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Patrick Sellar, 'the agent for the Sutherland Association, saw exactly that some great caucus of buyers and sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February 1817 that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the fair into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready to attend.
Rumours came of skirmishes at Tippermuir and elsewhere. I am aware that the fabulous Wishart makes out that our lads were defeated by Montrose at every turning, claiming even Dundee, Crief, Strathbogie, Methven Wood, Philiphaugh, Inverness, and Dunbeath.
Glens, waterfalls, stream, torrent, mountain and valley, with their romantic histories, make this a very attractive region to thousands of summer travellers from England and other countries. The railway from Perth to Inverness via Dunkeld and Blair Atholl, has just opened up this secluded Scotch Switzerland to multitudes who never would have seen it without the help of the Iron Horse.
When the first far away note of the Inverness' whistle floated across the water from the Gates, the ladies at the Presbyterian church began putting the finishing touches to the tables and the dressing on the salads, and half of the reception committee that had remained at home drove down to the dock.
They heard him call and announce to someone in the back parlour but the boy made sure that it was to Miranda in her inner cave that he was going out for a few minutes; and by and by he reappeared, wearing a dark skull-cap, with an Inverness cape about his shoulders, and carrying in his hand a stout staff.
And she delivered it commiseratingly but decidedly. She was to tell me from him that there was nothing in the house to set before me; that the fair the day before had eaten out the whole stock of his provisions; in short, that I was to take my staff and walk on to Inverness. It was in vain that I remonstrated, pleaded and urged wet feet, the darkness, the wind and rain.
It is impossible that even he can have conceived the idea of a serious attack on the place; and the story of his actually entering and plundering the town is certainly apocryphal, though his men very probably made free with Rollo's camp. Meanwhile Mackay at Inverness was busy in his turn among the clans. Lochiel had only sent the cross round among those chiefs who, like him, hated the Campbells.
He had taken refuge with the Kennedies, two common thieves, who protected him with the greatest fidelity, robbed for his support, and often went in disguise to Inverness to purchase provisions for him.
William and Charles Grant were the sons of a farmer in Inverness- shire, whom a sudden flood stripped of everything, even to the very soil which he tilled. The farmer and his sons, with the world before them where to choose, made their way southward in search of employment until they arrived in the neighbourhood of Bury in Lancashire.
Then artists rush in and not only make fine trade of his good looks, but lend his beauty to the clansmen who fought at Killiecrankie, till the curtain falls upon "Bonnie Dundee" being carried to his grave by picturesque and broken-hearted Highlanders dressed in the costly panoply of the Inverness Gathering, and with faces of the style of George MacDonald or Lord Leighton.
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