Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844. Various

is no ingredient of fiction in the historical incidents recorded in the following ballad. The indignities that were heaped upon Montrose during his procession through Edinburgh, his appearance before the Estates, and his last passage to the scaffold, as well as his undaunted bearing, have all been spoken to by eyewitnesses of the scene. A graphic and vivid sketch of the whole will be found in Mr Mark Napier’s volume, “The Life and Times of Montrose”—a work as chivalrous in its tone as the Chronicles of Froissart, and abounding in original and most interesting materials; but, in order to satisfy all scruple, the authorities for each fact are given in the shape of notes. The ballad may be considered as a narrative of the transactions, related by an   aged Highlander, who had followed Montrose throughout his campaigns, to his grandson, shortly before the splendid victory of Killiecrankie:—

I

      Come hither, Evan Cameron,

      Come, stand beside my knee—

      I hear the river roaring down

      Towards the wintry sea.

      There’s shouting on the mountain side,

      There’s war within the blast—

      Old faces look upon me,

      Old forms go trooping past.

      I hear the pibroch wailing

      Amidst the din of fight,

      And my old spirit wakes again

      Upon the verge of night!

II

      ’Twas I that led the Highland host

      Through wild Lochaber’s snows,

      What time the plaided clans came down

      To battle with Montrose.

      I’ve told thee how the Southrons fell

      Beneath the broad claymore,

      And how we smote the Campbell clan

      By Inverlochy’s shore.

      I’ve told thee how we swept Dundee,

      And tamed the Lindsays’ pride;

      But never have I told thee yet

      How the Great Marquis died!

III

      A traitor sold him to his foes;9

      O deed of deathless shame!

      I charge thee, boy, if e’er thou meet

      With one of Assynt’s name—

      Be it upon the mountain’s side,

      Or yet within the glen,

      Stand he in martial gear alone,

      Or back’d by armed men—

      Face him, as thou would’st face the man

      Who wrong’d thy sire’s renown;

      Remember of what blood thou art,

      And strike the caitiff down!

IV

      They brought him to the Watergate10

      Hard bound with hempen span,

      As though they held a lion there,

      And not a fenceless man.

      They set him high upon a cart—

      The hangman rode below—

      They drew his hands behind his back,

      And bared his lordly brow.

      Then, as a hound is slipp’d from leash,

      They cheer’d the common throng,

      And blew the note with yell and shout,

      And bade him pass along.

V

      It would have made a brave man’s heart

      Grow sad and sick that day,

      To watch the keen malignant eyes

      Bent down on that array.

      There stood the Whig west-country lords

      In balcony and bow,

      There sat their gaunt and wither’d dames,

      And their daughters all a-row;

      And every open window

      Was full as full might be,

      With black-robed Covenanting carles,

      That goodly sport to see!

VI

      But when he came, though pale and wan,

      He look’d so great and high,11

      So noble was his manly front,

      So calm his steadfast eye;—

      The rabble rout forbore to shout,

      And each man held his breath,

      For well they knew the hero’s soul

      Was face to face with death.

      And then a mournful shudder

      Through all the people crept,

      And some that came to scoff at him,

      Now turn’d aside and wept.

VII

      But onwards—always onwards,

      In silence and in gloom,

      The dreary pageant labour’d,

      Till it reach’d the house of doom:

      But first a woman’s voice was heard

      In jeer and laughter loud,12

      And an angry cry and a hiss arose

      From the heart of the tossing crowd:

      Then, as the Græme look’d upwards,

      He caught the ugly smile

      Of him who sold his King for gold—

      The master-fiend Argyle!

VIII

      The Marquis gazed a moment,

      And nothing did he say,

      But the cheek of Argyle grew ghastly pale,

      And he turn’d his eyes away.

      The painted harlot at his side,

      She shook through every limb,

      For a roar like thunder swept the street,

      And hands were clench’d at him,

      And a Saxon soldier cried aloud,

      “Back, coward, from thy place!

      For seven long years thou hast not dared

      To look him in the face.”13

IX

      Had I been there with sword in hand

      And fifty Camerons by,

      That day through high Dunedin’s streets

      Had peal’d the slogan cry.

      Not all their troops of trampling horse,

      Nor might of mailéd men—

      Not all the rebels in the south

      Had borne us backwards then!

      Once more his foot on Highland heath

      Had stepp’d as free as air,

      Or I, and all who bore my name,

      Been laid around him there!

X

      It might not be. They placed him next

      Within

9

“The contemporary historian of the Earls of Sutherland records, that (after the defeat of Invercarron) Montrose and Kinnoull ‘wandered up the river Kyle the whole ensuing night, and the next day, and the third day also, without any food or sustenance, and at last came within the country of Assynt. The Earl of Kinnoull, being faint for lack of meat, and not able to travel any further, was left there among the mountains, where it was supposed he perished. Montrose had almost famished, but that he fortuned in his misery to light upon a small cottage in that wilderness, where he was supplied with some milk and bread.’ Not even the iron frame of Montrose could endure a prolonged existence under such circumstances. He gave himself up to Macleod of Assynt, a former adherent, from whom he had reason to expect assistance in consideration of that circumstance, and, indeed, from the dictates of honourable feeling and common humanity. As the Argyle faction had sold the King, so this Highlander rendered his own name infamous by selling the hero to the Covenanters, for which ‘duty to the public’ he was rewarded with four hundred bolls of meal.”—Napier’s Life of Montrose.

10

“Friday, 17th May.—Act ordaining James Grahame to be brought from the Watergate on a cart, bareheaded, the hangman in his livery, covered, riding on the horse that draws the cart—the prisoner to be bound to the cart with a rope—to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and from thence to be brought to the Parliament House, and there, in the place of delinquents, on his knees, to receive his sentence—viz., to be hanged on a gibbet at the Cross of Edinburgh, with his book and declaration tied on a rope about his neck, and there to hang for the space of three hours until he be dead; and thereafter to be cut down by the hangman, his head, hands, and legs to be cut off, and distributed as follows—viz., His head to be affixed on an iron pin, and set on the pinnacle of the west gavel of the new prison of Edinburgh; one hand to be set on the port of Perth, the other on the port of Stirling; one leg and foot on the port of Aberdeen, the other on the port of Glasgow. If at his death penitent, and relaxed from excommunication, then the trunk of his body to be interred, by pioneers, in the Greyfriars; otherwise, to be interred in the Boroughmuir, by the hangman’s men, under the gallows.”—Balfour’s Notes of Parliament.

It is needless to remark that this inhuman sentence was executed to the letter. In order that the exposure might be more complete, the cart was constructed with a high chair in the centre, having holes behind, through which the ropes that fastened him were drawn. The author of the Wigton Papers, recently published by the Maitland Club, says, “the reason of his being tied to the cart was in hope that the people would have stoned him, and that he might not be able by his hands to save his face.” His hat was then pulled off by the hangman, and the procession commenced.

11

“In all the way, there appeared in him such majesty, courage, modesty—and even somewhat more than natural—that those common women who had lost their husbands and children in his wars, and who were hired to stone him, were upon the sight of him so astonished and moved, that their intended curses turned into tears and prayers; so that next day all the ministers preached against them for not stoning and reviling him.”—Wigton Papers.

12

“It is remarkable, that of the many thousand beholders, the Lady Jean Gordon, Countess of Haddington, did (alone) publicly insult and laugh at him; which being perceived by a gentleman in the street, he cried up to her, that it became her better to sit upon the cart for her adulteries.”—Wigton Papers. This infamous woman was the third daughter of Huntly, and the niece of Argyle. It will hardly be credited that she was the sister of that gallant Lord Gordon, who fell fighting by the side of Montrose, only five years before, at the battle of Aldford!

13

“The Lord Lorn and his new lady were also sitting on a balcony, joyful spectators; and the cart being stopt when it came before the lodging where the Chancellor, Argyle, and Warristoun sat—that they might have time to insult—he, suspecting the business, turned his face towards them, whereupon they presently crept in at the windows: which being perceived by an Englishman, he cried up, it was no wonder they started aside at his look, for they durst not look him in the face these seven years bygone.”—Wigton Papers.