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It was because I never saw a barn blaze in Appin or Glencoe but I minded on our own black barns in Shira Glen; nor a beast slashed at the sinew with a wanton knife, but I thought of Moira, the dappled one that was the pride of my mother's byre, made into hasty collops for a Stewart meal.
There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there were Macdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts of Appin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans, Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon the mountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders?
Balfour of Pilrig, to Stewart the Writer that was Appin's agent, and to William Grant Esquire of Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scotland. Mr. But the rest were in a different case. Not only was the visit to Appin's agent, in the midst of the cry about the Appin murder, dangerous in itself, but it was highly inconsistent with the other.
I asked my boatman what it should be; and he answered he supposed it was some of the red-soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me; and whether it was because of my thoughts of Alan, or from something prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second time I had seen King George's troops, I had no good will to them.
R.L. Stevenson, when he was writing Kidnapped? Like William of Deloraine, 'I know but may not tell'; at least, I know all that the Celt knows. The great-grandfather and grandfather of a friend of mine were with James Stewart of the Glens, the victim of Hanoverian injustice, in a potato field, near the road from Ballachulish Ferry to Appin, when they heard a horse galloping at a break-neck pace.
Now, the tenants of Appin have to pay a rent to King George; but their hearts are staunch, they are true to their chief; and what with love and a bit of pressure, and maybe a threat or two, the poor folk scrape up a second rent for Ardshiel. Well, David, I'm the hand that carries it." And he struck the belt about his body, so that the guineas rang. "Do they pay both?" cried I.
Glengarry, Clanranald, Glencoe, Appin, Lochiel, Clan Vourich, and the Gordons affected submission but only handed over two thousand rusty weapons of every sort. Lovat did obtain an independent company, later withdrawn with results. The clans were by no means disarmed, but Wade did, from 1725 to 1736, construct his famous military roads and bridges, interconnecting the forts.
The brother-in-law of Appin, and second chieftain of the clan, Alaster Stewart of Invernahyle, accepted the challenge, and they encountered with broadsword and target before their respective kinsmen.* * Some accounts state that Appin himself was Rob Roy's antagonist on this occasion. My recollection, from the account of Invernahyle himself, was as stated in the text.
This was to lie the night in Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross Morven the next day to Ardgour, and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was warned that I might come; the third day to be set across one loch at Corran and another at Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of James of the Glens, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin.
I have never seen a copy of the pamphlet put forth after the hanging by the Stewart party, and only know it through a reply in the Campbell MSS. The tragedy remains as fresh in the memories of the people of Appin and Lochaber as if it were an affair of yesterday. The reason is that the crime of cowardly assassination was very rare indeed among the Highlanders.
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