tasted; but I cannot
tell how this should be, for they only make skimmed-milk cheeses. I
asked her for a little bread and milk for our breakfast, but she said it
would be no trouble to make tea, as she must make it for the family; so
we all breakfasted together. The cheese was set out, as before, with
plenty of butter and barley-cakes, and fresh baked oaten cakes, which, no
doubt, were made for us: they had been kneaded with cream, and were
excellent. All the party pressed us to eat, and were very jocose about
the necessity of helping out their coarse bread with butter, and they
themselves ate almost as much butter as bread. In talking of the French
and the present times, their language was what most people would call
Jacobinical. They spoke much of the oppressions endured by the
Highlanders further up, of the absolute impossibility of their living in
any comfort, and of the cruelty of laying so many restraints on
emigration. Then they spoke with animation of the attachment of the
clans to their lairds: 'The laird of this place, Glengyle, where we live,
could have commanded so many men who would have followed him to the
death; and now there are none left.' It appeared that Mr. Macfarlane,
and his wife's brother, Mr. Macalpine, farmed the place, inclusive of the
whole vale upwards to the mountains, and the mountains themselves, under
the lady of Glengyle, the mother of the young laird, a minor. It was a
sheep-farm.

Speaking of another neighbouring laird, they said he had gone, like the
rest of them, to Edinburgh, left his lands and his own people, spending
his money where it brought him not any esteem, so that he was of no value
either at home or abroad. We mentioned Rob Roy, and the eyes of all
glistened; even the lady of the house, who was very diffident, and no
great talker, exclaimed, 'He was a good man, Rob Roy! he had been dead
only about eighty years, had lived in the next farm, which belonged to
him, and there his bones were laid.' {93} He was a famous swordsman.
Having an arm much longer than other men, he had a greater command with
his sword. As a proof of the length of his arm, they told us that he
could garter his tartan stockings below the knee without stooping, and
added a dozen different stories of single combats, which he had fought,
all in perfect good-humour, merely to prove his prowess. I daresay they
had stories of this kind which would hardly have been exhausted in the
long evenings of a