MacGregor
Page 5
Chapter 3
Stronachlachar - June 1789
The sun was dropping towards the summits of the Arrochar as Rob finished his tale of seventy years since.
"Come on then," he said "We have a long walk back to Stronachlachar and it will be dark soon. Oidhche mhath." he called out to Iain, his herd-boy as the old man led his son and grandson down the glen.
“Seanair,” asked Alasdair, “why do you call your father Glengyle? Is that not a place? You also called him James Graham, but my father said he was Gregor MacGregor? And who is Glùn Dubh? I cannot understand all of this.”
“Well then,” Rob answered, “such a lot of questions you ask, but I agree, it is confusing that one man can have so many names. There are good reasons for this. Now let me tell you. Firstly, Glùn Dubh means ‘Black Knee’. It is simply a by-name. In England you call it a nickname. He had a black mark on his knee from birth. When he wore a kilt, which he did for much of his life, it was quite an obvious mark. We Gaels are not very imaginative with names. We like to keep to a small number of traditional family first names and, of course, within our kinship, we are all MacGregors. I can remember at least ten men in this area with the name Gregor MacGregor, so by-names are useful. You might have a name referring to your appearance. With Rob Roy, roy or ruadh means red or ruddy because he had red hair. A man named glas might be grey, bàn is fair and dubh is black or dark-visaged. Sometimes more than one of a set of brothers or cousins living nearby would have the same name so the younger would be called og meaning young. A big man would be called mòr, and a smaller or younger person beag.”
“Has your father never told you of the proscription against Clan Gregor? It lasted for many years and was only ended in 1774. Legally we could be MacGregors only if we left Scotland. Your father, for instance, could quite legally call himself MacGregor in Monkwearmouth. Before 1774 he could not use the name in Scotland. All this came about because powerful men in the past wanted the lands that were held by our people. Much of the lands of Breadalbane and Argyll once belonged to Clan Gregor. We were tricked out of our birthright by them.”
“When our forebears retaliated against their oppressors in the only way open to them they were outlawed by the Lowland law. In 1602 the Earl of Argyll persuaded men of Clan Gregor to raid the farms of the Colquhouns in the Lennox. This suited the Earl’s interests in his enmity to Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Luss but it was Clan Gregor that suffered the consequences. The MacGregors took 120 cattle from Sir Humphrey’s lands and two of the Luss tenants were killed. Most of the cattle were reset among Campbell lairds who knew full well where it had come from. The widows of the two slain Colquhouns paraded shirts soaked in ox blood before King James VI at Stirling. Now the king hated the sight of blood almost as much as he hated Highlanders. Sir Humphrey Colquhoun was given royal authority to destroy the MacGregors and he raised a force of 500, including about 100 mounted men, to do this. He sent messages to the Chief of Clan Gregor, Alasdair of Glenstrae, saying he wished for peace and proposed a meeting to settle matters amicably at the head of Glen Fruin. Each side was to bring no more than one hundred men. Alasdair was warned that Luss intended perfidy so in addition to his hundred he had his brother Iain Dubh stationed with a further hundred men more than three miles away beyond the boundary of the Luss estate. When he met up with Sir Humphrey it became clear that Luss did not intend peace. Sir Humphrey had hidden 300 men in ambush beside the road he expected the MacGregors to leave by. However, Alasdair chose a different route, so Luss had to sound his war-horn to signal his men to attack. The MacGregor party had a small lead as they retreated from Luss’s men. After retreating as far as the defile at Finnart where Iain Dubh had been stationed, they stopped and engaged with the men of Luss. The MacGregor archers shot many of their enemy before they realised that they, in turn, had been ambushed. Soon it was the turn of the men of Luss to retreat. They went back to Auchengaich on the level ground at the head of Glen Fruin where Sir Humphrey was able to reform his superior numbers in battle order. Sir Humphrey’s battle line broke in less than three minutes and his men fled. Further down the glen the MacGregors met and attacked the Dumbarton militia and put them to flight. One hundred and forty of Sir Humphrey’s men were killed, but just two of the MacGregors.”
“James had his Privy Council enact a law awarding a bounty to anyone who killed a MacGregor and giving the property of the victim to his killer. It was also forbidden for anyone to use the name MacGregor. The government hoped to wipe us out completely. They were dreadful times.”
“By this time King James had gone to London to become James I of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Alasdair of Glenstrae received a solemn promise from Argyll that if he surrendered he would be permitted to go to England to put Clan Gregor’s case before the King. Argyll did not want Glenstrae to go anywhere near the king as the truth of his part in the affair might become known. Glenstrae was escorted to the border at Berwick so that Argyll could say he had fulfilled his promise to let him go to England, but Argyll arranged for the Edinburgh town guard to be waiting at Berwick to bring him back again. He received a mockery of a trial in Edinburgh before a jury packed with relatives of men killed at Glen Fruin and was executed outside St Giles Church. As a result of the persecution the line of our chiefs, the family of Glenstrae, was eventually wiped out. Many other MacGregors were also killed.”
“However, I am wandering from my subject. We could not sign our name to births and marriages in the parish roll. We could not be called MacGregor when taking a tack of land. Nor could we announce ourselves by our rightful names at the cattle trysts. As a result we had to adopt an alias, but we always remembered we were MacGregors despite them. Now Glen Gyle is on the edge of the Buchanan estate of the Duke of Montrose and my father had tacks of additional land from the Duke. So he adopted the name Graham, which is the family name of the Duke. Since Gregor is very rare as a firstname among other clans, he had to adopt an alias for that as well. Therefore Gregor MacGregor became James Graham in the eyes of the law.”
“Other MacGregors, even if they were closely related, used different aliases and would change them when it suited them. Rob Roy called himself Robert Campbell, partly because his mother was a Campbell and also because the Duke of Argyll helped him, since Rob Roy was an enemy of the Duke of Montrose. James Mòr - that is Big James remember, - was the eldest son of Rob Roy. As a child he was James Campbell. Once he had a tack of land from the Earl of Perth so he called himself James Drummond. When he moved to the farm of Corrie Arklet that you passed when you came here, he began to call himself James Graham. In Balquhidder the Glencarnaig people called themselves Murray because they held their lands from the Duke of Atholl. Ronald, Rob Roy’s second son and younger brother to James Mòr changed his name to Drummond.”
“Now, what else did you ask?” Rob continued, “Oh yes, Glengyle. In Scotland anyone with landed property, even if it is only a few acres, will use the name of his property as part of his title. He does not actually have to own the land to use the title. In fact it used to be very common to take a tack of land and this entitled one to the designation of a gentleman. A tack is like an English mortgage. By making a payment to the actual owner, which could be for a fixed time or unlimited, the tacksman could enjoy the use of the land until the owner redeemed the tack. So in the case of Glengyle, when he was a minor, Rob Roy purchased a perpetual tack of the lands of Glen Gyle from the Duke of Montrose, as superior on behalf of Glùn Dubh. He himself, held the lands of Craigrostan and Inversnaid. Most tacksman prefer to be called by the name of their estate, so James Graham of the estate of Glen Gyle would normally be called ‘Glengyle’. Nowadays the big landowners do not like giving away their land as they did in the past. Their factors prefer to let the land on fixed term leases, as I have from Montrose for my farm. I cannot call myself Stronachlachar.”
“My father told me these lands belong to our clan,” Alasdair said, “Why do you tell me they belong to Montrose?”
“Ah lad,” a
nswered Rob, “there is a question I cannot easily answer, though I had it explained to me once. I was told many years ago the whole of Alba belonged to the Gaelic people. The land was ruled by great lords and over them was an elected high king.”
“Seanair, what is ‘A-la-pa’?” asked Alasdair.
“That is the name in Gaelic for Scotland. It is written as Alba. It has always been Alba to the Gael. It was the English speakers who called the land Scotland. As I was saying, the great lords or Mòrmaers of Alba ruled the land. Here we lived under the Mòrmaer of Menteith. Over in Balquhidder they were under the Mòrmaer of Strathearn. The Mòrmaers awarded lands to their kin to rule over as lesser lords. The lords of each glen apportioned the land out to their sons, and they in turn to their sons. The people supported their rulers, and they in turn supported the High King. At a later time, strangers came into Alba and brought new ways, called feudalism with them. It was ordained that all land belonged to the King and he could grant land to anyone and take it away as he saw fit. If a lord offended the King he could be dispossessed without the consent of his people and kin. New lords were set over us by the King and he gave them paper charters for the land, but we gave our allegiance still to our Chiefs and to our Chief’s sons and to their sons in turn. Our lands were given to others and our people said the King had neither the right nor our consent to give our lands to others. We fought them, but we could not win these battles. So they persecuted us and made us change our names. Now they wish us to change our language. Since the SPCK schools came, our children are punished when they speak Gaelic. They forced us to change our dress. Since 1782 I have been permitted to wear my old breacan feile once more, but after the ‘45, I could have been transported to Jamaica for that!”
“What is a brekan fail?” asked Alasdair.
“Breacan feile is a plaid or great kilt. The soldiers in the Black Watch and other Highland regiments are wearing kilts made by tailors these days. The feile beag is stitched together and hangs from the waist down. It is more convenient to put on, I grant you, but not as useful as the breacan I used to wear. We would go to the weaver over in Balquhidder when we had silver in our sporrans from selling a few beasts at Crieff and buy 12 ells of cloth - that is about 36 English feet. His loom could only weave material one ell in width and by the time it had been waulked it shrunk to about thirty English inches. The length was cut in half and stitched lengthways so the piece was a little less than 6 ells. To put it on, you would lay it down and pleat it leaving an apron on either side. Then you lie on top of it and tie it around your waist with a belt. The upper part could be a jacket or folded around your waist or tied over the shoulder. At night it was a blanket. Many is the time I have slept snug on the hillside in my plaid.”
These and other explanations by the old man to his grandson passed the time as they walked down the glen towards Loch Katrine. Though the sun had set before they reached home, the midsummer night was bright enough to light their way back.
"Alasdair, tomorrow your father has to go over to Balquhidder to meet with his cousin. So, you and I will have some time together. I shall tell you all about the '45,” Rob told him. "Sleep well."