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.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DEVASTATION OF KIPPEN.
In the days of Rob Roy there were no police, troops, or garrisons in his part of the Highlands, and no law was recognized save that of the sword.