Kern, or Ketteran, as they were called. He used to narrate the merry doings of the good old time when he was follower of Rob Roy Macgregor. This leader, on one occasion, thought proper to make a descent upon the lower part of the Loch-Lomond district, and summoned all the heritors and farmers to meet at the Kirk of Drymen, to pay him black-mail, i. e. tribute for forbearance and protection. As this invitation was supported by a band of thirty or forty stout fellows, only one gentleman, an ancestor, if I mistake not, of the present Mr Grahame of Gartmore, ventured to decline compliance. Rob Roy instantly swept his land of all he could drive away, and among the spoil was a bull of the old Scottish wild breed, whose ferocity occasioned great plague to the Ketterans. "But ere we had reached the Row of Dennan," said the old man, "a child might have scratched his ears."[1] The circumstance is a minute one, but it paints the times when the poor beeve was compelled
With goading pikemen hollowing at his heels,
As e'er the bravest antler of the woods.
Ethwald.
Note III.
Tradition calls the Hero's Targe.—St. V. p. 148.
There is a rock so named in the forest of Glenfinlas, by
- ↑ This anecdote was, in former editions, inaccurately ascribed to Gregor Macgregor of Glengyle, called Ghlune Dhu, or Black-knee, a relation of Rob Roy, but, as I have been assured, not addicted to his predatory excesses.
