mLUAJI AND 5IABY.

27

sons free from all restraint, may seem extraordinary. There chap.is not a word on the subject in Evelyn’s Diary. In Narcissus J692 _-Luttrell’s Diary is a remarkable entry made five weeks after thebutchery. The letters from Scotland, he says, described thatkingdom as perfectly tranquil, except that there was still somegrumbling about ecclesiastical questions. The Dutch ministersregularly reported all the Scotch news to their government.

They thought it worth while, about this time, to mention thata collier had been taken by a privateer near Berwick, that theEdinburgh mail had been robbed, that a whale, with a tongueseventeen feet long and seven feet broad, had been strandednear Aberdeen. But it is not hinted in any of their despatchesthat there was any rumour of any extraordinary occurrence inthe Highlands. Reports that some of the Macdonalds had beenslain did indeed, in about three weeks, travel throughEdinburghup to London. But these reports were vague and contradictory;and the very worst of them was far from coming up to thehorrible truth. The Whig version of the story was that the oldrobber Mac Ian had laid an ambuscade for the soldiers, that hehad been caught in his own snare, and that he and some of hisclan had fallen sword in hand. The Jacobite version, sentfrom Edinburgh on the twenty-third of March, appeared in theParis Gazette of the seventh of April. Glenlyon, it was said,had been sent with a detachment from Argyle’s regiment, undercover of darkness, to surprise the inhabitants of Glencoe, andhad killed thirty six men and boys and four women.* In thisthere w r as nothing very strange or shocking. A night attackon a gang of freebooters occupying a strong natural fortressmay be a perfectly legitimate military operation; and, in theobscurity and confusion of such an attack, the most humaneman may be so unfortunate as to shoot a woman or a child. The

* What I have called the Whig version of the story is given, as well asthe Jacobite version, in the Paris Gazette of April 7. 1692.