[1073] Jacobite Memoirs, p. 73.
[1074] Jacobite Memoirs, p. 74.—Johnstone’s Memoirs, p. 99.
[1075] “The terror of the English,” says the Chevalier Johnstone, Memoirs, p. 101, “was truly inconceivable, and in many cases they seemed quite bereft of their senses. One evening as Mr. Cameron of Lochiel entered the lodgings assigned to him, his landlady, an old woman, threw herself at his feet, and with uplifted hands and tears in her eyes, supplicated him to take her life, but to spare her two little children. He asked her if she was in her senses, and told her to explain herself; when she answered, that every body said the Highlanders ate children, and made them their common food. Mr. Cameron having assured her that they would not injure either her or her little children, or any person whatever, she looked at him for some moments with an air of surprise, and then opened a press, calling out with a loud voice, ‘Come out children; the gentleman will not eat you.’ The children immediately left the press where she had concealed them, and threw themselves at his feet. They affirmed in the newspapers of London that we had dogs in our army trained to fight, and that we were indebted for our victory at Gladsmuir to these dogs, who darted with fury on the English army. They represented the Highlanders as monsters, with claws instead of hands. In a word, they never ceased to circulate, every day, the most extravagant and ridiculous stories with respect to the Highlanders. The English soldiers had indeed reason to look upon us as extraordinary men, from the manner in which we had beaten them with such inferior numbers, and they probably told these idle stories to the country people by way of palliating their own disgrace.” The able editor of Johnstone’s Memoirs relates in a note to the above, that Mr. Halkston of Rathillet, who was in the expedition, stated that the belief was general among the people of England, that the Highlanders ate children:—“While the army lay at Carlisle he was taken ill, and went with a few of his companions to a farmer’s house in the neighbourhood, where he remained several days. Perceiving his landlady to be a young woman, he asked her if she had any children, and where they were. When she found that he was no cannibal, she told him the truth was, that all the children were sent out of the way for fear the Highlanders should devour them.”
A Derby gentleman, who had a party of forty men quartered in his house, in a letter which appeared in all the newspapers of the period, describes most of them as looking “like so many fiends turned out of hell to ravage the kingdom and cut throats; and under their plaids nothing but various sorts of butchering weapons were to be seen.” He complains that they had eaten up “near a side of beef, eight joints of mutton, four cheeses, with abundance of white and brown bread, (particularly white,) three couples of fowls, and would have drams continually, as well as strong-ale, beer, tea, &c.” In the midst of this general devastation our host was convulsed with “unavoidable laughter to see these desperadoes, from officers to the common men, at their several meals, first pull off their bonnets, and then lift up their eyes in a most solemn manner, and mutter something to themselves, by way of saying grace, as if they had been so many pure primitive Christians!!!” This is merely a specimen of the many ridiculous stories with which the English journals of the period were crammed.
[1076] Boyse, p. 129.
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
A.D. 1745–46.
BRITISH SOVEREIGN:—George II., 1727–1760.
The Highland army returns to Scotland—Arrives at Glasgow—Proceedings of the Jacobites in the North—Arrest and escape of Lord Lovat—Skirmish at Inverury—Alarm at Edinburgh—Arrival of an English army—The Prince at Glasgow—Marches towards Stirling—Investment and surrender of the town—Skirmishing on the Forth—Highland army reinforced—Hawley’s army arrives at Falkirk—Preparations for battle—Battle of Falkirk.