“Wee Magregors” and such-like, once looked on as wolf cubs to be caged or exterminated. And much of this favour and familiarity comes through the figure cut by Rob Roy, to make famous a name he himself durst not bear, unless by stealth, when his foot stood firm on his native heath.
As to the popular hero of her clan, Miss Murray Macgregor has not so much to say as might be expected; she seems even inclined to belittle his reputation, and to denounce his freebooting exploits as discreditable anachronism in a day of “changing moral sense.” She would have us know that he was by no means the chief of the clan, as has been lightly said, but only uncle and tutor to the young chieftain of Glengyle, a junior branch rooted at the head of Loch Katrine. But he is by far the most widely celebrated son of Gregor; and we need turn to no more recondite source than Scott for fact and fiction to illustrate a career that in its own day made copy for a London hack writer. Sir Walter, by the way, regrets that rare tract, The Highland Rogue, not having fallen to be written by Defoe; but there now seems reason to believe that this catchpenny piece was Defoe’s work. Better informed biographies of Rob Roy have been written in our time, one decked out in trappings of fiction by the novelist James Grant; but he is still best known from the novel that bears his name, or from Wordsworth’s humorously idealising verses. Not to swell out the following sketch of his life with vain repetitions of such qualifying phrases as “it is said,” “he is believed,” the reader will please understand that a writer has here to pick out what seems most likely to be the fact from a mass of deficient and sometimes contradictory materials more easily handled by fiction than by history. Our critical generation has gleaned very little to round off the presentment of his hero by a romancer who in youth had opportunities to gather what passed for truth about the scenes of Rob’s exploits.
Scott had spoken to men who knew the renowned freebooter, and could describe him as hairy and strong like a Highland bull—not tall, but remarkable for the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his arms, so that he could untie his garters without stooping. It was his red hair or complexion, of course, that gave him the well-known byname. He is supposed to have been born early in Charles II.’s reign, a descendant of Ciar Mhor, the “great mouse-coloured man,” whom tradition accused of the murder of those scholars at Glenfruin. He would hardly have been out of his teens when the Revolution gave him an opportunity of apprenticeship to scenes of violence. He may have fought at Killiecrankie. His first recorded exploit was the Hership of Kippen in 1691, when he swooped down into the Lennox to carry off a herd of cows belonging to Lord Livingstone, and while he was about it plundered the village of Kippen, whose inhabitants had presumed to oppose him with such clumsy weapons as they had at hand.
The young leader of this raid was no homeless outlaw. He had a farm of his own at Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, the accommodation of which he may now and then have exchanged for what is shown on the lakeside as Rob Roy’s Cave, said to have given shelter to Robert Bruce also in his day. When the country had settled down after the Revolution, Rob is heard of as taking grazing lands in Balquhidder, and as acquiring further property or holdings at Craig Royston, farther down Loch Lomond, where again an arched cavern is called “Rob Roy’s Prison,” and rival “Rob Roy’s Wells” are pointed out in this tourist-haunted vicinity. Now or afterwards he combined the apparently incongruous professions of cattle-robber and blackmailer or captain of a border “Watch.” In 1695 he appears to have fallen into the hands of the Philistines, for there is a record of his being ordered for exile to Flanders; but somehow he must have escaped this sentence, perhaps owing to the protection of the Duke of Montrose. It is of course possible that he may here be confused with some other member of the clan, in which the agname Roy was not uncommon.
To this nobleman, his neighbour on Loch Lomond, he for a time attached himself, receiving not only protection but loans of money with which to carry on business as a drover. Another way of telling it is that the duke became practically a partner with his enterprising client. For now, putting his pride into his pocket, Rob took to dealing in cattle at the Lowland markets, a trade, as Scott tells us, not altogether peaceful in its incidents.
The cattle, which were the staple commodity of the mountains, were escorted down to fairs, on the borders of the Lowlands, by a party of Highlanders, with their arms rattling around them; and who dealt, however, in all honour and good faith with their Southern customers. A fray, indeed, would sometimes arise, when the Lowland men, chiefly Borderers, who had to supply the English market, used to dip their bonnets in the next brook, and wrapping them round their hands, oppose their cudgels to the naked broadswords, which had not always the superiority. I have heard from aged persons, who had been engaged in such affrays, that the Highlanders used remarkably fair play, never using the point of the sword, far less their pistols or daggers; so that—
With many a thwack, and many a bang,
Hard crabtree and cold iron rang.
A slash or two or a broken head was easily accommodated, and as the trade was of benefit to both parties, trifling skirmishes were not allowed to interrupt its harmony.
The area of such operations was extended by the Union allowing Highland cattle to be driven over the Border; and for a time our hero seems to have done a profitable business. By and by, however, it went ill with him in overstocked markets. His losses are also blamed on the rascality of a partner who absconded in 1712, when Rob himself had to keep out of the way of a charge that he had treacherously made off with money entrusted to him by several nobleman and gentlemen for buying cows. Such an embarrassed state of his affairs he faced by withdrawing himself deeper into the Highland wilds. The Duke of Montrose pressed for payment of his advances; then his agents are said to have insulted Rob’s wife, in distraining upon their home in the master’s absence. This outrage is charged against Graham of Killearn, the Duke’s chamberlain, upon whom Rob afterwards took stinted revenge by seizing him while collecting rents, laying hands on the money, and carrying off the man of business to an island on Loch Katrine, from which, however, he was released, robbed but unharmed, after a few days’ imprisonment.