Chapter VIII: The Battle of Glenfruin

The preceding chapter will sufficiently have indicated that the clan of MacGregor was in a state of hostility with nearly all their neighbours, and that it proved a source of disquiet to Government.

We will now proceed to relate how this state of matters came to pass, and an explanation is the more necessary as it will serve to show the _secret spring_ of many of Rob Roy's hostile actions,--why he took up arms against the Government, and how, from being a gentleman farmer and levier of black-mail, he gradually became a rebel, an outlaw, and yet a patriot, with a price set upon his head. The clan and surname of MacGregor are descended from Alpine MacAchai, who was crowned King of Scotland in 787, hence their motto, "_'S Rioghal mo dhream_,"--"My race is royal!" They are named the Clan Alpine, and from their antiquity comes the old Scottish proverb:--

The woods, the waters and Clan Alpine,
Are the oldest things in Albyn.

Long before charters or parchments were known in the North, their possessions were great; for they held lands in Glendochart, Strathfillan, Glenorchy, Balquhidder, Breadalbane, and Rannoch, and, until 1490, Taymouth, too, was theirs. They had four strong castles: Kilchurn, which crowns an insular rock in Loch Awe, Finlarig, and Ballach, at the east end of Loch Tay; an old fortress on an isle in Loch Dochart, and many minor towers.

But when the kings of Scotland sought to introduce into the Highlands the same feudal system which existed in England, and in their Lowland territories, and endeavoured to subvert the Celtic or patriarchal law by substituting Crown charters, which made chiefs into barons, who, in their single person, thus became lords of all the land in which their clan had previously a _joint_ right and share,--a right old as the days of the first settlers on British soil,--a bloody strife ensued between those who accepted such charters and those who refused and despised them.

Feuds and local wars began, and all who resisted the King were termed broken clans, and to be thus stigmatized was tantamount to a denunciation of outlawry. By their sturdy adherence to the system of their forefathers, the Clan Alpine soon became eminently obnoxious to James VI., the meanest monarch that ever occupied a European throne; the more so, that in 1602, a long and bitter quarrel between them and the Colquhouns of Luss (who had murdered two wandering MacGregors) came to a terrible issue in a place called Glenfruin. Its name signifies the Glen of Sorrow, and it is a deep vale intersected by the Fruin, and overlooked by ridges of dark heathy mountains, that are more than eighteen hundred feet in height.

Here, then, on the 9th of February Sir Humphry Colquhoun, of Luss, at the head of a great force of horse and foot, composed of his own clan, the Grahames, and the burghers of Dumbarton, under Tobias Smollet, their provost,--met Alaster Roy MacGregor of Glenstrae, who had only four hundred swordsmen; but his superior bravery and skill soon decided the disastrous conflict.

Glenstrae divided his little force into two parties. Reserving two hundred to himself, he gave two hundred to his brother Ian MacGregor, with orders to make a long circuit, and attack Luss in the rear.

This manoeuvre was most successfully executed, and a dreadful hand-to-hand conflict ensued in the narrow vale. The Clan Gregor cast aside their shields, and plying their sharp claymores, with both hands clenched in the iron hilts, assailed both horse and foot in front and rear, threw them into confusion, and swept them in rout and dismay down Glenfruin towards Loch Lomond.

Two hundred Buchanans and Colquhouns were slain on the field, and though many of the Clan Alpine were wounded in their furious charge, it is remarkable that only Ian MacGregor and another of the clan were slain.

They lie buried on the field, under a large block, which is named "The Grey Stone of MacGregor."

A little rivulet near it is still named "the stream of ghosts;" for there Fletcher of Cameron, a follower of the Clan Alpine, is said to have slaughtered a number of clerical scholars, who had come from Dumbarton to see the battle; and it is still believed that if a MacGregor crosses it after sunset he will be scared by dreadful spectres. Yet, to preserve these boys from bullets and arrows in the hour of battle, it is alleged that Alaster of Glenstrae humanely enclosed them in a little church, the thatched roof of which was fired accidentally by the wadding of a musket, and they all perished in the flames. Others say they were all dirked by Dugald Ciar Mhor, from whom Rob Roy was lineally descended, and that he slew them like sheep, at a large stone, from which the blood can never be effaced.

Being mounted on a powerful horse, Sir Humphry Colquhoun, minus sword and helmet, escaped from the field, and fled to the castle of Bannochar, where he was afterwards slain, when concealed in one of the vaults, not by MacGregors, but by some of the MacFarlanes, though the blame of the deed was unjustly thrown on the former.

To James VI., his successor and friends made a doleful report of the battle, in their own fashion, and there came before that monarch, at Stirling, a strange procession of eleven score of women, bearing each, upon a spear, a bloody shirt, purporting to be that of a husband or kinsman slain in Glenfruin.

These females had been mostly hired at so much per head, in Glasgow, for the pageant, and the blood on the woollen shirts was that of a cow, bled expressly for the purpose; but this melo-dramatic exhibition was singularly successful.

James was so incensed that, without further inquiry, he issued letters of fire and sword against the MacGregors; and then the Colquhouns, the Buchanans, the Camerons, and the Clan Ronald joined with others, in a species of crusade, to crush them. They were hunted throughout the land, like wild animals, but could never be suppressed; for, whenever a MacGregor fell, the sword of another appeared to avenge him.

Captured by treachery, Alaster of Glenstrae, the gallant victor of Glenfruin, was ignominiously hanged, at the cross of Edinburgh, with all his nearest kinsmen, the sole honour awarded to him being a loftier gibbet than the rest.

By an Act of the Scottish Legislature, the surname of MacGregor was abolished, and they were compelled to adopt others. Some called themselves Gregory and Gregorson, and some Mallet, of whom the grandfather of the poet of that name was one. Many took the name of Grahame, but many more allied themselves with the powerful House of Argyle, taking the surname of "the Great Clan;" hence, a hundred years after the grass had grown above the graves of the dead in Glenfruin, we find Rob Roy designating himself _Campbell_, the name of his mother!

The same Act ordained that none of the race of Alpine should have in their possession any other weapon than a pointless knife, wherewith to cut their food; yet, in defiance of the Act, the Clan Gregor went armed to the teeth as usual.

Bloodhounds were employed to track them in their retreats; and their very children were abstracted, and brought up in hatred of the blood they inherited. But the Celtic nature was soon averse to such modes of suppressing a warlike and time-honoured clan; and the Camerons alone maintained the war against the MacGregors, who, on being joined by the MacPhersons, met them in battle in Brae Lochaber, and gave one-half of them a lesson in charity, by cutting the other to pieces.

After the battle of Glenfruin, seven MacGregors, who were pursued by a body of Colquhouns, came over the mountains of Glencoe and Glenorchy, down by the lone and lovely shore of Lochiel and the birchen woods that border on the wild waters of the Spean, till they found a brief shelter in the farmhouse of Tirindrish, which was then occupied by a Cameron.

Alarmed by the approach of the Colquhouns, they fled again, and took shelter in a cavern, which the Cameron, actuated either by treachery or timidity, pointed out to the pursuers. The toil-worn fugitives were attacked with sword and pistol. Six were slain, and lie buried, where some pines, the badge of their clan, were lately planted, in memory of the event. The seventh fled to a little distance, but was overtaken, beheaded, and buried beside a stream, where a friend of the author lately found his skull, which the water had laid bare, by washing away the bank, in which the other bones lie yet embedded.

After their slaughter, the Colquhouns went back to Luss; but the farmhouse of Tirindrish was now said to be haunted from time to time by a headless figure. The Cameron became alarmed, and brought thither a _Taischatr_, or seer, who saw it also--the dim outline of a shadowy and bare-legged Highlander, without a head, but with a remarkable swelling on the right knee, a disease of which the treacherous farmer had long complained; and hence the seer intimated that the figure represented _himself_!

It proved but the shadow of a coming event; for soon after a party of MacGregors, true to the old Celtic instinct of revenge, came to Tirindrish, and, to punish the Cameron for having discovered the cavern to the Colquhouns, struck off his head, by order of Dugald Ciar Mhor. The place where the six fugitives perished is still named the MacGregor's Cave, and a cairn was built there by the MacDonalds in memory of the event.

Hundreds of such episodes followed the battle of Glenfruin; and more fully to suppress the fated surname, no minister of the church could, at baptism, give the name of Gregor to a child, under pain of banishment and deprivation; and the heads of the Clan Alpine became a marketable commodity under King William III., as the story of Duncan nan Cean remains to testify.

Yet in spite of all these savage laws the clan grew and flourished in the fastnesses of the Highlands, and in the battles of Montrose their shout of _Ard Choille_ was heard farthest amid the ranks of the routed Covenanters. Hence the spirit of their Gathering--

The moon's on the lake, and the mist's on the bay,
And the clan _has a name_ that is _nameless_ by day--
Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach!
* * * * * *
While there's leaves on the forest, or foam on the river,
MacGregor, despite them, shall flourish for ever!
Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach!

Hence in 1645 they could muster a thousand swordsmen; a hundred years later seven hundred swordsmen, and when the Highland regiment of Clan Alpine was raised by the chief in 1799, one thousand two hundred and thirty of the clan and their kindred enlisted to fight for George III.

So little do tyranny and oppression avail in the end! They served but to bind Clan Alpine together like bands of steel; but they were never restored to their ancient rights, surname, or liberty, till an Act of the British Parliament was passed in their favour, _only twenty-four_ years before the regiment was embodied.

The wrongs of his name and kindred made a deep impression on Rob Roy, and he thirsted for an opportunity of seeing them righted, either by the restoration of the House of Stuart, or by the destruction of their more immediate oppressors.

He knew and writhed under the unjust laws by which the whole clan, for the deeds of a few, so long ago as the field of Glenfruin, were stigmatized as cut-throats and traitors, and by which they were nominally disarmed--the deepest disgrace that could be inflicted upon a Highlander; by which they were degraded in name and station, and only permitted to live as Campbells, Grahames, or Drummonds--a landless and broken race.

In his soul he longed for an opportunity of avenging all this on the King and Parliament, and for becoming a champion of the old Scottish patriarchal system, and opposing the new, which made feudal lords of Celtic chiefs, with power of gallows and dungeon, over free men--but these were visions wild and vain!

Proud of the past, however vague, the Red MacGregor, like all his Celtic countrymen, believed in the words of the bard, that--

Ere ever Ossian raised his song,
To tell of Fingal's fame;
Ere ever from their sunny clime
The Roman eagles came:

The hills had given to heroes birth,
Brave e'en amid the brave;
Who taught, above tyrannic dust,
The thistle tufts to wave!

And this belief in a lofty and warlike ancestry has ever been the Highlander's greatest incentive to moral character and heroic bearing.