d to equal it. The old house stood near the great ash tree further
west, and a yet older is proved by a family record, which narrates the
births of generations at Quoig House, above the church. Robert Burns'
visit to Ochtertyre in 1787 and the two poems he produced are too
familiar to need mention here. In the reign of Charles I. a mortality
greater even than that caused by war almost depopulated the bonnie
braes of Ochtertyre. The dreaded Plague assumed alarming proportions,
and many huts were erected for isolation near the west end of
Monzievaird Loch. The dead were not buried in the churchyard, but in a
large sepulchral mound near the Marle Lodge gate.

The Right Honourable Sir George Murray, G.C.B., perhaps the most
distinguished member of the Ochtertyre family, after meritorious
service in Egypt and the Peninsular War, was chief of the general staff
under Wellington at Waterloo. He also served the State as a
politician, six times representing Perthshire in Parliament, and
attaining among many honours the office of Secretary of State for the
Colonies in the Duke of Wellington's Government of 1828. The present
Baronet is a worthy successor of an honoured line, and his generous
consideration for the public in throwing open his grounds and granting
the fullest facilities for their enjoyment deserves the highest praise.
It is claimed for Glenturret that the two last wolves seen in Scotland
were killed there. But a similar claim has been advanced for
Nairnshire, and, with far more likelihood, for the wilds of the Moor of
Rannoch. The glen, however, was long famous for its falcons. In few
places is the bird-life more various or abundant than in the woods of
bonnie Ochtertyre. And the rabbit, introduced there while the present
century was young, has evidently come to stay and to multiply.

At Upper Quoig two reputed witches once dwelt, but whether from greater
fear or greater enlightenment here than elsewhere, they were never
called to endure the ordeal either by fire or by water. They hunted in
couples apparently, for the story goes that two men at Clathick, rising
early on a May morning, saw them coming up the burn-side, putting a
tether across the stream, and saying, "Come all to me." This
incantation succeeded in providing the witches' dairy with a double
supply of milk, while their neighbours had none! Verily many poor old
crones have lost their lives on as trivial a charge. Passing westward
to the com