from the
old gentleman's own lips his narrative of a journey which he had been
obliged to make, shortly after he first settled in Stirlingshire, to
the wild retreat of Rob Roy. The venerable laird told how he was
received by the cateran "with much courtesy," in a cavern exactly such
as that of _Bean Lean_; dined on collops cut from some of his own
cattle, which he recognized hanging by their heels from the rocky roof
beyond; and returned in all safety, after concluding a bargain of
_blackmail_--in virtue of which annual payment Rob Roy guaranteed the
future security of his herds against, not his own followers merely,
but all freebooters whatever. Scott next visited his friend
Edmonstone, at Newton, a beautiful seat close to the ruins of the once
magnificent Castle of Doune, and heard another aged gentleman's vivid
recollections of all that happened there when John Home, the author of
Douglas, and other Hanoverian prisoners, escaped from the Highland
garrison in 1745.[106] Proceeding towards the sources of the Teith, he
was received for the first time under a roof which, in subsequent
years, he regularly revisited, that of another of his associates,
Buchanan, the young Laird of Cambusmore. It was thus that {p.194}
the scenery of Loch Katrine came to be so associated with "the
recollection of many a dear friend and merry expedition of former
days," that to compose The Lady of the Lake was "a labor of love, and
no less so to recall the manners and incidents introduced."[107] It
was starting from the same house, when the poem itself had made some
progress, that he put to the test the practicability of riding from
the banks of Loch Vennachar to the Castle of Stirling within the brief
space which he had assigned to Fitz-James's Grey Bayard, after the
duel with Roderick Dim; and the principal landmarks in the description
of that fiery progress are so many hospitable mansions, all familiar
to him at the same period--Blairdrummond, the residence of Lord
Kaimes; Ochtertyre, that of John Ramsay, the scholar and antiquary
(now best remembered for his kind and sagacious advice to Burns); and
"the lofty brow of ancient Kier," the splendid seat of the chief
family of the name of Stirling; from which, to say nothing of remoter
objects, the prospect has, on one hand, the rock of "Snowdon," and in
front the field of Bannockburn.

[Footnote 106: _Waverley_, chap, xxxviii. note.]

[Footnote 107: Introduction to _The La