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Updated: June 24, 2025
"Now will I wad a hogshead of claret," said Garschattachin, "that this is a message to tell us that these cursed Highlandmen, whom we have fetched here at the expense of so much plague and vexation, are going to draw off, and leave us to do our own business if we can."
To judge from the haste with which they dispersed, the domestics of the Marquis were scarce more pleased with their late occupation than the anxious Captain Dalgetty; indeed, many of them being Highlandmen, had the excuse of not understanding a single word which the clergyman spoke, although they gave their attendance on his doctrine by the special order of M'Callum More, and would have done so had the preacher been a Turkish Imaum.
We had been warned at Penrith, not against the bold highwaymen, the border moss-troopers or the ranting Highlandmen of song and story, but against a plain, Twentieth Century police trap which was being worked very successfully along this road. Such was our approach in these degenerate days to "Merrie Carlile," which figured so largely in the endless border warfare between the Scotch and English.
'But you are in the commission besides, Mr. Crosbie; a justice of peace for the county. 'Why, in that case, said young Fairford, 'there are ill-natured people might doubt your attachment to the Protestant line, Mr. Crosbie. 'God forbid, Mr. Fairford! I who have done and suffered in the Forty-five. I reckon the Highlandmen did me damage to the amount of 100l.
The bands and pipers again played as the troops marched away, the Highlandmen stepping off to the tune of the "Cameron Men." E Company of the Camerons numbered exactly 100 rank and file under five officers: Captain Hon. A. Murray, Lieutenants Hoare, Cameron, Alderson, and Surgeon-Captain Luther. The fraternisation of the Soudanese soldiers and the Shilluks became thorough.
Do you think Highlandmen who have lived on the mountains are going to dig coal? Do you imagine that these men, who, until a generation or two ago, never handled anything but a claymore, and who even now scorn to do aught but stalk deer or spear salmon, will take a shovel and a pickaxe and labor as coal-miners? There is not a Crawford among them who would do it. I would despise him if he did."
Wha is it else that kills maist of the folks about, unless now and than when the burghers take a tirrivie, and kill ane another, or whiles that the knights and nobles shed blood? But I'se uphauld it's been the Highlandmen this bout. The man was no in Perth, laird or loon, durst have faced Henry Smith man to man. There's been sair odds against him; ye'll see that when it's looked into."
It was my diversion in this time that I could watch from my place the progress of my friend's escape. I saw the boat come to the brig and be hoisted in, the sails fill, and the ship pass out seaward behind the isles and by North Berwick. In the course of two hours or so, more and more ragged Highlandmen kept collecting, Neil among the first, until the party must have numbered near a score.
On the drawbridge, standing sentinel, was a French man-at-arms, a young man of my own age, armed with a long fauchard, which we call a bill or halberd, a weapon not unlike the Lochaber axes of the Highlandmen. Other soldiers, French, Scottish, Spaniards, Germans, a mixed company, were idling and dicing just within the gate.
A number of ruddy watch-fires were burning with red and smoky light, and around these sat, reclined, or moved about, in a variety of active employments, a number of dark forms, most of which were robust Arnauts, clad in their national dress, which in the distance is not unlike that seen among Highlandmen, consisting as it does of a snowy white kilt, green velvet jacket, and bright-coloured scarf wound round the waist.
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