by Walter Scott
‘And did you learn this, you false-hearted traitor,’ said the wife of MacGregor, ‘and not instantly rush to your father’s rescue to bring him off, or leave your body on the place?’
The young MacGregor modestly replied, by representing the very superior force of the enemy, and stated, that as they made no preparation for leaving the country, he had fallen back up the glen with the purpose of collecting a band sufficient to attempt a rescue with some tolerable chance of success. At length he said, ‘The militiamen would quarter, he understood, in the neighbouring house of Gartartan, or the old castle in the port of Monteith, or some other stronghold, which, although strong and defensible, was nevertheless capable of being surprised, could they but get enough of men assembled for the purpose.’
I understood afterwards that the rest of the freebooter’s followers were divided into two strong bands, one destined to watch the remaining garrison of Inversnaid, a party of which, under Captain Thornton, had been defeated; and another to show front to the Highland clans who had united with the regular troops and Lowlanders in this hostile and combined invasion of that mountainous and desolate territory, which, lying between the lakes of Loch-Lomond, Loch-Katrine, and Loch-Ard, was at this time currently called Rob Roy’s, or the MacGregor, country. Messengers were dispatched in great haste, to concentrate, as I supposed, their forces, with a view to the purposed attack on the Lowlanders; and the dejection and despair, at first visible on each Countenance, gave place to the hope of rescuing their leader, and to the thirst of vengeance. It was under the burning influence of the latter passion that the wife of MacGregor commanded that the hostage exchanged for his safety should be brought into her presence. I believe her sons had kept this unfortunate wretch out of her sight, for fear of the consequences; but if it was so, their humane precaution only postponed his fate. They dragged forward at her summons a wretch already half dead with terror, in whose agonized features I recognized, to my horror and astonishment my old acquaintance Morris.
He fell prostrate before the female Chief with an effort to clasp her knees, from which she drew back, as if his touch had been pollution, so that all he could do in token of the extremity of his humiliation, was to kiss die hem of her plaid. I never heard entreaties for life poured forth with such agony of spirit. The ecstasy of fear was such, that, instead of paralyzing his tongue, as on ordinary occasions, it even rendered him eloquent; and, with cheeks pale as ashes, hands compressed in agony, eyes that seemed to be taking their last look of all mortal objects, he protested, with the deepest oaths, lois total ignorance of any design on the person of Rob Roy, whom he swore he loved and honoured as his own soul. In the inconsistency of his terror, he said, he was but the agent of others, and he muttered the name of Rashleigh. He prayed but for life—for life he would give all he had in the world; it was but life he asked—life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations: he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of the lowest caverns of their hills.
It is impossible to describe the scorn, the loathing, and contempt, with which the wife of MacGregor regarded this wretched petitioner for the poor boon of existence.
‘I could have bid you live,’ she said, ‘had life been to you the same weary and wasting burden that it is to me—that it is to every noble and generous mind. But you—wretch! you could creep through the world unaffected by its various disgraces, its ineffable miseries, its constantly accumulating masses of crime and sorrow: you could live and enjoy yourself, while the noble minded are betrayed—while nameless and birthless villains tread on the neck of the brave and the long-descended: you could enjoy yourself, like a butcher’s dog in the shambles, battening on garbage, while the slaughter of the oldest and best went on around you! This enjoyment you shall not live to partake of; you shall die, base dog, and that before yon cloud has passed over the sun.’
She gave a brief command in Gaelic to her attendants, two of whom seized upon the prostrate suppliant, and hurried him to the brink of a cliff which overhung the flood. He set up the most piercing and dreadful cries that fear ever uttered—I may well term them dreadful, for they haunted my sleep for years afterwards. As the murderers, or executioners, call them as you will, dragged him along, he recognized me even in that moment of horror, and exclaimed, in the last articulate words I ever heard him utter, ‘O, Mr. Osbaldistone, save me!—save me!’
I was so much moved by this horrid spectacle, that, although in momentary expectation of sharing his fate, I did attempt to speak in his behalf, but, as might have been expected, my interference was sternly disregarded. The victim was held fast by some, while others, binding a large heavy stone in a plaid, tied it round his neck, and others again eagerly stripped him of some part of his dress. Half-naked, and thus manacled, they hurled him into the lake, there about twelve feet deep, with a loud halloo of vindictive triumph, above which, however, his last death-shriek, the yell of mortal agony, was distinctly heard. The heavy burden splashed in the dark-blue waters, and the Highlanders, with their pole-axes and swords, watched an instant, to guard, lest, extricating himself from the load to which he was attached, the victim might have struggled to regain the shore. But the knot had been securely bound: the wretched man sunk without effort; the waters, which his fall had disturbed, settled calmly over him, and the unit of that life for which he had pleaded so strongly, was for ever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.
CHAPTER XXXII
And be he safe restored ere evening set,
Or, if there’s vengeance in an injured heart,
And power to wreak it in an armed hand,
Your land shall ache for’t.
Old Play
I KNOW not why it is, that a single deed of violence and cruelty affects our nerves more than when these are exercised on a more extended scale. I had seen that day several of my brave countrymen fall in battle—it seemed to me that they met a lot appropriate to humanity; and my bosom, though thrilling with interest, was affected with nothing of that sickening horror with which I beheld the unfortunate Morris put to death without resistance, and in cold blood. I looked at my companion, Mr. Jarvie, whose face reflected the feelings which were painted in mine. Indeed, he could not so suppress his horror, but that the words escaped him in a low and broken whisper——
‘I take up my protest against this deed, as a bloody and cruel murder—it is a cursed deed, and God will avenge it in his due way and time.’
‘Then you do not fear to follow?’ said the virago, bending on him a look of death, such as that with which a hawk looks at his prey ere he pounces.
‘Kinswoman,’ said the Bailie, ‘nae man willingly wad cut short his thread of life before the end of his pirn was fairly measured off on the yarn-winles—And I hae muckle to do, an I be spared, in this warld—public and private business, as weel that belanging to the magistracy as to my ain particular—and nae doubt I hae some to depend on me, as puir Mattie, wha is an orphan——She’s a far-awa’ cousin o’ the Laird o’ Limmerfield—Sae that, laying a’ this thegither— skin for skin, yea all that a man hath will he give for his life.’
‘And were I to set you at liberty,’ said the imperious dame, ‘what name would you give to the drowning of that Saxon dog?’
‘Uh! uh!—hem! hem!’ said the Bailie, clearing his throat as well as he could, ‘I suld study to say as little on that score as might be—least said is sunest mended.’
‘But if you were called on by the courts, as you term them, of justice,’ she again demanded, ‘what then would be your answer?’
The Bailie looked this way and that way, like a person who meditates an escape, and then answered in the tone of one who, seeing no means of accomplishing a retreat, determines to stand the brunt of battle,—‘I see what you are driving me to the wa’ about. But I’ll tell you’t plain, kinswoman, I behoved just to speak according to my ain conscience; and though your ain gudeman, that I wish had been here for his ain sake and mine, as weel as the puir Hieland creature Dougal,
can tell ye that Nicol Jarvie can wink as hard at a friend’s failings as ony body, yet I’se tell ye, kinswoman, mine’s ne’er be the tongue to belie my thought; and sooner than say that yonder puir wretch was lawfully slaughtered, I would consent to be laid beside him—though I think ye are the first Hieland woman wad mint sic a doom to her husband’s kinsman but four times removed.’
It is probable that the tone of firmness assumed by the Bailie in his last speech was better suited to make an impression on the hard heart of his kinswoman than the tone of supplication he had hitherto assumed, as gems can be cut with steel, though they resist softer metals. She commanded us both to be placed before her. ‘Your name,’ she said to me, ‘is Osbaldistone?—the dead dog, whose death you have witnessed, called you so.’
‘My name is Osbaldistone,’ was my answer.
‘Rashleigh, then, I suppose is your Christian name?’ she pursued.
‘No; my name is Francis.’
‘But you know Rashleigh Osbaldistone?’ she continued. ‘He is your brother, if I mistake not, at least your kinsman and near friend.’
‘He is my kinsman,’ I replied, ‘but not my friend. We were lately engaged together in a rencontre, when we were separated by a person whom I understand to be your husband. My blood is hardly yet dried on his sword, and the wound on my side is yet green. I have little reason to acknowledge him as a friend.’
‘Then,’ she replied, ‘if a stranger to his intrigues, you can go in safety to Garschattachin and his party, without fear of being detained, and carry them a message from the wife of the MacGregor?’
I answered, ‘That I knew no reasonable cause why the militia gentlemen should detain me; that I had no reason, on my own account, to fear being in their hands; and that if my going on her embassy would act as a protection to my friend and servant, who were her prisoners, I was ready to set out directly.’ I took the opportunity to say, ‘That I had come into this country on her husband’s invitation, and his assurance that he would aid me in some important matters in which I was interested; that my companion, Mr. Jarvie, had accompanied me on the same errand.’
‘And I wish Mr. Jarvie’s boots had been fu’ o’ boiling water when he drew them on for sic a purpose,’ interrupted the Bailie.
‘You may read your father,’ said Helen MacGregor, turning to her sons, ‘in what this young Saxon tells us—Wise only when the bonnet is on his head, and the sword is in his hand, he never exchanges the tartan for the broadcloth, but he runs himself into the miserable intrigues of the Lowlanders, and becomes again, after all he has suffered, their agent—their tool—their slave.’
‘Add, madam,’ said I, ‘and their benefactor.’
‘Be it so,’ she said; ‘for it is the most empty title of them all, since he has uniformly sown benefits to reap a harvest of the most foul ingratitude.—But enough of this.—I shall cause you to be guided to the enemy’s outposts—ask for their commander, and deliver him this message from me, Helen MacGregor;—that if they injure a hair of MacGreg-or’s head, and if they do not set him at liberty within the space of twelve hours, there is not a lady in the Lennox but shall before Christmas cry the coronach for them she will be loathe to lose,—there is not a farmer but shall sing well-a-wa over a burnt barnyard and an empty byre,—there is not a laird nor heritor shall lay his head on the pillow at night with the assurance of being a live man in the morning,—and, to begin as we are to end, so soon as the term is expired, I will send them this Glasgow Bailie, and this Saxon Captain, and all the rest of my prisoners, each bundled in a plaid, and chopped into as many pieces as there are checks in the taftan.’
As she paused in her denunciation, Captain Thornton, who was within hearing, added with great coolness, ‘Present my compliments—Captain Thornton’s, of the Royals, compliments—to the commanding officer, and tell him to do his duty and secure his prisoner, and not waste a thought upon me. If I have been fool enough to have been led into an ambuscade by these artful savages, I am wise enough to know how to die for it without disgracing the service. I am only sorry for my poor fellows,’ he said, ‘that have fallen into such butcherly hands.’
‘Whist! whist!’ exclaimed the Bailie; ‘are ye weary o’ your life?—Ye’ll gie my service to the commanding officer, Mr. Osbaldistone—Bailie Nicol Jarvie’s service, a magistrate o’ Glasgow, as his father the deacon was before him—and tell him, here are a wheen honest men in great trouble, and like to come to mair; and the best thing he can do for the common good, will be just to let Rob come his wa’s up the glen, and nae mair about it—There’s been some ill dune here already, but as it has lighted chiefly on the gauger, it winna be muckle worth making a stir about.’
With these very opposite injunctions from the parties chiefly interested in the success of my embassy, and with the reiterated charge of the wife of MacGregor, to remember and detail every word of her injunctions, I was at length suffered to depart; and Andrew Fairservice, chiefly, I believe, to get rid of his clamorous supplications, was permitted to attend me. Doubtful, however, that I might use my horse as a means of escape from my guides, or desirous to retain a prize of some value, I was given to understand that I was to perform my journey on foot, escorted by Hamish MacGregor, the elder brother, who, with two followers, attended, as well to show me the way, as to reconnoitre the strength and position of the enemy. Dougal had been at first ordered on this party, but he contrived to elude the service, with the purpose, as we afterwards understood, of watching over Mr. Jarvie, whom, according to his wild principles of fidelity, he considered as entitled to his good offices, from having once acted in some measure as his patron or master.
After walking with great rapidity about an hour, we arrived at an eminence covered with brushwood, which gave us a commanding prospect down the valley, and a full view of the post which the militia occupied. Being chiefly cavalry, they had judiciously avoided any attempt to penetrate the pass which had been so unsuccessfully assayed by Captain Thornton. They had taken up their situation with some military skill, on a rising ground in the centre of the little valley of Aberfoil, through which the river Forth winds its earliest course, and which is formed by two ridges of hills, faced with barricades of limestone rock, intermixed with huge masses of brescia, or pebbles imbedded in some softer substance which has hardened around them like mortar; and surrounded by the more lofty mountains in the distance. These ridges, however, left the valley of breadth enough to secure the cavalry from any sudden surprise by the mountaineers, and they had stationed sentinels and outposts at proper distances from this main body, in every direction, so that they might secure full time to mount and get under arms upon the least alarm. It was not indeed expected at that time, that Highlanders would attack cavalry in an open plain, though late events have shown that they may do so with success.1 When I first knew the Highlanders, they had almost a superstitious dread of a mounted trooper, the horse being so much more fierce and imposing in his appearance than the little shelties of their own hills, and moreover being trained, as the more ignorant mountaineers believed, to fight with his feet and his teeth.
The appearance of the picqueted horses, feeding in this little vale; the forms of the soldiers, as they sate, stood, or walked, in various groups in the vicinity of the beautiful river, and of the bare yet romantic ranges of rock which hedge in the landscape on either side, formed a noble foreground, while far to the eastward the eye caught a glance of the lake of Menteith; and Stirling Castle, dimly seen along with the blue and distant line of the Ochill Mountains, closed the scene.
After gazing on this landscape with great earnestness, young MacGregor intimated to me that I was to descend to the station of the militia and execute my errand to their commander, enjoining me at the same time, with a menacing gesture, neither to inform them who had guided me to that place, nor where I had parted from my escort. Thus tutored, I descended towards the military post, followed by Andrew, who, only retaining his breeches and stockings of the English costume, without a hat, bare-legge
d, with brogues on his feet, which Dougal had given him out of compassion, and having a tattered plaid to supply the want of all upper garments, looked as if he had been playing the part of a Highland Tom-of-Bedlam. We had not proceeded far before we became visible to one of the videttes, who, riding towards us, presented his carabine and commanded me to stand. I obeyed, and when the soldier came up, desired to be conducted to his commanding officer. I was immediately brought where a circle of officers, sitting upon the grass, seemed in attendance upon one of superior rank. He wore a cuirass of polished steel, over which were drawn the insignia of the Ancient Order of the Thistle. My friend Garschattachin, and many other gentlemen, some in uniform, others in their ordinary dress, but all armed and well attended, seemed to receive their orders from this person of distinction. Many servants in rich liveries, apparently a part of his household, were also in waiting.
Having paid to this nobleman the respect which his rank appeared to demand, I acquainted him that I had been an involuntary witness to the king’s soldiers having suffered a defeat from the Highlanders at the pass of Loch-Ard, (such I had learned was the name of the place where Mr. Thornton was made prisoner,) and that the victors threatened every species of extremity to those who had fallen into their power, as well as to the Low Country in general, unless their Chief, who had that morning been made prisoner, were returned to them uninjured. The Duke (for he whom I addressed was of no lower rank) listened to me with great composure, and then replied, that he should be extremely sorry to expose the unfortunate gentlemen who had been made prisoners to the cruelty of the barbarians into whose hands they had fallen, but that it was folly to suppose that he would deliver up the very author of all these disorders and offences, and so encourage his followers in their license. ‘You may return to those who sent you,’ he proceeded, ‘and inform them, that I shall certainly cause Rob Roy Campbell, whom they call MacGregor, to be executed, by break of day, as an outlaw taken in arms, and deserving death by a thousand acts of violence; that I should be most justly held unworthy of my situation and commission did I act otherwise; that I shall know how to protect the country against their insolent threats of violence; and that if they injure a hair of the head of any of the unfortunate gentlemen whom an unlucky accident has thrown into their power, I will take such ample vengeance, that the very stones of their glens shall sing woe for it this hundred years to come!’
