Legends of the Black Watch; or, Forty-second Highlanders

OR,
Forty-second Highlanders.
JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF THE ROMANCE OF WAR, HOLLYWOOD HALL, ETC., ETC.
NEW EDITION.
LONDON: ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, AND ROUTLEDGE, FARRINGDON STREET, NEW YORK: 66, WALKER STREET. 1860.
LONDON SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET.
PREFACE.
Woven up with an occasional legend or superstition gleaned among the mountains from whence its soldiers came, the warlike details and many of the names which occur in the following pages, belong to the military history of the country and of the brave Regiment whose title is given to our Book.
It is generally acknowledged that but for the retention of the kilt in the British service, and for the high character of those regiments who wear it> the military name of Scotland had been long since forgotten in Europe, and her national existence had been as completely ignored during the Wars of Wellington as in those of Marlborough; nor in times more recent had the electric wire announced that, when the cloud of Russian horse came on at Balaclava and our allies fled, the Scots stood firm.
The kilt alone indicated their country, as our Scots Lowland regiments are clad like the rest of the Line. The martial and picturesque costume of the ancient clans which is now so completely identified with modern Scotland, is one of the few remnants of the past that remain to her; and it is remarkable that it has survived so long; for it was the garb of those adventurous Greeks who fought under Xenophon, and of those hardy warriors who spread the terror of the Roman name from the shores of the Euphrates on the east, to those of the Caledonian Firths upon the west.