If the date assigned to his birth be correct, he was only twenty-one when the rebellion of 1745 awoke the martial ardour of the youth of Scotland, and Dougal, notwithstanding his incapacity for bearing arms, had his love of adventure fired by the popular enthusiasm evoked by the romantic enterprise of “Prince Charlie.” The Fords of Frew, on the Forth--the Rubicon crossed by the Highland army in its march into the Lowlands--are only a few miles to the west of Dougal’s birthplace; and it was here that he appears to have embarked in the popular cause, with what purposes it would be difficult to say. In his metrical History of the Rebellion, although he writes in the first person, he makes no mention of any adventures personal to himself; he records only what he saw, and in the preface he says “that he had been an eye witness of most of the movements of the Highland army from the crossing of the Fords of Frew till the final defeat at Culloden.” Nor does he make any allusion to the capacity in which he observed the movements of the army; and, as it is every way improbable that he gave the Jacobites any other assistance than that of sympathy, the conjecture almost amounts to a certainty that he followed them as a sutler. He had sufficient pride not to mention the fact in his writings; yet, no doubt, a man of his genial and outspoken disposition must often have referred to the incidents of his campaigning among his boon companions. We are disposed to think, considering the circumstances, that he must have been born earlier than 1724; for the coolness and self-confidence, not to say the indifference, with which he regarded the success or failure of either side, the impartiality of his narrative, and, it is conjectured, his dealing with either side, according as it suited his convenience or his safety, argue greater experience of the world than could reasonably be expected of a person of such limited education at the age of twenty-one. It is true he was born within hearing of the muster trumpet of Stirling Castle, and must, from his boyhood, have been sufficiently familiar with the garrison exercises to make him at home in the bustle of a camp; but there is the fact, that, almost before the smoke of the rebellion was extinguished, his metrical History, consisting of over five thousand lines, Hudibrastic metre, is announced in the _Glasgow Courier_ as “A full and particular account of the late rebellion, in the years 1745 and 1746, beginning with the Pretender’s embarking for Scotland, and then, an account of every battle, siege, or skirmish that has happened in either Scotland, or England; to which is added several addresses and epistles to the Pope, Pagans, Poets, and Pretender; all in metre; price fourpence.” After stating that any bookseller of packman might have it on easier terms from James Duncan, or the author, D. Graham, it is added:--“The like has not been done since the days of David Lindsay.” The book appeared in September, 1746,