A famous Jacobite song gives us the names of the leaders and the clans:—
“I saw our chief come up the glen
Wi’ Drummond and Glengarry,
Macgregor, Murray, Rollo, Keith,
Panmure and gallant Harry;
Macdonald’s men, Clan Ronald’s men,
Mackenzie’s men, Macgillivray’s men,
Strathallan’s men, the Lowlan’ men,
O’Callander and Airly.”
The hunting party, it should be noted, was not all a pretence. It took place on a magnificent scale, as Taylor the Water Poet, who was there (how or why it would take too long to explain), tells us. After he lost sight of the old castle, he was twelve days before he saw either house, or cornfield, or habitation for any creature but deer, wild horses, wolves, and such-like creatures. Taylor goes on to describe how a great body of beaters, setting out at early morning, drove the deer, “their heads making a show like a wood,” to the place where the hunters shot them down. As we all know, the ’15 was a disastrous failure—less terrible, it is true, but less glorious, than the ’45. Mar turned out to be neither statesman nor soldier (“Oh for one hour of Dundee!” said the old officer at Sheriffmuir). He escaped with the Pretender to France, his vast estates were forfeited, and for a time there was no Earldom of Mar. His poor followers suffered more than their lord. All the houses in Braemar were burnt, save one at Corriemulzie. It was only the seclusion of that narrow glen, so beautiful with its birch-trees and its linn, that saved the lonely habitation. There are memories of the ’45 about the district too. For instance, a little way down the river from Castleton is Craig Clunie, where Farquharson of Invercauld lay hid for ten months after Culloden, safe in the devotion of his clan, though his enemies were hunting for him far and near.