by Walter Scott
How I sped in my wooing, Will Tresham, I need not tell you. You know, too, how long and happily I lived with Diana. You know how I lamented her. But you do not—cannot know, how much she deserved her husband’s sorrow.
I have no more of romantic adventure to tell, nor, indeed, any thing to communicate farther, since the latter incidents of my life are so well known to one who has shared, with the most friendly sympathy, the joys, as well as the sorrows, by which its scenes have been chequered. I often visited Scotland, but never again saw the bold Highlander who had such an influence on the early events of my life. I learned, however, from time to time, that he continued to maintain his ground among the mountains of Loch Lomond, in despite of his powerful enemies, and that he even obtained, to a certain degree, the connivance of government to his self-elected office of Protector of the Lennox, in virtue of which he levied black-mail with as much regularity as the proprietors did their ordinary rents. It seemed impossible that his life should have concluded without a violent end. Nevertheless, he died in old age and by a peaceful death, some time about the year 1733, and is still remembered in his country as the Robin Hood of Scotland, the dread of the wealthy, but the friend of the poor, and possessed of many qualities, both of head and heart, which would have graced a less equivocal profession than that to which his fate condemned him.
Old Andrew Fairservice used to say, that ‘There were many things ower bad for blessing, and ower gude for banning, like ROB ROY.’
[Here the original manuscript ends somewhat abruptly. I have reason to think that what followed related to private affairs.]
1 The introduction of gaugers, supervisors, and examiners, was one of the great complaints of the Scottish nation, though a natural consequence of the Union.
1 This seems to have been written about the time of Wilkes and Liberty.
1 Now called Don Juan.
1 Perhaps from the French Just-au-corps.
1 On occasions of public alarm, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the horses of the Catholics were often seized upon, as they were always supposed to be on the eve of rising in rebellion.
1 The nunnery of Wilton was granted to the Earl of Pembroke upon its dissolution by the magisterial authority of Henry VIII, or his son Edward VI. On the accession of Queen Mary, of Catholic memory, the Earl found it necessary to reinstall the Abbess and her fair recluses, which he did with many expressions of his remorse, kneeling humbly to the vestals, and inducting them into the convent and possessions from which he had expelled them. With the accession of Elizabeth, the accommodating Earl again resumed his Protestant faith, and a second time drove the nuns from their sanctuary. The remonstrances of the Abbess, who reminded him of his penitent expressions on the former occasion, could wring from him no other answer than that in the text—‘Go spin, you jade,—Go spin.’
1 I have in vain laboured to discover this gentleman’s name, and the period of his incumbency. I do not, however, despair to see these points, with some others which may elude my sagacity, satisfactorily elucidated by one or other of the periodical publications which have devoted their pages to explanatory commentaries on my former volumes; and whose research and ingenuity claim my peculiar gratitude, for having discovered many persons and circumstances, connected with my narratives, of which I myself never so much as dreamed.
1 This I believe to be an anachronism, as Saint Enoch’s Church was not built at the date of the story.
1 The lads with the kilts or petticoats.
1 Inch-Cailleach is an island in Loch Lomond, where the clan of MacGregor were wont to be interred, and where their sepulchres may still be seen. It formerly contained a nunnery; hence the name Inch-Cailleach, or the Island of Old Women.
1 Anglicé, the head of the sow to the tail of the pig.
1 The boys in Scotland used formerly to make a sort of Saturnalia in a snow-storm, by pelting passengers with snowballs. But those exposed to that annoyance were excused from it on the easy penalty of a baik (curtsey) from a female, or a bow from a man. It was only the refractory who underwent the storm.
1 Thigging and sorning was a kind of genteel begging, or rather something between begging and robbing, by which the needy in Scotland used to extort cattle, or the means of subsistence, from those who had any to give.
1 The word pretty is, or was, used in Scotch, in the sense of the German prachtig, and meant a gallant, alert fellow, prompt and ready at his weapons.
1 Cutlass
1 An outlaw.
1 Plundered.
1 Two great clans fought out a quarrel with thirty men of a side, in presence of the king, on the North Inch of Perth, on or about the year 1392; a man was amissing on one side, whose room was filled by a little bandy-legged citizen of Perth. This substitute, Henry Wynd—or, as the Highlanders called him, Gow Chrom, that is the bandy-legged smith—fought well, and contributed greatly to the fate of the battle, without knowing which side he fought on—so, to fight for your own hand, like Henry Wynd, passed into a proverb.
2 Sackless, that is, innocent.
1 Mons Meg was a large old-fashioned piece of ordnance, a great favourite with the Scottish common people; she was fabricated at Mons, in Flanders, in the reign of James IV or V of Scotland. This gun figures frequently in the public accounts of the time, where we find charges for grease to grease Meg‘s mouth withal, (to increase, as every schoolboy knows, the loudness of the report,) ribands to deck her carriage, and pipes to play before her when she was brought from the Castle to accompany the Scottish army on any distant expedition. After the Union, there was much popular apprehension that the Regalia of Scotland, and the subordinate Palladium, Mons Meg, would be carried to England to complete the odious surrender of national independence. The Regalia, sequestered from the sight of the public, were generally supposed to have been abstracted in this manner. As for Mons Meg, she remained in the Castle of Edinburgh, till, by order of the Board of Ordnance, she was actually removed to Woolwich about 1757. The Regalia, by his Majesty‘s special command, have been brought forth from then-place of concealment in 1818, and exposed to the view of the people, by whom they must be looked upon with deep associations; and, in this very winter of 1828-9, Mons Meg has been restored to the country, where that, which in every other place or situation was a mere mass of rusty iron, becomes once more a curious monument of antiquity.
1 Archilowe, of unknown derivation, signifies a peace-offering.
1 Lymphads. The galley which the family of Argyle and others of the Clan-Cathpbell carry in their arms.
2 Lochow and the adjacent districts formed the original seat of the Campbells. The expression of a ‘far cry to Lochow’ was proverbial
1 A rude kind of guillotine formerly used in Scotland.
1 This, as appears from the introductory matter to this Tale, is an anachronism. The slaughter of MacLaren, a retainer of the chief of Appine, by the MacGregors, did not take place till after Rob Roy’s death, since it happened in 1736.
1 A great feudal oppressor, who, riding on some cruel purpose through the forest of Guiyock, was thrown from his hone, and, his foot being caught in the stirrup, was dragged along by the frightened animal tul he was torn to pieces. The expression, Walter of Gui-yock‘s curse, is proverbial.
1 A kind of lighter used in the river Clyde, probably from the French gabare
1 The affairs of Prestonpans and Falkirk are probably alluded to, which marks the time of writing the Memoirs as subsequent to 1745.
1 i.e. The throat and the withy. Twigs of willow, such as bind fagots, were often used for halters in Scotland and Ireland, being a sage economy of hemp.
1 The MacRimmons or MacCrimonds were hereditary pipers to the chiefs of MacLeod, and celebrated for their talents. The pibroch said to have been composed by Helen MacGregor is still in existence.
1 ‘Strike up.’
1 A pike.
1 This pithy verse occurs, it is believed, in Shadwell’s play of Bury Fair.
;
Walter Scott, Rob Roy
