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Issue 9 - The stuff of legends

History & Heritage

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Scotland Magazine Issue 9

Scotland Magazine Issue 9
July 2003

 

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The stuff of legends

ROB ROY MACGREGOR ATTRACTED HERO STATUS EVEN IN HIS OWN LIFETIME, AND IT HAS GROWN EVER SINCE. SO HOW CLOSE TO TRUTH ARE THE STORIES?

The stuff of legends (Issue 9)
Few Scottish characters have been accredited with more heroic exploits and stories than Roy MacGregor – known as Rob Roy because of his striking red hair. His dramatic life was to capture the public imagination even during his own lifetime.

But for all the tales, captured in writing and more recently on film, how much do we really know about the man who was born in 1671 and died peacefully at home 63 years later?

Depending on what you read, Rob Roy was either a thief and common criminal or a dedicated family man and businessman forced into a life of crime.

What we know as fact is that he was essentially a farmer and cattle dealer with strong leadership and business skills.

Well-educated, he had a reputation for retrieving lost cattle and ran a profitable business protecting other people’s herds – a common, if dubious, practice of the time.

The MacGregors were Protestant and had a long history of rebelliousness. Their ancestors were Celtic kings. A feud with the Colquhouns led to the whole clan being outlawed at the start of the 17th century, and from then on, they were known as ‘the children of the mist’.

Rob Roy was to follow a lawless path, though it would seem that it was thrust upon him through circumstances.

So good had he become at cattle droving that his landlord, the Marquess of Montrose, invested heavily in the business. But the money was stolen and MacGregor was blamed.

He fled, but Montrose took his revenge by having his home burned. There are also suggestions that his wife was raped.

For the next few years, Rob Roy launched a personal war on Montrose. Living on the estate of Montrose’s rival, the powerful Campbell Duke of Argyll, MacGregor led his men in audacious acts of banditry, taking land and livestock.

Meanwhile, he was also to play a peripheral role in the conflict between the Jacobites and Hanoverians. A Jacobite despite being a Protestant, he supported the uprising, but took no part in the definitive battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715.

Through all of this, Rob Roy was a continual thorn in the side of Montrose, kidnapping his factor and imprisoning him on an island in Loch Katrine.

His private war, however, was to lead to many of the heroic stories that grew up around him. In 1717, he was captured by Montrose and escaped, swimming across the Ford of Frew on the River Forth, while on the way to Stirling Castle. The dramatic dusk swim to safety, while musket shots whizzed around him, still captures the imagination to this day.

Montrose gave up after this, leaving MacGregor as a national hero to many; but that wasn’t to be the end of his woes. For now he became the target of the Duke of Atholl, not for personal reasons, but because of the prestige attached to capturing the outlaw.

Once again, legend records that Rob Roy was to escape his enemy’s clutches, this time from prison, and there are other heroic stories of his long battle for peace.

He finally called a truce with the authorities in 1725, was pardoned, and lived out his final years quietly. It is said he converted to Catholicism in 1730.

He died nine years later at his home in Inverlochlarig, at the head of Glen Balquhidder. His final words were: “It is all over. Put me to bed. Call the piper. Let him play Cha till me tuille.”

He was buried with great ceremony at a funeral attended by most of the clans, and his body placed under an ancient Celtic slab in the graveyard of the auld Kirk of Balquhidder.

But Rob Roy had already attracted the interest of writers such as Daniel Defoe, and in time he was to be immortalised by Sir Walter Scott.

The common image of him these days is as a rugged Highlander acting like a Scottish Robin Hood against the injustices of the laird. But he was much more than that; a loving husband, father of four sons, and a charismatic leader and capable businessman, he survived into old age having carved himself out a place in Scottish history and folklore.