acGregor, who was born among the willows or in a hill-side
sheep-pen--'Son of my love,' a heraldic bar sinister, but history
reveals a reason for the birth among the willows far other than the
sinister aspect of the name": these are the dark words of Mr. Cosmo
Innes; but history or tradition, being interrogated, tells a somewhat
tangled tale. The heir of Macgregor of Glenorchy, murdered about 1353 by
the Argyll Campbells, appears to have been the original "Son of my
love"; and his more loyal clansmen took the name to fight under. It may
be supposed the story of their resistance became popular, and the name
in some sort identified with the idea of opposition to the Campbells.
Twice afterwards, on some renewed aggression, in 1502 and 1552, we find
the Macgregors again banding themselves into a sept of "Sons of my
love"; and when the great disaster fell on them in 1603, the whole
original legend re-appears, and we have the heir of Alaster of Glenstrae
born "among the willows" of a fugitive mother, and the more loyal
clansmen again rallying under the name of Stevenson. A story would not
be told so often unless it had some base in fact; nor (if there were no
bond at all between the Red Macgregors and the Stevensons) would that
extraneous and somewhat uncouth name be so much repeated in the legends
of the Children of the Mist.

But I am enabled, by my very lively and obliging correspondent, Mr.
George A. Macgregor Stevenson of New York, to give an actual instance.
His grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and
great-great-great-grandfather, all used the names of Macgregor and
Stevenson as occasion served; being perhaps Macgregor by night and
Stevenson by day. The great-great-great-grandfather was a mighty man of
his hands, marched with the clan in the 'Forty-five, and returned with
_spolia opima_ in the shape of a sword, which he had wrested from an
officer in the retreat, and which is in the possession of my
correspondent to this day. His great-grandson (the grandfather of my
correspondent), being converted to Methodism by some wayside preacher,
discarded in a moment his name, his old nature, and his political
principles, and with the zeal of a proselyte sealed his adherence to the
Protestant Succession by baptising his next son George. This George
became the publisher and editor of the _Wesleyan Times_. His children
were brought up in ignorance of their Highland pedigree; and my
correspondent was puzzled t