as well as the description that
precedes it, will remind the reader of the war of La Vendee, in which
the royalists, consisting chiefly of insurgent peasantry, attached a
prodigious and even superstitious interest to the possession of a piece
of brass ordnance, which they called Marie Jeanne.

The Highlanders of an early period were afraid of cannon, with the noise
and effect of which they were totally unacquainted. It was by means
of three or four small pieces of artillery that the Earl of Huntly and
Errol, in James VI's time, gained a great victory at Glenlivat, over a
numerous Highland army, commanded by the Earl of Argyle. At the battle
of the Bridge of Dee, General Middleton obtained by his artillery a
similar success, the Highlanders not being able to stand the discharge
of MUSKET'S-MOTHER, which was the name they bestowed on great guns. In
an old ballad on the battle of the Bridge of Dee, these verses occur:--

The Highlandmen are pretty men
For handling sword and shield,
But yet they are but simple men
To stand a stricken field.

The Highlandmen are pretty men
For target and claymore,
But yet they are but naked men
To face the cannon's roar.

For the cannons roar on a summer night
Like thunder in the air;
Was never man in Highland garb
Would face the cannon fair.

But the Highlanders of 1745 had got far beyond the simplicity of their
forefathers, and showed throughout the whole war how little they dreaded
artillery, although the common people still attached some consequence to
the possession of the field-piece which led to this disquisition.

NOTE 26.--ANDERSON OF WHITBURGH

The faithful friend who pointed out the pass by which the Highlanders
moved from Tranent to Seaton, was Robert Anderson, Junior, of Whitburgh,
a gentleman of property in East Lothian. He had been interrogated by the
Lord George Murray concerning the possibility of crossing the uncouth
and marshy piece of ground which divided the armies, and which he
described as impracticable. When dismissed, he recollected that there
was a circuitous path leading eastward through the marsh into the
plain, by which the Highlanders might turn the flank of Sir John Cope's
position, without being exposed to the enemy's fire. Having mentioned
his opinion to Mr. Hepburn of Keith, who instantly saw its importance,
he was encouraged by that gentleman to awake Lord George Murray, and
communic