e of the gillies went to the spot, "there was no fire
to be seen." On the day when the expedition had started, the Captain was
warned of the ill weather, but he said "he _must_ go." He was an
unpopular man, and was accused of getting money by procuring recruits
from the Highlands, often by cruel means. "Our informer told us nothing
more; he neither told us his own opinion, nor that of the country, but
left it to our own notions of the manner in which good and evil is
rewarded in this life to suggest the author of the miserable event. He
seemed impressed with superstitious awe on the subject, and said, 'There
was na the like seen in a' Scotland.' The man is far advanced in years
and is a schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of Rannoch."

Sir Walter says that "the feeling of superstitious awe annexed to the
catastrophe could not have been improved by any circumstances of
additional horror which a poet could have invented." But is there not
something more moving still in the boatman's version: "they were never
seen again . . . they were not found indeed till this day"?

The folklorist, of course, is eager to know whether the boatman's much
more complete and connected narrative is a popular mythical development
in the years between 1820 and 1890, or whether the schoolmaster of
Rannoch did not tell all he knew. It is unlikely, I think, that the
siege of Seringapatam would have been remembered so long in connection
with the Black Officer if it had not formed part of his original legend.
Meanwhile the earliest printed notice of the event with which I am
acquainted, a notice only ten years later than the date of the Major's
death in 1799, is given by Hogg in "The Spy," 1810-11, pp. 101-3. I
offer an abridgment of the narrative.

"About the end of last century Major Macpherson and a party of friends
went out to hunt on the Grampians between Athole and Badenoch. They were
highly successful, and in the afternoon they went into a little bothy,
and, having meat and drink, they abandoned themselves to jollity.

"During their merry-making a young man entered whose appearance
particularly struck and somewhat shocked Macpherson; the stranger
beckoned to the Major, and he followed him instantly out of the bothy.

"When they parted, after apparently having had some earnest conversation,
the stranger was out of sight long before the Major was half-way back,
though only twenty yards away.

"The Major showed on his return such evi