Waverley

on the part of the Chevalier was put into the castle, then less ruinous than at present. It was commanded by Mr. Stewart of Balloch, as governor for Prince Charles; he was a man of property near Callander. This castle became at that time the actual scene of a romantic escape made by John Home, the author of Douglas, and some other prisoners, who, having been taken at the battle of Falkirk, were confined there by the insurgents. The poet, who had in his own mind a large stock of that romantic and enthusiastic spirit of adventure which he has described as animating the youthful hero of his drama, devised and undertook the perilous enterprise of escaping from his prison. He inspired his companions with his sentiments, and when every attempt at open force was deemed hopeless, they resolved to twist their bedclothes into ropes and thus to descend. Four persons, with Home himself, reached the ground in safety. But the rope broke with the fifth, who was a tall, lusty man. The sixth was Thomas Barrow, a brave young Englishman, a particular friend of Home’s. Determined to take the risk, even in such unfavourable circumstances, Barrow committed himself to the broken rope, slid down on it as far as it could assist him, and then let himself drop. His friends beneath succeeded in breaking his fall. Nevertheless, he dislocated his ankle and had several of his ribs broken. His companions, however, were able to bear him off in safety.

The Highlanders next morning sought for their prisoners with great activity. An old gentleman told the author he remembered seeing the commandant Stewart

Bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste,

riding furiously through the country in quest of the fugitives.93 ↩

“The Castle of Doune.” See Lockhart, I 290. Scott visited the place in his Highland tour in 1793.

—⁠Editor

↩

The Judges of the Supreme Court of Session in Scotland are proverbially termed among the country people, The Fifteen. ↩

To go out, or to have been out, in Scotland was a conventional phrase similar to that of the Irish respecting a man having been up, both having reference to an individual who had been engaged in insurrection. It was accounted ill-breeding in Scotland about forty years since to use the phrase rebellion or rebel, which might be interpreted by some of the parties present as a personal insult. It was also esteemed more polite, even for stanch Whigs, to denominate Charles Edward the Chevalier than to speak of him as the Pretender; and this kind of accommodating courtesy was usually observed in society where individuals of each party mixed on friendly terms. ↩

“Wude Willie Grime.” Chapbooks and county histories have, hitherto, yielded no information about this a bandit of the Torwood.

—⁠Editor

↩

“The patriotic statesman.” This was President Blair of Avonton. See “Provincial Antiquities,” under “Linlithgow,” and Lockhart, III, 316.

—⁠Editor

↩

The Jacobite sentiments were general among the western counties and in Wales. But although the great families of the Wynnes, the Wyndhams, and others had come under an actual obligation to join Prince Charles if he should land, they had done so under the express stipulation that he should be assisted by an auxiliary army of French, without which they foresaw the enterprise would be desperate. Wishing well to his cause, therefore, and watching an opportunity to join him, they did not, nevertheless, think themselves bound in honour to do so, as he was only supported by a body of wild mountaineers, speaking an uncouth dialect, and wearing a singular dress. The race up to Derby struck them with more dread than admiration. But it is difficult to say what the effect might have been had either the battle of Preston or Falkirk been fought and won during the advance into England. ↩

Divisions early showed themselves in the Chevalier’s little army, not only amongst the independent chieftains, who were far too proud to brook subjection to each other, but betwixt the Scotch and Charles’s governor O’Sullivan, an Irishman by birth, who, with some of his countrymen bred in the Irish Brigade in the service of the King of France, had an influence with the Adventurer much resented by the Highlanders, who were sensible that their own clans made the chief or rather the only strength of his enterprise. There was a feud, also, between Lord George Murray and John Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s secretary, whose disunion greatly embarrassed the affairs of the Adventurer. In general, a thousand different pretensions divided their little army, and finally contributed in no small degree to its overthrow. ↩

The Doutelle was an armed vessel which brought a small supply of money and arms from France for the use of the insurgents. ↩

Old women, on whom devolved the duty of lamenting for the dead, which the Irish call Keening. ↩

These lines, or something like them, occur in an old magazine of the period. ↩

That is, contiguous. ↩

They occur in Miss Seward’s fine verses, beginning⁠—

“To thy rocks, stormy Lannow, adieu.”

↩

Which is, or was wont to be, the old air of “Good night and joy be wi’ you a’!” ↩

“My friend Bangour.” The Editor is unable to find the quotation in Poems on Several Occasions, by Hamilton of Bangour. (Glasgow, 1748.)

—⁠Editor

↩

The main body of the Highland army encamped, or rather bivouacked, in that part of the King’s Park which lies towards the village of Duddingston. ↩

The Helot clans. The Autobiography of Dr. Carlyle (“Jupiter Carlyle”), who saw the field after Preston Pans, contains a singular account of the ill-clad and ill-fed Highlanders who formed