WILLIAM AND MAST.

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the number of claymores that Dundee had commanded. The chap.Stewarts of Appin, who, though full of zeal, had not been able - -

to come up in time for the battle, were among the first who Thoiiigh-arrived. Several clans, which had hitherto waited to see which Jointor- yside was the stronger, were now eager to descend on the Low- ccd ‘lands under the standard of King James the Seventh. TheGrants indeed continued to bear true allegiance to William andMary; and the Mackintoshes were kept neutral by unconquer-able aversion to Keppoch. But Macphersons, Farquharsons,and Frasers came in crowds to the camp atBlair. The hesitationof the Athol men was at an end. Many of them had lurked,during the fight, among the crags and birch tree's of Killie-crankie, and, as soon as the event of the day was decided, hademerged from those hiding places to strip and butcher thefugitives who tried to escape by the pass. The Robertsons,a Gaelic race, though bearing a Saxon name, gave in at thisconjuncture their adhesion to the cause of the exiled king.

Their chief Alexander, who took his appellation from his lord-ship of Struan, was a very young man and a student at theUniversity of Saint Andrew’s. He had there acquired a smatter-ing of letters, and had been initiated much more deeply intoTory politics. He now joined the Highland army, and con-tinued, through a long life, to be constant to the Jacobitecause. His part, however, in public affairs was so insignificantthat his name would not now be remembered, if he had notleft a volume of poems, always very stupid and often very pro- 'fligate. Had this book been manufactured in Grub Street, itwould scarcely have been honoured with a quarter of a line inthe Dunciad. But it attracted some notice on account of thesituation of the writer. For, a hundred and twenty years ago,an eclogue or a lampoon written by a Highland chief was aliterary portent.*

* See the History prefixed to the poems of Alexander Robertson. In

3 *