The adventures of Rob Roy

The sun of a September evening--we need not say in what year--was shining down a wild and lonely glen, a few miles eastward from the head of Loch Lomond, where a boy and a girl sat on the slope of the green hill-side, watching a herd of fifteen red-eyed, small, and shaggy black cattle, with curly fronts and long sharp horns, that were browsing mid-leg deep amid the long-leaved fern. The place was one of stern and solemn grandeur.

Leaping from ledge to ledge, and foaming between the grey and time-worn rocks, a mountain torrent, red and fierce, swept down the steep slope of the narrow glen, now disappearing in deep corries, that were covered by dwarf birch, hazel, and alder trees, and elsewhere emerging in mist and spray, white as the thistle's beard, till it reached the lake which reposed under the shadows of the vast Ben Lomond, whose summits were hidden in grey mist.

Ben Lawers, which towers above the source of the Tay, and Ben More, that looks down on the Dochart with its floating isle, are there; but the king of these is Ben Lomond, a name which means in English "the hill of the lake full of isles," for four-and-twenty stud the loch below; and the bare scalp of that mighty mountain rises to the height of 3,300 feet above the water. There the wild winds that came in sudden gusts down the glens, furrowed up the bosom of the loch, causing its waters to ripple on the silent shore, and on its verdant isles, with a weird and solemn sound.

But here where our story opens, the shrill note of the curlew, as he suddenly sprang aloft from the thick soft heather, made one start; while the rush of the many white watercourses that poured over the whinstone rocks, and woke the silence, was sharp and hissing. The setting sun shed a flood of purple light along the steep-sided glen, making the heather seem absolutely crimson.

The boy and girl, Colin Bane, the son of a widow, and Oina MacAleister, belonged to the clachan, or village--the smoking chimneys of which alone indicated its locality--about three miles off; for the walls of the little cottages so closely resembled the grey rocks of the glen, and their roofs, thatched with heather, blended so nearly with the mountainside, that, except for the forty little columns of white vapour that ascended into the clear evening sky, there was nothing else to indicate a human habitation.

Neither of these young people was above twelve years old; but the boy was tall, lithe, and manly for his age. His dark grey eyes were keen and sharp as those of the wiry otter terrier that sat beside him; and his bare legs, which his tattered kilt revealed from the knee, showed that he was handsome as well as strong--so strong, that he was already entitled to wear a man's bonnet, as a proof that he could lift and fling the "stone of strength,"--the test of manhood, which lay beside the door of Rob Roy's house, as beside that of every Highland chieftain, to test the muscle of his growing followers; for previous to being able to poise and hurl the Clachneart, a boy wore his hair simply tied with a thong.

A jacket of deerskin, fastened by wooden buttons and loops of thong; a pouch or sporan composed of a polecat's skin, with its face for a flap; and a skene dhu (or black knife) stuck in a waist-belt, completed the attire of Colin.

His pretty companion, who sat with her little bare feet paddling in a pool of water that gurgled from a rock, was enveloped in a short plaid of red tartan, fastened under her chin by a little silver brooch, and her thick brown hair, which she had wreathed with blue bells and golden broom, fell in masses on her shoulders.

But the faces of this boy and girl were thoughtful, keen, and anxious in expression; for they were children of a long-oppressed, outlawed, and broken tribe, the MacGregors, or Clan Alpine. Still, as they tended the cattle, they sang merrily; for when reaping in the fields, or rowing on the lochs, casting the shuttle at the loom, or marching in the ranks to battle, in those days the Scottish Highlander always sang.

Ever and anon the boy and girl would pause and utter a joyous shout, when a large brown salmon leaped amid a shower of diamonds from the rough stream that tore through the glen; or when a sharp-nosed fox, a shaggy otter, or a red polecat came stealthily out of the gorse and whins to drink of it; for as yet they had no other visitors, and saw not those who were secretly approaching.

Colin, who had started up to cast a stone at a wild swan, and pursue it a little way, returned breathless; but nevertheless, producing a chanter of hard black wood, mounted with ivory rings, from his girdle, in which it had been stuck, he said,--"Come, Oina--Mianna Bhaird a thuair aois--sing, and I shall play."

"It is a song of many verses, and is too long," replied the girl.

"Long! There are only two-and-thirty verses, and mother says that old Paul Crubach can remember as many more."

Colin commenced the air at once upon his chanter, and without further hesitation the girl began one of the old songs which are half sung and half recited, in a manner peculiar to the Highlands.

I have no intention of afflicting my readers with all the said song in Gaelic; but it ran somewhat in this fashion (a friend has translated it for me), and the girl, as she sang sweetly, splashed the sparkling water with her tiny feet:--

Lay us gently by the stream That wanders through our grassy meads; And thou, O sun! with kindly beam, Light up the bower that o'er us spreads.

Here softly on the grass we'll sit, Where flowerets bloom and breezes sigh; Our feet laved in the gentle tide That, slowly gliding, murmurs by.

Let roses bright and primrose fair With sweet perfume and lovely hues, Around us woo the ambient air, And breathe upon the falling dews.

Intent upon themselves and their simple occupation, and singing thus in the fulness of their young hearts to the objects of Nature, the boy and girl saw not those who were coming up the glen, creeping on their hands and feet, with keen eyes and open ears.

Place by my hand (with harp and shell), So long our solace and our pride, The shield that often roll'd the swell Of battle from our father's side!

Let Ossian blind and tuneful Dall Strike from their harps a solemn sound, And open wide their airy hall-- No bard will here, at eve, be found!

So closed the song, and at that moment a cry burst from Oina, while Colin sprang up with a hand on his knife, for suddenly there arose out of the long tossing leaves of the braken, or fern, the dark whins and matted gorse, amid which the cattle grazed, about twenty well-armed and fierce-looking Highlanders, whose tattered attire, green tartans, and wild bearing, all proclaimed them to be strangers and foes, who had come intent on spoil and hostility.