visit; mine is in some peril; but that I readily encounter on your account, for I care not for risk, and I love a free young blood, that kens no protector but the cross o' the sword." While he spoke thus, we had reached the principal street, and were pausing before a large building of hewn stone, garnished, as I thought I could perceive, with grat ings of iron before the windows. "Muckle," said the stranger, whose language became more broadly national as he assured a tone of colloquial freedom-"Muckle wad the provost and baillies o' Glasgow gie to hae him sitting with iron garters to his hose within their tolbooth, that now stands wi' his legs as free as the red-deer's on the outside on't. And little wad it avail them; for an if they had me there wi' a stane's weight o' iron at every ancle, I would show them a toom room and a lost lodger before to-morrow-But come on, what stint ye for ?" As he spoke thus, he tapped at a low wicket, and was answered by a sharp voice, as of one awakened from a dream or reverie,-" Fa's tat ?—Wha's that, I wad say? —and fat a deil want ye at this hour at een ?—clean again rules—clean again rules, as they ca' them." The protracted tone in which the last words were uttered, betokened that the speaker was again composing himself to slumber. But my guide spoke in a loud whisper, "Dougal, man! hae ye forgotten Ha nun Gregarach ?" "Deil a bit, deil a bit," was the ready and lively response, and I heard the internal guardian of the prisongate bustle up with great alacrity. A few words were exchanged between my conductor and the turnkey, in a language to which I was an absolute stranger. The bolts revolved, but with a caution which marked the apprehension that the noise might be overheard, and we stood within the vestibule of the prison of Glasgow, a small, but strong guard-room, from which a narrow staircase led upwards and one or two low entrances conducted to apartments on the same level with the outward gate, all secured with the jealous strength of wickets, bolts, and bars. The walls, otherwise naked, were not unsuitably garnished with iron fetters, and other uncouth implements, which might be designed for purposes still more inhuman, interspersed with partizans, guns, pistols of antique manufacture, and other weapons of defence and offence. At finding myself so unexpectedly, fortuitously, and, as it were, by stealth, introduced within one of the legal fortresses of Scotland, I could not help recollecting my adventure in Northumberland, and fretting at the strange incidents which again, without any demerits of my own. threatened to place me in a dangerous and disagreeable collision with the laws of a country, which I visited only in the capacity of a stranger. NOTES TO ROB ROY. 1. Page 38. The introduction of gaugers, supervisors, and examiners, was one of the great complaints of the Scottish nation, though a natural consequence of the Union. 2. Page 77. On occasions of public alarm, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the horses of the Catholics were often seized upon, as they were always supposed to be on the eve of rising in rebellion. 3. Page 106. The nunnery of Wilton was granted to the Earl of Pembroke upon its dissolution, by the magisterial authority of Henry VIII., or nis son Edward VI. On the accession of Queen Mary, of Catholic memory, the Earl found it necessary to reinstal the Abbess and her fair recluses, which he did with many expressions of his remorse, kneeling humbly to the vestals, and inducting them into the convent and possessions from which he had expelled them. With the accession of Elizabeth, the accommodating Earl again resumed his Protestant faith, and a second time drove the nuns from their sanctuary. The remonstrances of the Abbess, who reminded him of his penitent expressions on the former occasion, could wring from him no other answer than that in the text-" Go spin, you jade-Go spin." 4. Page 224. This I believe to be an anachronism, as Saint Enoch's Church was not built at the date of the story. END OF VOLUME 1 ROB ROY. For why? Because the good old rule That they should take who have the power, Rob Roy's Grave.... Wordsworth. IN TWO VOLUMES. II. PARKER'S EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED, WITH A GENERAL PREFACE, AN INTRODUCTION TO EACH NOVEL, AND NOTES, HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE, BY THE AUTHOR. |