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A visit of the writer's to her sister in Argyleshire gave occasion for the following notes on ballad-lore, in which Major Mackay of Carskey, Mrs Burton's brother-in-law, was also strong: "MORTON, 2d May 1879. "MY DEAR LOVE, I recollect having come across the ballad incident you mention upwards of fifty years ago, when I was zealous in ballad-lore.
On one occasion a party of four of us set out early in the morning in pursuit of deer, numbers of which we knew were to be met with in the mountainous tracts of Bute and Argyleshire. The course we happened to take lay through a succession of dark deep glens, and over frowning rocks; the difficulties of access to which only stirred up my dormant spirit of enterprise the more.
For it had long been her wish to go back to Argyleshire "among her ain folk and die among the mountains," and this marriage satisfied all her longings. One evening they found her sitting in her open door with her face turned towards the cloud-cleaving hills. Her knitting had fallen upon her lap, her earthly work was done for ever, and she had put on the garments of the eternal Sabbath.
His own county is not Argyleshire, but Inverness, and we did not deal much in local myth. True, he told me why Loch Awe ceased like the site of Sodom and Gomorrah to be a cultivated valley and became a lake, where the trout are small and, externally, green. "Loch Awe was once a fertile valley, and it belonged to an old dame.
"I cannot rejoice in the prospect, my lord," said Auchebreck, "that James Grahame will be crushed with little assistance of ours. He has left a heavy account in Argyleshire against him, and I long to reckon with him drop of blood for drop of blood. I love not the payment of such debts by third hands."
* In 1725, there was a great riot in Glasgow on account of the malt-tax. Among the troops brought in to restore order, was one of the independent companies of Highlanders levied in Argyleshire, and distinguished, in a lampoon of the period, as "Campbell of Carrick and his Highland thieves."
The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting clothes homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all.
He laid before them the extreme difficulty of marching even a Highland army from the eastward into Argyleshire, through passes scarcely practicable for shepherds and deer-stalkers, and over mountains, with which even the clans lying nearest to them did not pretend to be thoroughly acquainted.
On one occasion a party of four of us set out early in the morning in pursuit of deer, numbers of which we knew were to be met with in the mountainous tracts of Bute and Argyleshire. The course we happened to take lay through a succession of dark deep glens, and over frowning rocks; the difficulties of access to which only stirred up my dormant spirit of enterprise the more.
At the same time the dragoons under Hawley, and the Argyleshire militia, pulled down a park wall that covered their flank, and the cavalry falling in among the rebels sword in hand, completed their confusion. The French picquets on their left, covered the retreat of the highlanders by a close and regular fire; and then retired to Inverness, where they surrendered themselves prison-ers of war.
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