In weal or woe, through
every species of fatigue, difficulty, and danger,
Elspat was his faithful companion. She enjoyed
with him the fits of occasional prosperity; and
when adversity pressed them hard, her strength of
mind, readiness of wit, and courageous endurance
of danger and toil, are said often to have stimulated
the exertions of her husband.
Their morality was of the old Highland cast,
faithful friends and fierce enemies: the Lowland
herds and harvests they accounted their own, whenever
they had the means of driving off the one, or
of seizing upon the other; nor did the least scruple
on the right of property interfere on such occasions.
Hamish Mhor argued like the old Cretan warrior:
My sword, my spear, my shaggy shield,
They make me lord of all below;
For he who dreads the lance to wield,
Before my shaggy shield must bow.
His lands, his vineyards, must resign,
And all that cowards have is mine.
But those days of perilous, though frequently
successful depredation, began to be abridged, after
the failure of the expedition of Prince Charles
Edward. MacTavish Mhor had not sat still on
that occasion, and he was outlawed, both as a traitor
to the state, and as a robber and cateran.
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