the Rev. Robert Kirke, their minister, had retired only six years before, to take up habitation with the Men of Peace.1

Most probably they only scrugged their bonnets, shifted their targets on their backs, called out to any lagging beast, or without stopping picked up a stone to throw at him. The retiring freebooters lay there (Craiguchty) the first night.' One can see them, going and coming about the little shieling, and Ewan Cameron's wife and children, with shaggy hair and uncouth look, coming out to meet them, just as the women of an Arab 'duar' come out to meet a marauding party, raising their shrill cries.

Some of the men must have been on guard all night to keep the animals from straying and to guard against surprise, and as they walked about, blowing upon their fingers to keep them warm, the cold December night must have seemed long to them.

They would sleep little, between the cold and fear of an attack. Long before daylight they would be astir, just as a war party of Indians, or cattle-men upon an expedition in America, who spend the colder hours before the morning seated around the fire, always rise just before the dawn to boil their coffee pots. We know what took the place of coffee with Ewan Cameron and his band, or can divine it at the least.

Next night they reached Achray, 'in the Earl of Menteith's

1 See the Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fairies and Fauns, written in 1691 (?) and supposed to have been first published in 1815. It was reprinted in 1893, with Introduction by Andrew Lang.

land, and lay there in the town.' By this time the 'said hership' (that is, the stolen beasts) must have been rather troublesome to drive, as the old trail, now long disused, that ran by the birch copse above the west end of Loch Dunkie, was steep and rocky, and ill adapted for 'greate cowes.'

Both at Craiguchty and Achray they had begun to sell their booty, for the tenants there are reported as not having been 'free of the hership.'

In fact, Walter and John M'Lachlin in Blairwosh' bought several of the animals. Their names seem not to have been concealed, and it appears the transaction was looked upon as one quite natural.

One, Donald Stewart, who dwells at the wast end of Loch Achray,' also bought some of the geare,' with 'certaine' of the sheep, and thereafter transported them to the highland to the grass.

Almost unconsciously, with regard to these sheep, the Spanish proverb rises to the mind, that says, a sardine that the cat has taken, seldom or never comes back to the plate.'

So far, all is clear and above board. Ewan Cameron and his band of rogues broke in and stole and disposed of such of the booty as they could, sharing, one hopes, equitably between them the sum of fiftie six pounds, six shillings and eight pennies' (Scots) that they found in the house, reserving naturally a small sum, in the nature of a bonus, to Ewan Cameron, for his skill in getting up the raid.

As I do not believe in the word 'stripping,' and am aware that if we substitute the homelier 'striking' for it, no great harm would probably be done in an age when the stage directions in a play frequently run beats his servant John,' when speaking of some fine, young spark, all hitherto seems to have been conducted in the best style of such business known on the Highland line.

Now comes in one 'Alexander Campbell, alias M'Grigor,' who 'informs'; oh, what a falling off was there, in one of the Gregarach.

This hereditary enemy of my own family, and it is chiefly upon that account I wish to speak dispassionately... 'sed magis amicus veritas'... informed, that is he condescended to give his moral support to laws made by the Sassenach that Duncan Stewart in Baad of Bochasteal, bought two of the said cowes.' Whatever could have come into his head? Could not this Campbell, for I feel he could not have been of the sept of Dougal Ciar Mor, the hero who

wrought such execution on the shaveling band' of clerks after Glen Fruin, have left the matter to the 'coir na claidheamh '?

So far from this, the recreant M'Gregor, bound and obliged himself to prove the same by four sufficient witnesses'--so quickly had he deteriorated from the true practice of his clan. His sufficient witnesses were 'John Grame and his sub-tenant in Ballanton, his neighbour Finley Dymoch, and John M'Adam, Osteleir in Offerance of Gartmore.' A little leaven leaveneth the whole, and the bad example of this man soon bore its evil fruit.

We find that Robert Grame in Ballanton' (that is not wonderful, for he was of a hostile clan and had received none of the spoil as justifiable hush money) also came forward, with what in his case I should soften into 'testimony.' Far more remains to tell. 'Jean, spouse to the said Ewan Cameron,' that very Ewan who so justly received a bonus as the rent of his ability, also came forward and informed. She deponed that Walter M'Watt was of the band,' although we knew it all before.

It is painful to me to record that the said M'Watt was 'tenant to said Laird of Gartmore,' for it appears according to the evidence of Ewan Cameron's wife that 'he brocht the said rogues to the said house, went in at ane hole in the byre, which formerly he knew, opened the door and cutted the bands of the said cowes and horse.' This who after all neither made nor unmade kings, but only served his lord (Ewan Cameron), 'got for his pains, two sheep, a plyde, a pair of tow-cards, two heckles and a pair of wool cleets, with ane maikle brass pan and several other thinges.' The harrying of the luckless Isabell M'Clucky seems to have been done thoroughly enough, and in a business way. However, punishment possibly overtook the evil-doers, as Thomas M'Callum, who changed the said brass pott with the said M'Watt for bute,' testified in confirmation of the above.

2

'Item Janet Macneall giveth up that she saw him take the plough irons out of a moss hole the summer thereafter with ane pott when he flitted out of Offerance to the waird, and that he sent the plaid and some other plenishing that he got to John

1 I am well aware that gentlemen of the Clan Gregor have indignantly denied that Dougal Ciar Mor was the author of the slaughter of the students in Glen Fruin. If though we hold him innocent, how is he to be justified in the eyes of fame, for he seems to have done nothing else worthy of remark, . . . except of course being the ancestor of Rob Roy, an entirely unconscious feat of arms on his part.

2 Bute = spoil.

Hunter his house in Corriegreenan for fear of being known. Item the said Walter M'Watt died tenant to the Laird of Gartmore and his spouse and the said John Hunter took and intromitted with the whole geir. Item Elizabeth Parland spouse to umquhile George M'Muir, Moorherd in Gartmore, informs she being ane ostlere, that they gave a cow that night they lifted the hership to Patrick Graeme in Middle Gartfarran in the byegoing betwixt him and his brother Alexander Graeme in Borland and also that the said Robert M'Grigor and his brethern with the said John M'Watt met them in the way, although they came not to the house.

Item that they sold the rest of the geir at one Nicol M'Nicol's house in the Brae of Glenurchy and the said Nicol M'Nicol got a flecked horse for meat and drink from them and lastly Dugald McLaren and his brother Alexander got aquaviti among them. This is the true information of the said persons that I have endeavoured to get nottrie att, and if they be not material bonds and grounds of pursuit in it I give it over, but as I think the most material point is in the third article.'

So ends the document, leaving us in the dark as to what happened in the end, just as is usually the case in life.

The names of nearly all the witnesses, as Elizabeth Parlane, John Ffisher, Robert Carrick, Robert M'Laren, Thomas M'Millan, the pseudo-M'Gregor, and of course the Grames, were all familiar to me in the Gartmore of my youth.

All the place-names remain unchanged, although a certain number of them have been forgotten, except by me, and various old semi-Highlanders interested in such things, or accustomed to their sound. Ballanton, Craiguchty, Cullochgairtane (now Cooligarten), Offerance of Garrachel, Gouston of Cashlie, Bochaistail, Gartfarran, Craigieneult, Boquhapple, Corriegreenan, and others which I have not set down, as Milltown of Aberfoyle, though they occur in one or other of the documents, are household words to me.

What is changed entirely is the life. No one, I say it boldly, no one alive can reconstruct a Highlander of the class treated of my document as Loose and Broken Men.

in

Pictures may show us chiefs. Song and tradition tell us tricks of manner; but Ewan Cameron, Robert Dou M'Grigor, and their bold compeers elude us utterly. A print of Rob Roy, from the well-known picture once in the possession of the Buchanans of Arden, hangs above the mantelpiece just where I write these lines.

He must have known many a "gallowglass " of the Ewan Cameron breed; but even he was semi-civilised, and of a race different from all my friends. Long-haired, light (and rough) footed, wild-eyed, ragged carles they must have been; keen on a trail as is an Indian or a Black-boy in North Queensland, pitiless, blood-thirsty, and yet apt at a bargain, as their disposal of the 'particular goodes, to wit, four horses and two mares,' the sheep and other gear' goes far to prove.

The mares and horses are set down as being worth thirttie six pound the piece overhead,' and I am certain Ewan Cameron got full value for them, even although the price was paid in Scots, for sterling money in those days could not have been much used above the pass.' It must have been a more exciting life in Gartmore and in Aberfoyle than in our times, and have resembled that of Western Texas fifty years ago. In London, Addison was rising into fame, and had already translated Ovid's Metamorphoses. Prior was Secretary to the Embassy in Holland, Swift was a parish priest at Laracar, and in the very year (1698) in which Ewan Cameron drove his 'creagh' past the Grey Mare's Tail, on the old road to Loch Achray, Defoe published his Essay on Projects, and two years later his True Englishman.

Roads must have been non-existent, or at least primitive in the district of Menteith. This is shown clearly by the separation, as of a whole world, between the farm of Gouston, near Buchlyvie, and the shores of Loch Achray, where it was safe to sell in open day, beasts stolen barely fifteen miles away.

Men, customs, crops, and in a measure even the face of the low country through which those loose and broken men passed, driving the stolen cows and sheep, have changed. If they returned, all that they would find unaltered would be the hills, Ben Dearg and Ben Dhu, Craig Vadh, Ben Ledi, Schiehallion, Ben Voirlich, distant Ben More, with its two peaks, and Ben Venue peeping up timidly above the road they travelled on that December night, the Rock of Stirling, the brown and billowy Flanders moss, and the white shrouding mists.

R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.