Robin Oig appears to have fled abroad; then later he enlisted in King George’s Black Watch, and served at Fontenoy, where he was taken prisoner. After the ’45, he ventured home to Scotland, and in 1750 became concerned in another outrage, that seems as if thrown back into the Middle Ages, Being now a widower, he proposed a forcible marriage with a young widow named Jean Key, whose fortune of a few hundred pounds bulked large enough to balance the risk of abduction. In older days it had been not so uncommon for a Highlander, upon Sabine and savage precedent, to carry off a bride whose heart might not refuse to follow the violent possession of her hand, as in Red Indian story a white squaw has been found so strongly wedded to the wigwam that she would refuse to be rescued by her old kin. Only a generation earlier, the notorious Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, had played a prank of the same kind in high life with peculiar brutality that yet gained its end. But now the Macgregors committed themselves not only to a crime but to a blunder, in forgetting how times had changed. The third brother, known from his stature as James Mhor, who seems to have been the most active spirit of the family, was the ringleader in this enterprise. Robin, who went to the gallows for it, reading a book, may have been acquainted with Allan Ramsay’s song-- The widow can bake, and the widow can brew, The widow can shape and the widow can sew, And mony braw things the widow can do; Then have at the widow, my laddie! Wi’ courage attack her baith early and late, To kiss her and clap her ye mauna be blate: Speak weel and do better; for that’s the best gate To win a young widow, my laddie. At the trial it came to be asserted rather than proved that Robin had begun with speaking and other approved forms of courtship, and that he had been encouraged to hope for success with this widow of a few weeks’ standing. In any case, he hastened to _voies de fait_.