Dear Clan,

With the 326th anniversary of the birthday of Rob Roy just past, I wanted to follow our publisher's lead from last newsletter and quote from "The History of Rob Roy MacGregor" by W. H. Murray. This is the book that inspired the film, or so declares the book's jacket.

W. H. Murray brings Rob and his time so alive in details you feel like you are standing there in the home of Rob Roy's early infancy when he writes:

" The boy in his cradle by the fireside must have looked an unlikely candidate for notoriety. Like any other baby when the dawn fires were stoked, he had certainly squalled incessantly, eyes stung by smoke and his face licked by passing collies. He had his mother's bright red hair, eye catching even by candle-light, a halo destined to darken with the years, as hers had too, but meantime to be enjoyed, already she called him "Rab Rauch" she would breathe it as an inward whisper, for ill-luck held to attend open declaration before the sprinkling of water."

Murray believes that past biographies had severely misunderstood Rob Roy's character because they had not done their homework regarding the social and political history of the highlands. "Rob had figured in Scott's story incidentally and had been grossly libeled, although still with a grain of truth that won esteem."

To get the truth out of "Rab Ruach's" life, Murray searched the estate papers of Argyll, Atholl, Breadalbane, Buchanan, MacGregor, Montrose, and others. "In righting the wrong done to Rob Roy's name by Scott, and by historians whom he and others followed, I have found Rob to be of stronger character than the earlier writers had imagined. Their works on Rob Roy require so much correction and refutation few readers would want to wade through the quagmire."

Here is another of my favorite descriptions from the book about the highland funeral and Celtic burial on Inch Cailleach of Rob Roy's first cousin Gregor, chief of Clan Gregor. It is long but well worth the space. Inch Cailleac is the ancient Celtic burial site of our clan, and this funeral seems more traditional than Rob Roy's which follows it by several decades. Perhaps the difference in these funerals and burial sites reflect the amount of breakdown that had already happened in Gaelic society by the time of Rob Roy's death.

" On the first night of the wake, all relatives able to make the journey gathered with friends at Stucnaroy to keep the chief mourners company. They entered the house in relays to be offered a light snack of bread and cheese with ale and whiskey, and these services were repeated at intervals when each new guest arrived. The corpse, wrapped in its winding sheet of white linen and raised on benches (wooden coffins were rarely used in the highlands until next century), lay at one end of the room; at the other stood kegs of oatmeal whiskey from which women served. All was done in silence, except when grace was said by Kilmann at each and every service of food, until he and Christian led the company in dancing that lasted till morning. They formed a ring, and to the chants of laments, danced where they stood in slow time. The wake and dancing continued each night until burial. The custom was observed at wakes everywhere except by people in the poorest circumstances. On the third night, the corpse was placed on a bier and carried next to Inversnaid, where it rested over night. A small fleet of galleys had assembled there during the day, and some had been engaged in transporting mourners arriving on the west side of Loch Lomond to their accommodation along the shores of Craigrostan. Every bit of floor space in every house had been spread with dry bracken for the guests' bedding. A few important men lodged at Glengyle House and Corarklet, but many had to lie out on the braesides on frosted ground.

" Early in the morning, when the chief mourners had gathered at Inversnaid, a black banner was run up the mast head of the funeral galley. A score of women, who had been mustered above the shore, moaned and wailed while the bier was lifted aboard. Gregor's piper took position beside his dead chief, whose bier had been placed at the bow, face open to the sky. Archibald, wearing for the first time three eagles' feathers in his bonnet, then embarked with his sons Iain and Rob Roy, and several chieftain's of Clan Gregor and their families. As soon as they cast off, the mourners fell silent and the piper sounded the first notes of the coronach. The oarsman pulled away. The other galleys came into the beach in turn to pick up their complement and follow; meanwhile, the funeral galley was describing a deasil, a circle rowed three times sunwise. This symbol of eternity, blessing and dedication, in the ideal form of the Celtic sun god, had come down to them from ancestors of two thousand years.

"Proceeding as one flotilla, the boats were rowed thirteen miles south toward Inch Cailleach. To the men following in the galleys, and the women and children listening and watching by the oak woods, the pipes sounded the very voice of their people and homeland. The summits of Ben Vorlich, Ben Oss, and Ben Dubhcraig floated like icebergs of the sky, adrift on the clouds that engulfed the head of the loch. Ben Lomond towered close by over its Ptarmigan shoulder, given added height by the darker narrows beneath. Where the lock widened southward around a dozen scattered islands, its surface lay smooth as pewter in every shade of grey and white. The pipe music that indoors could sound harshly loud or shrill became muted across long waters and great space, more perfectly in harmony with wild land than the song of any other instrument."

For the rest, and many other interesting facts of the life and times of Rob Roy, you'll have to get the book.

Ard Choille,

J. K. Gregg