wrought such execution on the shaveling band' of clerks after Glen Fruin, have left the matter to the 'coir na claidheamh '?

So far from this, the recreant M'Gregor, bound and obliged himself to prove the same by four sufficient witnesses'-so quickly had he deteriorated from the true practice of his clan. His sufficient witnesses were 'John Grame and his sub-tenant in Ballanton, his neighbour Finley Dymoch, and John M'Adam, Osteleir in Offerance of Gartmore.' A little leaven leaveneth the whole, and the bad example of this man soon bore its evil fruit.

We find that 'Robert Grame in Ballanton' (that is not wonderful, for he was of a hostile clan and had received none of the spoil as justifiable hush money) also came forward, with what in his case. I should soften into 'testimony.' Far more remains to tell. 'Jean, spouse to the said Ewan Cameron,' that very Ewan who so justly received a bonus as the rent of his ability, also came forward and informed. She deponed 'that Walter M'Watt was of the band,' although we knew it all before.

It is painful to me to record that the said M'Watt was 'tenant to said Laird of Gartmore,' for it appears according to the evidence of Ewan Cameron's wife that 'he brocht the said rogues to the said house, went in at ane hole in the byre, which formerly he knew, opened the door and cutted the bands of the said cowes and horse.' This

who after all neither made nor unmade kings, but only served his lord (Ewan Cameron), got for his pains, two sheep, a plyde, a pair of tow-cards, two heckles and a pair of wool cleets, with ane maikle brass pan and several other thinges.' The harrying of the luckless Isabell M'Clucky seems to have been done thoroughly enough, and in a business way. However, punishment possibly overtook the evil-doers, as Thomas M'Callum, who changed the said brass pott with the said M'Watt for bute,'2 testified in confirmation of the above.

'Item Janet Macneall giveth up that she saw him take the plough irons out of a moss hole the summer thereafter with ane pott when he flitted out of Offerance to the waird, and that he sent the plaid and some other plenishing that he got to John

1I am well aware that gentlemen of the Clan Gregor have indignantly denied that Dougal Ciar Mor was the author of the slaughter of the students in Glen Fruin. If though we hold him innocent, how is he to be justified in the eyes of fame, for he seems to have done nothing else worthy of remark, . . . except of course being the ancestor of Rob Roy, an entirely unconscious feat of arms on his part.

2 Bute = spoil.

Hunter his house in Corriegreenan for fear of being known. Item the said Walter M Watt died tenant to the Laird of Gartmore and his spouse and the said John Hunter took and intromitted with the whole geir. Item Elizabeth Parland spouse to umquhile George M'Muir, Moorherd in Gartmore, informs she being ane ostlere, that they gave a cow that night they lifted the hership to Patrick Graeme in Middle Gartfarran in the byegoing betwixt him and his brother Alexander Graeme in Borland and also that the said Robert M'Grigor and his brethern with the said John M'Watt met them in the way, although they came not to the house.

Item that they sold the rest of the geir at one Nicol M'Nicol's house in the Brae of Glenurchy and the said Nicol M'Nicol got a flecked horse for meat and drink from them and lastly Dugald McLaren and his brother Alexander got aquaviti among them. This is the true information of the said persons that I have endeavoured to get nottrie att, and if they be not material bonds and grounds of pursuit in it I give it over, but as I think the most material point is in the third article.'

So ends the document, leaving us in the dark as to what happened in the end, just as is usually the case in life.

The names of nearly all the witnesses, as Elizabeth Parlane, John Ffisher, Robert Carrick, Robert M'Laren, Thomas M'Millan, the pseudo-M'Gregor, and of course the Grames, were all familiar to me in the Gartmore of my youth.

All the place-names remain unchanged, although a certain number of them have been forgotten, except by me, and various old semi-Highlanders interested in such things, or accustomed to their sound. Ballanton, Craiguchty, Cullochgairtane (now Cooligarten), Offerance of Garrachel, Gouston of Cashlie, Bochaistail, Gartfarran, Craigieneult, Boquhapple, Corriegreenan, and others which I have not set down, as Milltown of Aberfoyle, though they occur in one or other of the documents, are household words to me.

What is changed entirely is the life. No one, I say it boldly, no one alive can reconstruct a Highlander of the class treated of in my document as Loose and Broken Men.

Pictures may show us chiefs. Song and tradition tell us tricks of manner; but Ewan Cameron, Robert Dou M'Grigor, and their bold compeers elude us utterly. A print of Rob Roy, from the well-known picture once in the possession of the Buchanans of Arden, hangs above the mantelpiece just where I write these lines.

He must have known many a "gallowglass" of the Ewan Cameron breed; but even he was semi-civilised, and of a race different from all my friends. Long-haired, light (and rough) footed, wild-eyed, ragged carles they must have been; keen on a trail as is an Indian or a Black-boy in North Queensland, pitiless, blood-thirsty, and yet apt at a bargain, as their disposal of the particular goodes, to wit, four horses and two mares,' the sheep and other gear' goes far to prove.

The mares and horses are set down as being worth thirttie six pound the piece overhead,' and I am certain Ewan Cameron got full value for them, even although the price was paid in Scots, for sterling money in those days could not have been much used 'above the pass.' It must have been a more exciting life in Gartmore and in Aberfoyle than in our times, and have resembled that of Western 'Texas fifty years ago. In London, Addison was rising into fame, and had already translated Ovid's Metamorphoses. Prior was Secretary to the Embassy in Holland, Swift was a parish priest at Laracar, and in the very year (1698) in which Ewan Cameron drove his 'creagh' past the Grey Mare's Tail, on the old road to Loch Achray, Defoe published his Essay on Projects, and two years later his True Englishman.

Roads must have been non-existent, or at least primitive in the district of Menteith. This is shown clearly by the separation, as of a whole world, between the farm of Gouston, near Buchlyvie, and the shores of Loch Achray, where it was safe to sell in open day, beasts stolen barely fifteen miles away.

Men, customs, crops, and in a measure even the face of the low country through which those loose and broken men passed, driving the stolen cows and sheep, have changed. If they returned, all that they would find unaltered would be the hills, Ben Dearg and Ben Dhu, Craig Vadh, Ben Ledi, Schiehallion, Ben Voirlich, distant Ben More, with its two peaks, and Ben Venue peeping up timidly above the road they travelled on that December night, the Rock of Stirling, the brown and billowy Flanders moss, and the white shrouding mists.

R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.

A Forgotten Scottish Scholar of the Sixteenth

Century

N Smollett's comedy, The Reprisal, published in 1757, one of

In the charactero, a Scottish ensign in the French service, makes

this remark to his companion-in-arms, an Irish lieutenant of the name of Ochlabber, Hoot, fie! Captain Ochlabber, whare's a' your philosophy? Did ye never read Seneca De Consolatione, or Volusenus, my countryman, De Tranquillitate Animi?' It was not very likely that an Irish lieutenant should have heard of Volusenus, and still less likely that he had read his principal work. At least, only six years before the appearance of Smollett's play, a Principal of the university of Edinburgh, Dr. William Wishart, had published a new edition of Volusenus's book, accompanied by a prefatory epistle in which the writer 2 asks this question, How many to-day have heard anything of Volusenus?' If we go back a century earlier, we find that Volusenus was then no better known, even in his native country. In 1637 had appeared a previous issue of his book, and the editor, David Echlin, physician to Henrietta Maria, begins his dedication as follows: How much not only his parent Scotland, prolific in such geniuses, but all the nations of the earth, owe to Florentius Volusenus, this one little book of his amply testifies.' In view of the immense debt the world owed to Volusenus, however, it is somewhat curious to find the editor taking credit to himself for rescuing Volusenus from the jaws of Orcus.' These testimonies may suffice to prove that, though Volusenus may have been known to a few scholars, he had no place in the memories of the mass of his countrymen as one of the distinguished ornaments of their nation. Be it added that of the Scottish historians who wrote in

1 Delivered as an Introductory Lecture to the Class of Ancient (Scottish) History in the University of Edinburgh.

2 Dr. John Ward of Gresham College, London.

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, only one, Calderwood, mentions his name.1

In recent years, Florence Wilson, for such is his name in the vernacular, has attracted the attention of three distinguished scholars, all of whom recognised in him a rare and choice spirit whom his countrymen do not well to forget. It fell to Professor Robertson Smith to write an account of Wilson for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and he became so interested in the task that he made a special investigation of Wilson's career, with the result that he discovered two productions from his hand which had hitherto escaped notice. The late Dr. R. C. Christie, whose life was devoted to the study of the sixteenth century, and whose biography of the printer Étienne Dolet is the monument of his labours, also found in Wilson a subject of such interest that he contributed a sketch of him to the Dictionary of National Biography, in which he throws new light on certain periods of Wilson's career. Finally, a French historian, M. Ferdinand Buisson, well known for his services to primary education in France, has given a picture of Wilson and his surroundings which puts it beyond doubt that he was one of whom his country had reason to be proud.2

In the sixteenth century it was not the custom to write a twovolume biography of every person more or less distinguished immediately on his decease. At the close of his long life, George Buchanan wrote a brief sketch of his own career; and it was a wise precaution, since that sketch is the foundation of every biography that can be written of him. In the case of even the most notable scholars, a page or two prefixed to their works by some one more or less intimately acquainted with them is for the most part the sole record we have of their lives. So it is in the case of Florence Wilson, of whom we have a page of biography from the

1 Calderwood's account of Wilson is as follows: Florence Wilsone, a Black frier, in Elgine of Murrey, threw off his monkish habite this yeere, (1539,) and fled out of the countrie. He was a learned man, and of great expectatioun, as Gesnerus gathered, partlie frome his workes, and partlie by conference with him at Lions. The yeere following, as he maketh mentioun in his Bibliothecke, when he was in England, he had some conference with the Bishop of Rochester. The bishop tooke him to have beene a merchaunt. But after some conference he perceaved him to be a learned man, and burst forth in these words, “I mervel that the hereticks can interprete the Scriptures so perfytelie!" (Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, i. pp. 133-4.)

2 Sébastien Castellion, sa Vie et son Euvre (Paris, 1892), vol. i. pp. 35-6.