LOCHABER REIVERS.
The predatory habits of the Highlanders gave great trouble to the Aberdeenshire farmers for fully three hundred years after Harlaw. In 1689 a dozen wild Lochaber men came right down into the heart of Aberdeenshire and lifted six score of black cattle. The fate of the marauders is thus described by the author of Johnny Gibb:—
"They were pursued by a body of nearly 50 horsemen, well mounted and armed, and each carrying bags of meal and other provisions, both for their own support, and to offer in ransom for the cattle, if peaceful negotiations could be carried through. On through the hills, over marshes, rocks, and heather, the spirited horsemen followed, under their leader; and guided by a herd-boy whom they encountered, they traced the robbers by Loch Ericht side into the heart of their own country. At nightfall, they came upon them at Dalunchart, encamped and busily engaged roasting a portion of the flesh of one of the cattle they had stolen. They offered, after some parley, to give each of the freebooters a bag of meal and a pair of shoes in ransom for the cattle. The Highlanders treated such an offer for cattle driven so far and with so much trouble with contempt; the herd was gathered in, and the fight began in deep earnest, the result being that the Lochaber men were all shot down, killed or wounded, except three, who escaped unhurt to tell the tale; and the cattle were, of course, recovered."
REAY AND TWICKENHAM.
Perhaps the least attractive of the Scotch counties, in respect of scenery, is Caithness. The North-going train enters it a little after Helmsdale, and from thence to Thurso the journey is of a most dreary and depressing character. He who wishes to see the romantic part of the county should quit the train at Helmsdale, and go right to John o' Groats by the shore road: thereafter he should proceed along the line of the Pentland Firth to the dainty town of Thurso and to the village of Reay, the citadel of the Mackays. The district round Reay is a delightful one, and has great historical interest.
Some good examples of the power assumed of old by the country ministers are furnished by a perusal of the life of an eighteenth century minister, the Rev. Alexander Pope, who was stationed for many years in Reay. He was a huge giant of a man, and invariably carried about with him a nail-studded cudgel that was a terror to sinners. A lout of a fellow in his parish refused to come to church and get rebuked for an infringement of the usual commandment. Mr. Pope sent three elders with ropes to pinion the adulterer, hale him to church, and fasten him to a conspicuous pew right under the pulpit. The minister cannonaded the culprit to his heart's content, beginning thus: "Shame, shame, son of a beggar, where art thou now?"
Another parishioner who neglected family worship on the ground that he could not make up a prayer, was severely taken to task by Mr. Pope, who gave the man a year within which to manufacture one. At the end of the twelvemonth, Mr. Pope called and requested to hear the prayer. The man glibly rattled off a long succession of phrases that did not please the minister at all. "That won't do," he said, "you must prepare over again." "And is all my long labour to go for nothing," said the man, "all my year's toil? No, no: rather than lose my labour, I'll break the prayer up and make two graces of it." For the rest of his life, as the story runs, he did actually employ the two parts of his mutilated prayer as Grace before and Grace after meat respectively. Could there be a finer example of natural thrift in the spiritual world?
An Inverness journalist, Mr. Carruthers, wrote a life of the great poet, Alexander Pope, in which occurs the following curious note respecting the minister of Reay, just mentioned: "The northern Alexander Pope entertained a profound admiration for his illustrious namesake of England; and it is a curious and well-ascertained fact that the simple enthusiastic clergyman, in the summer of 1732, rode on his pony all the way from Caithness to Twickenham, in order to pay the poet a visit. The latter felt his dignity a little touched by the want of the necessary pomp and circumstance with which the minister presumed to approach his domicile; but after the ice of ceremony had in some degree been broken, and their intellects had come in contact, the poet became interested, and a friendly feeling was established between them. Several interviews took place, and the poet presented his good friend and namesake, the minister of Reay, with a copy of the subscription edition of the 'Odyssey' in five volumes quarto."
A grandson of the Reay minister, a Mr. James Campbell of Edinburgh, gave a description to Mr. Carruthers of a snuff-box which the poet had presented to the Rev. Mr. Pope. A series of letters to the Northern Ensign, in April, 1883, brought out the information that a Wick gentleman, Mr. Duncan, had in his possession two volumes of de Vertot's History of the Roman Republic, bearing an inscription to the effect that they had been presented by the poet of Twickenham to his northern namesake.
It has been suggested that the poet and the minister were distant blood-relations. Mr. Campbell, alluded to above, said that "the two Popes claimed kin." In any case, the friendship of the two men, one living on the shores of the wild Pentland Firth, in sight of the Orkneys, and the other not far "from streaming London's central roar," is pleasant to think of. In 1737, Pope wrote the lines—