landers was less shocked at the
idea of this particular species of violence, than might be expected from
their general kindness to the weaker sex when they make part of their own
families. But all their views were tinged with the idea that they lived
in a state of war; and in such a state, from the time of the siege of
Troy to "the moment when Previsa fell,"* the female captives are, to
uncivilised victors, the most valuable part of the booty--

* Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II.

"The wealthy are slaughtered, the lovely are spared."

We need not refer to the rape of the Sabines, or to a similar instance in
the Book of Judges, for evidence that such deeds of violence have been
committed upon a large scale. Indeed, this sort of enterprise was so
common along the Highland line as to give rise to a variety of songs and
ballads.*

* See Appendix, No. VI.

The annals of Ireland, as well as those of Scotland, prove the crime to
have been common in the more lawless parts of both countries; and any
woman who happened to please a man of spirit who came of a good house,
and possessed a few chosen friends, and a retreat in the mountains, was
not permitted the alternative of saying him nay. What is more, it would
seem that the women themselves, most interested in the immunities of
their sex, were, among the lower classes, accustomed to regard such
marriages as that which is presently to be detailed as "pretty Fanny's
way," or rather, the way of Donald with pretty Fanny. It is not a great
many years since a respectable woman, above the lower rank of life,
expressed herself very warmly to the author on his taking the freedom to
censure the behaviour of the MacGregors on the occasion in question. She
said "that there was no use in giving a bride too much choice upon such
occasions; that the marriages were the happiest long syne which had been
done offhand." Finally, she averred that her "own mother had never seen
her father till the night he brought her up from the Lennox, with ten
head of black cattle, and there had not been a happier couple in the
country."

James Drummond and his brethren having similar opinions with the author's
old acquaintance, and debating how they might raise the fallen fortunes
of their clan, formed a resolution to settle their brother's fortune by
striking up an advantageous marriage betwixt Robin Oig and one Jean Key,
or Wright, a young woman scarce twenty years old, and who had been le