Adventure stories; Scotland -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
“It is not much that I have done,” said she, “and I could be telling
you the five-fifths of it in two-three words. It is only a girl I am,
and what can befall a girl, at all events? But I went with the clan in
the year ’45. The men marched with swords and fire-locks, and some of
them in brigades in the same set of tartan; they were not backward at
the marching, I can tell you. And there were gentlemen from the Low
Country, with their tenants mounted and trumpets to sound, and there
was a grand skirling of war-pipes. I rode on a little Highland horse on
the right hand of my father, James More, and of Glengyle himself. And
here is one fine thing that I remember, that Glengyle kissed me in the
face, because (says he) ‘my kinswoman, you are the only lady of the
clan that has come out,’ and me a little maid of maybe twelve years
old! I saw Prince Charlie too, and the blue eyes of him; he was pretty
indeed! I had his hand to kiss in front of the army. O, well, these
were the good days, but it is all like a dream that I have seen and
then awakened. It went what way you very well know; and these were the
worst days of all, when the red-coat soldiers were out, and my father
and uncles lay in the hill, and I was to be carrying them their meat in
the middle night, or at the short sight of day when the cocks crow.
Yes, I have walked in the night, many’s the time, and my heart great in
me for terror of the darkness. It is a strange thing I will never have
been meddled with by a bogle; but they say a maid goes safe. Next there
was my uncle’s marriage, and that was a dreadful affair beyond all.
Jean Kay was that woman’s name; and she had me in the room with her
that night at Inversnaid, the night we took her from her friends in the
old, ancient manner. She would and she wouldn’t; she was for marrying
Rob the one minute, and the next she would be for none of him. I will
never have seen such a feckless creature of a woman; surely all there
was of her would tell her ay or no. Well, she was a widow; and I can
never be thinking a widow a good woman.”
“Catriona!” says I, “how do you make out that?”
“I do not know,” said she; “I am only telling you the seeming in my
heart. And then to marry a new man! Fy! But that was her; and she was
married again upon my Uncle Robin, and went with him awhile to kirk and
market; and then wearied, or else her friends got claught of her and
talked her round, or maybe she turned ashamed; at the least of it, she
ran away, and went back to her own folk, and said we had held her in
the lake, and I will never tell you all what. I have never thought much
of any females since that day. And so in the end my father, James More,
came to be cast in prison, and you know the rest of it an well as me.”
“And through all you had no friends?” said I.
“No,” said she; “I have been pretty chief with two-three lasses on the
braes, but not to call it friends.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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