Thus, with extreme travell, ascending and descending, mounting and alighting, I came at night to the place where I would be, in the Brae of Marr, which is a large county all composed of such mountaines, that Shooters hill, Gads hill, Highgate hill, Hampstead hill, Birdlip hill, or Malvernes hills, are but mole-hills in comparison, or like a liver, or a gizzard under a capon’s wing, in respect to the altitude of their tops, or perpendicularite of their bottomes. There I saw mount Benawne with a furrd’d mist upon his snowy head instead of a night-cap; for you must understand, that the oldest man alive never saw but the snow was on the top of divers of those hills, (both in summer as well as in winter). There did I find the truely noble and Right Honourable Lords John Erskine, Earle of Marr, James Stuart, Earle of Murray, George Gordon, Earle of Engye, sonne and heire to the Marquise of Huntley, James Erskin, Earle of Bughan, and John, Lord Erskin, sonne and heire to the Earle of Marr, and their Countesses, with my much honoured, and my best assured and approved friend, Sir William Murray, Knight, of Abercarny, and hundred of others, knights, esquires, and their followers; all and every man in generall, in one habit, as if Licurgus had been there, and made lawes of equality. For once in the yeere, which is the whole moneth of August, and sometimes part of September, many of the nobility and gentry of the kingdome (for their pleasure) doe come into these Highland countries to hunt, where they doe conforme themselves to the habite of the Highland men, who, for the moste part, speake nothing but Irish; and in former time were those people which were called the Red-shanks. Their habite is shooes with but one sole apiece; stockings (which they call short hose) made of a warme stuff of divers colours, which they call tartane. As for breeches, many of them, nor their forefathers, ever wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuffe that their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreathes of hay or straw, with a plaed about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours, much finer and lighter stuffe than their hose, with blue flat caps on their heads, a handkerchiefe knit with two knots about their necke; and thus are they attyred. Now, their weapons are long bowes and forked arrowes, swords and targets, harquebusses, muskets, durks, and Loquhabor-axes. With these armes I found many of them armed for the hunting. As for their attire, any man of what degree soever that comes amongst them, must not disdaine to weare it; for if they doe, then they will disdaine to hunt, or willingly to bring in their dogges; but if men be kind unto them, and be in their habit, then are they conquered with kindnesse, and the sport will be plentifull. This was the reason that I found so many noblemen and gentlemen in those shapes. But to proceed to the hunting.
My good Lord of Marr having put me into that shape, I rode with him from his house, where I saw the ruines of an old castle, called the castle of Kindroghit. It was built by king Malcolm Canmore (for a hunting house), who raigned in Scotland when Edward the Confessor, Harold, and Norman William raigned in England; I speak of it, because it was the last house that I saw in those parts; for I was the space of twelve dayes after, before I saw either house, corne-field, or habitation for any creature, but deere, wild horses, wolves, and such like creatures, which made me doubt that I should never have seene a house againe.
Defoe, in his Memoirs of a Cavalier, written about 1721, and obviously composed from authentic materials, thus describes the Highland part of the Scottish army which invaded England in 1639, at the commencement of the great civil war. The Cavalier having paid a visit to the Scottish camp to satisfy his curiosity, thus proceeds:—
I confess the soldiers made a very uncouth figure, especially the Highlanders: the oddness and barbarity of their garb and arms seemed to have something in it remarkable. They were generally tall swinging fellows; their swords were extravagantly and I think insignificantly broad, and they carried great wooden targets, large enough to cover the upper part of their bodies. Their dress was as antique as the rest; a cap on their heads, called by them a bonnet, long hanging sleeves behind, and their doublet, breeches, and stockings, of a stuff they called plaid, stripped across red and yellow, with short cloaks of the same.
William Cleland, Lieutenant-Colonel to the Earl of Angus’s regiment, who was killed whilst gallantly defending his post at Dunkeld, against a party of Highlanders, soon after the Revolution, wrote a satirical poem upon the expedition of the Highland host in 1678, from which the following extract is taken:—
Their head, their neck, their legs, their thighs
Are influenced by the skies,
Without a clout to interrupt them
They need not strip them when they whip them;
Nor loose their doublet when they’re hanged.