That turbulent warrior, Donald Glas (Grey or Pale) MacGregor of Portnellan in Glen Gyle, whom I introduced in the previous chapter and dismissed temporarily (after deploring his death from mal-treatment received in Einburgh Tolbooth) was born in 1620. at the time of the worst proscriptions. He was named after his uncle Donald Glas MacDonald. He married Margaret Campbell who came of both Campbell of Glen Orchy and Campbell of Glen Lyon chiefs. When Campbell of Glen Orchy married the widow of the 6th Earl of Caithness and wished to take over his newly acquired Earldom, he was opposed by the Caithness Sinclairs. He raised a force of Camphells and was supported by Donald Glas MacGregor's eldest son John with a strong force of his clan from Glen Gyle. They marched to the neighbourhood of Wick, where, having crossed the Ord of Caithness, a mountain ridge, they met the Sinclairs, The mixed force of former clan rivals camped by the Altimarlach Burn, while the Sinclairs sat up all night drinking and carousing in Wick. "Merry nichis mak dowie moms" was a proverb well illustrated. The wild charge of the Glen Gyle and Glen Orchy men resulted in such a slaughter of Sinclairs that the victors passed over the burn dryshod upon their corpses. The victors immediately set to. and. in a very successful liaison. composed the two pipes tunes "The Campbells are Coming". and the "Braes of Glen Orchy". In Gaelic the first is "Baile Inbheararaora "or "Inveraray Town".

It is little wonder that, with such a strong Campbell background. Rob Roy, Donald's third son, should have taken the name Campbell when the proscriptions of 1693 came into effect.

In view of the doubts that are sometimes cast on the existence of Rob Roy in the tiesh, here is a verbatim recording of his baptismal notice from the parish records of Buchanan, which adjoins Callander parish.

"On the 7 day of March 1671. Donald McGregor of Glengill pr of Callender upon testificat from the minr yrof Margaret Campbell~son baptised Robert. Witness Mr. Wm Anderson minr and Johne McGregore".

Very early in his career he was concerned in several notable exploits. the first of which was the famous Herschip or Harrying of Kippen when he emulated his predecessors of Glen Fruin, by driving off great numbers of sheep and cattle from that fertile strath west of Stirling. In another exploit. which was undertaken because of a higher urge than mere gain. he took a large body of Glen Gyle men to Strathspey; I have already mentioned this; I would like to fill in some colourful details.

Patrick Grant was a flamboyant chieftain of Strathspey who went about the Rothiemurehus area with a band of two dozen desperadoes executing summary and often quite unsubstantiated sentences on supposed wrong-doers. He was dressed in fine velvets, satins; his shoes lined with down and his cap dorned with great tail feathers of eagles. His table was furnished with choice meats and imported wines. He was what we should call now an ornament of the third sex.

He fell out with the MacIntoshes about 1690 over the supply of water to his mill. The chief of his rivals had built another mill farther up the burn, and was diverting the water for his own use. He now threatened to burn Grant's mill. In his extremity Grant sent hurriedly for Rob Roy, nearly a hundred miles oft, by the tortuous paths through the Cairngorms.

Soon after, as the MacIntoshes sat menacingly on all the adjacent hillocks, Rob appeared, accompanied by a solitary piper. On being querulously asked by Grant where his "tail" of the Clan Gregor was, Rob slapped him on the back and said, "Cheer up what though the purse be light in the morning. who can say how heavy it may be by nightfall?" He bade the piper blow a pibroch "The Rout of Glen Fruin" and as the notes swelled, bands of MacGregors sprang from the rocks and bushes, fully armed. As they appeared, the MacIntoshes disappeared in inverse ratio. The force of Grants and MacGregors then set fire to MacIntosh's mill, while the piper composed a new air to fit in with the roar and crackle. It was named "The Burning of the Black Mill" and is still given as a set piece in piping competitions.

After Donald Glas's death, followed a year or two later by the death of his heir John, who had also been in the Edinburgh Tolbooth, Rob Roy felt he had a long score to pay off against the Scottish establishment and he did this unsparingly with a grim humour which endeared him to the common folk and will probably continue to delight them.

His mother having been a Campbell, and his brother and father having aided Glen Orchy to keep his Earldom, Rob had a foot in both camps, a great help to him in his exploits. For a time he dealt in black cattle and fell in to trouble over a rogue of a partner, who absconded and left Rob to face his irate creditors. He was now, innocently perhaps, on the wrong side of the law. The Duke of Montrose, a Graham, was one of those who felt he had been cheated. He turned Rob's wife, Mary MacGregor of Comar, out of her house in wintry weather, with her young boys, in an effort to poind Rob's furniture and chattels. Rob now declared war on Montrose, for this injury, and of course was readily encouraged to do so by Argyll. The Grahams and Campbells. as I said earlier, were bitterly opposed, more so after the severities of the Civil War fifty years before. Argyll gave his distant relative, Rob, a house within his estates. The phrase is "granted him wood and water".

When Argyll was taxed with this leniency towards such a desperado, he replied that his generosity was minimal compared with that of Montrose, who supplied Rob with bountiful and regular loads of meat; "lifted" of course.

About this time Rob acquired the rocky estate of Craig Royston between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, a strategic point from which to conduct an extensive campaign of blackmail. It is thought that this word has nothing to do with colour, though black cattle were involved. It is an old word for protection money. The system was open to abuse. It was apt to turn into the sort of racket that goes on today. Pay up or else. But Rob was very skilful in recovering stolen cattle, for few thieves dared to argue with him. All the same, with property so insecure, the entire countryside near the Highland Line, in a broad belt across Scotland, about twenty miles wide, was rendered unproductive, and Rob got the blame for this general lawlessness, though there were many involved.

1 do not think that I can do any justice in this short history to Rob's activities and adventures. I recommend those who are interested to read Scott's very long historical note on the MacGregors in the appendix to Rob Roy. The note runs to twenty thousand words, about half the length of this book; much of it is devoted to Rob Roy and his family. There are many other books on Rob, such as "Highland Constable", by Hamilton Howlett, and the early collections named in my introduction, by the Rev. Mr MacLeay.

In the risings of 1715 and 1719, Rob took over the leadership, though MacGregor of Balhaldie had been recognised as chief at a gathering in 1714, as I have said. Rob's action at Sheriffmuir, or lack of action, has often been criticised, but Hamilton Howlett defends his distant relative's record there. He believes he came too late to take effective action, and had too much sagacity to throw his men away on a forlorn hope. One of Rob's battalion is rumoured to have shown his lack of political interest by remarking that "he was neither for King Shamus nor King Shordie but for King Spulzie (loot)". After this indecisive battle Rob and his men had a skirmish at Dunkeld with the Royal forces, from which they emerged losers, so they took over Falkland Palace in Fife, where they hibernated in all the crude comfort of early Scottish kings, and took a heavy toll of provisions from the "Howe" of Fife.

I shall not expatiate farther on Rob's adventures. He was audacious, and physically far above normal ability. He was also shrewd and knew when he had better use discretion. This part of his nature perhaps he derived from the Campbells, for the MacGregors were not noted for being discreet. A business letter of his own composition is extant and shows he wrote a firm neat hand, grammatically correct, and had a grasp of money matters, as well as of the cash itself. His leisure reading was of high-class matter, judging by the journals and books he subscribed to one of which was Keith's "History of Affairs of Church and State in Scotland", published in Edinburgh in 1735. though Rob did not live to read it.

His exit is recorded quite as laconically as his entrance. The Caledonian Mercury of 9th January 1735 reported under Deaths:

"Robert MacGregor, (or Campbell) died at Inverlochlarigbeg (head of Loch Dome) parish of Balquhidder on Saturday was Se'night". That is, on the 28th December 1734.

He was buried in the old Kirkyard of Balquhidder.

Scott believed that he died an aged man, but he was only 63, ("quite a young man" as my nonagenarian grandfather David MacGregor remarked in my hearing). Perhaps his exertions in robbing the rich to help the poor (including himself) had prematurely aged him. In truth, however, he was one of the poor for, after his funeral expenses and small debts had been paid he left a personal estate of £275. 13.4 (Scots) equal to £23 English, all to his wife Mary.

As to this misnaming of his wife as Helen, I have some contradictions to bring forward, on that and other misrepresentations. W.S. Crockett points out that she was named Mary, not Helen, and that she was of the Comar branch of the MacGregors. She was far from being the virago of Scott's novel. She was agreeable, domesticated, hospitable, musical and poetical.

Pursuing this point farther and completely demolishing this false character of Rob's wife, whom Scott likened to an Ate or classical female fiend, I would like to quote a correspondence which Sir Walter held with Mr. John Gregorson of Ardtornish, who had earlier supplied Scott with some information which the novelist acknowledges in his notes to "Rob Roy". Scott had published in his 1818 (first) edition of "Rob Roy" that traditionally Dougal Ciar Mhor had committed the outrage at Glen Fruin. In the "Advertisement to Edition, 1829 (January) Scott corrected this false allegation when he revised his novels, though he was careful to specify certain fields wherein, as an artist, he did not feel justified in altering the unity of his creations by trivial corrections. But he nevertheless decided to publish "various legends, family traditions, or obscure historical facts which have formed the groundwork of these novels".

Presumably subsequent to the Edition of 1829 and (by the contents of Mr. Gregorson's letter) consequent on what he considered the inadequate corrections in that Edition, Scott received the following letter from Gregorson. I give a verbatim account of an extract.

"I beg leave also to state that the wife of Rob Roy who you represent as a horrid Fiend both by your work of fiction and proposed truth. was a woman of totally different character. It is a fact that in the days of her widowhood and adversity the tenant's wives of Craigroistan were in the habit of going to her with Kaine (rent in kind) Sheep, Hens, and eggs, and this tribute of respect they paid to her, as being herself a descendant of the MacGregors of Craigroistan as much as being the widow of Rob Roy who had only an ephemeral interest in the lands of Craigroistan."

John Gregorson was Mary MacGregor's great-grand-nephew.

Knowing Sir Walter's generous character, we would expect that had he been spared to re-correct an Edition of his novels, he would have included Gregorson's protest but he died two years later, after a long breakdown, and his successors, until the (lays of W.S. Crockett. did not trouble to redress the grave injustice suffered by Mary MacGregor of Comar.

She bore Rob four sons, not live, as it is often repeated. They were James, Coll, Ronald and Robin Og (the younger); Duncan was an adopted relative. These sons were to offer the world an edifying picture of what it is to have wild men far ancestors, and to carry out their desperate courses in a world that professed to have outgrown such conduct.

Before I take final leave of Rob himself I would like to nail another old lie, even though the Encyclopaedia Britannica(11th Edition), the Dictionary of Natural Biography, and other reference books make no effort to correct it, as far as I know. Crockett investigated this "canard" very thoroughly; I refer to the tale that Rob Roy had been lodged in Newgate Prison, London, for treason. along with James, Lord Ogilvy, alleged also to be a Catholic. Crockett condemned this as unfounded rumour, There were no treason trials at that time, and Lord Ogilvy had been pardoned in 1725. Sir Walter Scott himself did not believe a word of it, or that Defoe had written the catch-penny chapbook, "The Highland Rogue" of 1723, which seems to have given rise to the scandal. What Scott said was quite a different thing, for anyone who could interpret good English. He said he "could have wished Defoe had taken up the theme of Rob Roy". What a story that would have made, a fitting companion for "Moll Flanders" published in 1721, the story of the whore who turned pious in her latter days. Rob Roy is said to have repented in his maturer years, too, and to have repaired to Father Drummond to confess his sins. Groans and cries of reproach were heard coming from the confessional, as Rob related his sins of commission (he apparently omitted nothing) unluckily, that was before the age of bugging, or we should have had the basis of a first rate autobiography with no holds barred.

Like their ancestors of the Glen Gyle line, especially their father and grandfather, Rob's four sons spent some part of their lives getting into, and out of, all sorts ofpolitical and legal trouble. James Mhor, or the Tall, as his father's heir, easily assumed the part of fear-an-tighe, or head of the household. Unlike Rob Roy, however, he appears to have been a person of uncontrollable temper. It has been said, on what evidence I do not know, that when his right to lead the MacGregors in the Forty-five was challenged by Glencarnoch, a MacGregor of another line. he behaved like a madman, and his rival broke of the argument in haste. It is understandable that, after ages of attempted dispersal and annulment. there should be insoluble problems about who should assume the place of honour in battle, and also. since the name was still proscribed in 1745, about whether a man who claimed to be a MacGregor was not a Campbell. a Murray. a Drummond, a Stewart or a Graham. James Mhor switched from being a Campbell, to being a Drummond, in 1729, to keep in with the Duke of Perth. He seemed never to be happy unless he was intriguing, and no person. perhaps not even himself, could guess what he would be planning next.

In the Forty-five rising he behaved very gallantly, along with his two brothers, Ronald and Robin Og. (Coll had died shortly after his father in 1735, aged about31). At Prestonpans the MacGregors were conspicuous by their wild charge and the carnage they inflicted with broadswords and cruder weapons such as Lochaber axes, or failing these, scythe-blades secured to long poles. On the retreat from Derby they again and again proved their worth. even in this long disheartening march. At Falkirk, where General Hawley found to his dismay that the cornered wild boar has tusks, along with the Camerons they fought in the centre of the line. When the clans reached the neighbourhood of Inverness the full significance of the gathering odds began to be realised. This is a much trodden field of Scottish history, and it is very fully documented now. It is hard to imagine how obscure the situation was, to the actual combatants at the time, The Prince and his rather discordant staff had to send out parties to keep in touch with the advancing Cumberland, but it was equally important to find out the intentions of the large clans in the North who were antagonistic to the Jacobites, and who were being supplied by sea along the coasts of Easter Ross. Food for the half-starved clans under the Prince had also to be found,

The Jacobite army before the battle was "diffused", and the conflict was forced upon them by sheer force of circumstances, They had attempted a night surprise on the Duke's forces but dawn had found them still some way off. so they had to retreat and were rapidly pursued to Drummossie Moor. where most of them were not adequately equipped or fed to stand up to cannons and the new use of bayonets. All this is too well known. What is not so well-known is that on the day of the battle the MacPhersons were in Badenoch, the Frasers in their own territory, (the Lovat country), and 700 MacKinnons, MacGregors (under Glen Gyle), and Barisdale's forces, were in Sutherland confronting the Mac Kays and Mac Kenzies and other threatening forces. What difference these absent clans would have made is conjectural; but they were all noted for their panache in the onslaught. The idea still persists that Culloden was between Scots and English. A "Guide to the Battlefields of Britain and Ireland", published recently, repeats this rubbish about Culloden. There were more clansmen in arms against Charles than for him. But had they known that their country was to be treated as a conquered land and subjected to pillage and rapine, they would have lived up to the ideal. (never realised). em bodied in the Gaelic proverb "The Clans of the Gaels shoulder to shoulder". Although John MacGregor. the Prince's personal piper. was wounded on the field. the MacGregors have no clan gravestone on Culloden Moor, for the reason above given. They marched home, a defiant body. several hundred strong. banners flying. pipes playing. by the north-west shores of Loch Ness. with the Hanoverians following on the opposite shore, but powerless to attack them. They easily evaded Cumberland's forces and arrived back in Balquhidder and Glen Gyle. but ready to take to the hills on the threat of retribution.

The following month. May l746, the Scots Magazine of that time reported that a party of the clan under Glen Gyle, Gregor Glun Dhubh. were out on the hills between Crieff and Dunkeld, engaged in highway robbery on "publick money" (probably pay for the troops centred in Perth). 300 men from Brigadier Mordaunt's force set off in a vain search for these "Children of the Mist". In June a company of 700 troops entered Balquhidder and. failing to catch Glen Gyle or his men. they burned his house and all the MacGregor houses in the whole area and drove off their cattle. It is said that Ronald. Rob Roy's son advised the women not to retaliate in any way for the ruin of their homes. or they would incur the fate of the country folk in the Fort Augustus region. which I described briefly in my introduction. and which Smollett so graphically depicted in his poem "The Tears of Scotland". In this way we are spared having to include a Massacre of Balquhidder in our narrative.

After the Rising. James Mhor made his peace with the Government. after having been "attainted for high treason with persons of more importance", as Scott says. Several of these Jacobite gentlemen perished on the scaffold in Tyburn. while others. notably the very estimable Lord Pitsligo. skulked about the countryside in the guise of beggars. dodging the redcoats but perfectly assured that none of their fellow-Scots would betray them. James was allowed to live unmolested in the Glen Gyle area and would have ended a longish life there. as Ronald did, if he had been content "to jouk and let the jaw go by".

But that was not his character. He incited his youngest brother Robin Og to take a wife and a fortune in one fell swoop. and this notorious abduction of Jean Key of Edinbelly is so well known, both in legal and lay history. that I need only give the bare outlines with a few original comments on the background. when I come to tell of Robin Og.

James was arrested because of his part in this abduction in 1750, but escaped from Edinburgh Castle through the daring subterfuge of Malie (Gaelic Maili). or May. MacGregor his daughter. She dressed herself as a cobbler and was admitted to his cell with her mother. A switch of clothes enabled James. (stooping like a cobbler to conceal his height). to escape and eventually reach France.

On the way he had met some British agents. and is accused of having done a package deal with them, offering to kidnap Alan Breck Stewart, (under strong suspicion of guilt for the Appin murder), in return for a more favourable treatment of Robin Og. in custody in Edinburgh. As I have related earlier, the Glen Gyle MacGregors were related by blood to the Campbells of two important lines, and James Mhor had a family prejudice against the Stewarts. so he undertook the trepanning of Alan Breck with enthusiasm and sophisticated treachery. But Alan was forewarned by two friends, and escaped with some snuff boxes and other personal articles of MacGregor's, ready to be revenged on him more bloodily whenever he could. He had no need to; James took ill and died in a wretched apartment. quite romantically. in a certain sense. in a Bohemian quarter of Paris. His last letter, to Balhaldie. the Chief', is extant; Scott quotes a large section of it wherein James pleads for a job as a breeder and trainer of horses, or as a hunter, however menial and below his station of birth. His postscript asks for a loan of bagpipes on which he could solace himself by playing tunes of his beloved hens and glens. He died a week later. Alan Breck, immortalised in Kidnapped". was still alive in 1789 in Paris.

Ronald was also out in the Forty-Five but was content to spend the next forty years. farming mostly; but when in his prime, after the Rebellion, he is described as "of Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell's Company" of militia. He died in 1786, four years after Clan Gregor. like the other clans, was actually permitted to resume the wearing of its distinctive tartan.

Robin Og was tried, after some delay in catching him, for the abduction of Jean Key, but, before this alleged rape. he had committed a manslaughter by shooting a relative as he was ploughing on land that Robin claimed was his mother's. He managed to escape punishment by joining the British army. He fought at Fontenoy in 1745, where the Duke of Cumberland and the whole British army surrendered to Marshal Saxe. the most ignominious defeat up to that date in all British military history. Cumberland was to prove more successful the following year, glorying in butchery of British prisoners. Robin Og was exchanged after Fontenoy and the mortification of that surrender perhaps induced him to enlist with the Jacobites; with no greater success, but more honour.

Condemned to death for the abduction of Jean Key, his last day on earth dawned on 14th February. St. Valentine's Day. a pretty ironic time to die because of a mismanaged love affair. I now quote the account of his execution, from the "Caledonian Mercury", a journal printed in Edinburgh.

"He was very genteelly dressed, behaved with great decency and declared he died an unworthy member of the Church of Rome and still further he attributed all his misfortunes to his swerving two or three years ago from that communion".

As Marvell wrote of the execution of Charles I,

"He nothing common did or mean

Upon that memorable scene".

On the way to the scaffold in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, he had to pass the very spot where, exactly a century and a half before, Alastair MacGregor and eleven of his clan had been unjustly executed; we have no means of knowing whether Robin Og was aware he was so close to that unhallowed spot. though he may have thought bitterly that he was suffering some injustice himself', in view of the controversial evidence in his trial.

The failure of the '45 rising was followed by repression in all fields, including the law courts. for over thirty years. The face of Scottish Justice,. as well as of English, was cold and hostile towards anyone of Jacobite leanings. It is salutary to compare and contrast two cases of abduction, one a few years before the '45, the other a few years after.

In 1737 Donald MacLachlan, son of a bailie of Inveraray, carried off Christian MacArthur from a boarding-school in that burgh. He took her to Ireland and married her. He was fined £20 Sterling.

In 1753, Robin MacGregor was tried for a similar offence. The evidence was so conflicting (as there was some weighty evidence of Jean Key's connivance at her abduction, including a very endearing love-letter) that the jury absolved him of two of the main charges, and could not agree that he was guilty of a capital crime. However, after a very lengthy course of legal quibbling, which reflects very badly on the judiciary's sense of fair play, sentence of death was passed exactly to the very calendar day 19 years after Rob Roy's death. (though, owing to the correction of the Gregorian calendar in 1752 it was about a fortnight out).

As he passed down the Bow he read from a volume of Gother's works. John Gother was a Roman Catholic protagonist of whom Dryden said, "He is the only man beside myself who knows how to write the English language". It is strange that Gother's name is not to be found in any list of English men of letters, yet his works were in Rob Roy's household along with works in Gaelic and other languages.

Tradition, which persisted for long after his death, reports that when the hangman tried to appropriate Robin's clothes, (which were his best) as his customary due, Malie MacGregor, the same woman of spirit who had secured her father's escape, turned on the executioner in a fury, screaming. "You've already done enough and won't be allowed to touch any part of my uncle's dress!" To back up her words. she paid the hangman in his own coin, in a manner of speaking, by "swinging him off" on his back across the causeway, to the great glee of the Edinburgh mob, to whom any hangman was an object of execration.

Robin's body was carried to Balquhidder, clothed as it was, with an adequate guard of MacGregors. considerablv reinforced at Linlithgow by those whose record of lawlessness was such that they did not venture within a day's march of Edinburgh. Laments were piped most of the long journey of two days, with a final coronach as they laid Robin Og to rest, close by the very rough stone that marks his father's grave.

So cods the tale of Rob Roy's immediate descendants. Many people claim direct descent from him, now at a distance of a quarter of a millenium or about ten generations. Some of these claims are authentic and it can be proved that a large number of men and women are in his line. For example, as I mentioned earlier in another respect, I am at present in correspondence with Mr. Andrew MacEwan, of Stockton Springs, Maine, USA who is a direct descendant of James Mhor MacGregor of Glen Gyle through his son John, who emigrated to Canada. Mr. Hamilton Howlett, author of "Highland Constable", also claims direct descent. Although I have never claimed this distinction (being pretty certain I am not directly descended, but that my family were Glen Gyle MacGregors). I have several times been quoted as claiming it. Apparently no amount of categorical denials has any effect, once a popular cry gets up.