s of Tullibardine, on
account of his high rank and importance to the cause. The spot chosen
for the ceremony was a knoll in the centre of the vale. Upon this little
eminence the Marquis stood, supported on either side by men, for his
health was infirm, and what we should now call a premature old age was
fast approaching. The banner which it was his lot to unfurl displayed no
motto, nor was there inscribed upon it the coffin and the crown which
the vulgar notion in England assigned to it. It was simply a large
banner of red silk, with a white space in the middle. The Marquis held
the staff until the Manifesto of the Chevalier and the Commission of
Regency had been read. In a few hours the glen in which this solemnity
had been performed, was filled not only with Highlanders, but with
ladies and gentlemen to admire the spectacle. Among them was the
celebrated Miss, or, more properly, Mrs. Jeanie Cameron, whose
passionate attachment for the Prince rendered her so conspicuous in the
troublous period of 1745. The description given of her in Bishop
Forbes's Jacobite Memoirs destroys much of the romance of the story
commonly related of her. "She is a widow," he declares, "nearer fifty
than forty years of age. She is a genteel, well-looking, handsome woman,
with a pair of pretty eyes, and hair black as jet. She is of a very
sprightly genius, and is very agreeable in conversation. She was so far
from accompanying the Prince's army, that she went off with the rest of
the spectators as soon as the army marched; neither did she ever follow
the camp, nor ever was with the Prince in private, except when he was in
Edinburgh."[54]

Soon after the unfurling of the standard, we find the Marquis of
Tullibardine writing to Mrs. Robertson of Lude, a daughter of Lord
Nairn, and desiring her to put the Castle of Blair into some order, and
to do honours of the place when the Prince should come there. The
Marquis, it is here proper to mention, was regarded by all the Jacobites
as still the head of his house, and uniformly styled by that party the
"Duke of Athole," yet he seldom adopted the title himself; and in only
one or two instances in his correspondence does the signature of Athole
occur.[55]

On the thirty-first of August the Prince visited the famous Blair
Athole, or Field of Athole, the word _Blair_ signifying a pleasant land,
and being descriptive of that beautiful vale situated in the midst of
wild and mountainous scenery.

After r