*Chapter XLI* *Gilderoy* Gilderoy was a celebrated and most daring highwayman, who roamed far, and was well-known all over Scotland and indeed in London. His death inspired a very striking ballad, but this is hardly a Border Lowland ballad, but refers chiefly to another Border district, namely, that between the Lowlands and Highlands. Just as the Scottish Lowlanders thought the English their legitimate quarry, so the Highlanders in turn looked upon the Lowlanders as created to supply them with all they lacked. There is a story on record of a Highland chief who, finding his men had carelessly robbed another Highlander, returned the spoil with a handsome apology, and issued stringent orders that in future nothing was to be taken except in the Lowlands, "where all men make their prey." Among the robber clans of the Highlands, the MacGregors stand easily in the first rank. In a long series of Scottish Acts of Parliament, they are habitually referred to as "the wicked clan Gregor, so long continuing in blood, slaughter, theft, and robbery." One of their most famous exploits was the battle of Glenfruin, when they defeated their enemies, the Colquhouns, and slew two hundred of them. The Colquhouns appeared before the King at Stirling with the bloody shirts stripped off their dead, and the law was put in motion against the MacGregors more vigorously than ever. This was in 1603. The execution of Gilderoy, as described in our poem, took place in 1638. His real name was Patrick MacGregor, and the fact that he belonged to this Ishmaelite clan, whose hand was directed against every man, and whose very name had been solemnly abolished, may well serve as an excuse for his career of crime. Gilderoy, in Gaelic, means the red-haired gillie or lad, and besides the name there are many other points of similarity between him and Rob Roy, who was the head of the Clan MacGregor in the following century. Both Gilderoy and Rob Roy were professional blackmailers, that is, they could be relied on never to plunder anyone who was prudent enough to buy them off by paying a fixed contribution. This is what is meant in the following lines of the ballad— "All these did honestly possess He never did annoy, Who never failed to pay their cess To my love, Gilderoy."