o overhear his father speak of him as a true
Macgregor, and amazed to find, in rummaging about that peaceful and
pious house, the sword of the Hanoverian officer. After he was grown up
and was better informed of his descent, "I frequently asked my father,"
he writes, "why he did not use the name of Macgregor; his replies were
significant, and give a picture of the man: 'It isn't a good _Methodist_
name. You can use it, but it will do you no _good_.' Yet the old
gentleman, by way of pleasantry, used to announce himself to friends as
'Colonel Macgregor.'"

Here, then, are certain Macgregors habitually using the name of
Stevenson, and at last, under the influence of Methodism, adopting it
entirely. Doubtless a proscribed clan could not be particular; they took
a name as a man takes an umbrella against a shower; as Rob Roy took
Campbell, and his son took Drummond. But this case is different;
Stevenson was not taken and left--it was consistently adhered to. It
does not in the least follow that all Stevensons are of the clan Alpin;
but it does follow that some may be. And I cannot conceal from myself
the possibility that James Stevenson in Glasgow, my first authentic
ancestor, may have had a Highland _alias_ upon his conscience and a
claymore in his back parlour.

To one more tradition I may allude, that we are somehow descended from a
French barber-surgeon who came to St. Andrews in the service of one of
the Cardinal Beatons. No details were added. But the very name of
France was so detested in my family for three generations, that I am
tempted to suppose there may be something in it.[9]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] An error: Stevensons owned at this date the barony of
Dolphingston in Haddingtonshire, Montgrennan in Ayrshire, and
several other lesser places.

[2] Pitcairn's "Criminal Trials," at large.--[R. L. S.]

[3] Fountainhall's "Decisions," vol. i. pp. 56, 132, 186, 204,
368.--[R. L. S.]

[4] _Ibid._ pp. 158, 299.--[R. L. S.]

[5] Working farmer: Fr. _laboureur_.

[6] This John Stevenson was not the only "witness" of the name;
other Stevensons were actually killed during the persecutions, in
the Glen of Trool, on Pentland, etc.; and it is very possible that
the author's own ancestor was one of the mounted party embodied by
Muir of Caldwell, only a day too late for Pentland.

[7] Wodrow Society's "Select Biographies," vol. ii.--[R. L. S.]

[8] Though the districts here n