The third brother, known from his stature as James Mhor, who seems to have been the most active spirit of the family, was the ringleader in this enterprise. Robin, who went to the gallows for it, reading a book, may have been acquainted with Allan Ramsay’s song—
The widow can bake, and the widow can brew,
The widow can shape and the widow can sew,
And mony braw things the widow can do;
Then have at the widow, my laddie!
Wi’ courage attack her baith early and late,
To kiss her and clap her ye mauna be blate:
Speak weel and do better; for that’s the best gate
To win a young widow, my laddie.
At the trial it came to be asserted rather than proved that Robin had begun with speaking and other approved forms of courtship, and that he had been encouraged to hope for success with this widow of a few weeks’ standing. In any case, he hastened to voies de fait.
She was living with her mother and other friends at her house in the Stirlingshire parish of Baldron, when, one December night of 1750, they found it beset by four of the brothers and other confederates, who broke in, terrified the inmates with a display of weapons, and by threats of murder and burning forced the mother to bring her daughter out of a closet where she had hidden herself. Poor Jean, wooed in such rough style, vainly besought at least a few hours for consideration of the proposal thus pressed upon her. Dragged from her mother’s arms, she was thrown over a horse, tied painfully with ropes, and carried off in spite of her screams and struggles. On their way to Loch Lomond, a distance of two or three hours’ walk, the abductors stopped at more than one house, and seem hardly to have cared to conceal their proceedings, but no one durst interfere with them. Professor William Richardson of Glasgow, then a seven-year-old boy at the manse of Aberfoyle, could afterwards “describe as a terrible dream their violent and noisy entry into the house. The Highlanders filled the little kitchen, brandishing their arms, demanding what they pleased, and receiving whatever they demanded. James Mhor, he said, was a tall, stern, and soldierlike man. Robin Oig looked more gentle; dark, but yet ruddy in complexion—a good-looking young savage. Their victim was so dishevelled in her dress, and forlorn in her appearance and demeanour that he could hardly tell whether she was alive or dead.”
Scott’s story is that at Rowardennan a priest was called in to perform a marriage ceremony in face of the bride’s protests; and that she was afterwards brought to the church of Balquhidder, where the husband affirmed the marriage while the wife kept terrified silence. She seems now to have been cowed into some sort of submission; as it came out on the trial that she had seen the sheriff-substitute, and refused his offer of assistance in escaping from her strange plight. It is said that old women were employed to administer drugs to her by way of love philtres; and by threats and entreaties she was made to sign papers declaring herself to have been carried off by her own consent. For now the high-handed husband found how he lived in a new age. The wife’s relatives appealed to the law, undeterred by threats of vengeful feud in good old Highland fashion. Soldiers were sent to back up warrants; and what made a more effectual hitch in the brothers’ scheme, the Court of Session sequestrated the woman’s property, teterrima causa of the crime.
When she had been carried about the Macgregor country for some weeks, to evade the hue-and-cry that now could be pushed into the Highlands in place of the Fiery Cross, the Glengyle chieftain interfered in her favour. The brothers consented to let her go back to her friends, and under James Mhor’s care she was taken to Edinburgh, at first kept shut up there as a prisoner. But again the Court of Session stretched out its arm to place her in safety in the house of a
connection, guarded by sentinels against the Macgregors’ interference. The unfortunate woman appears to have been so broken down that her own mother hardly knew her; and her mind was shaken so that she could with difficulty be brought to relate the tale of her wrongs. The future Lord Kames, who had a professional interview with her, at first judged his client disposed to condone the violent marriage; then withdrew from the case because she gave it a different aspect at another time. Other accounts represent her as oppressed by an oath she had been forced to take when in the hands of the Macgregors. She did, however, make an affidavit as to what had happened, which formed a main piece of evidence after her death.