vat and his clan.

JOHN ROY STUART.

John Roy Stuart was a distinguished officer in the Jacobite army of
1745. He was the son of a farmer in Strathspey, who gave him a good
education, and procured him a commission in a Highland regiment, which
at the period served in Flanders. His military experiences abroad proved
serviceable in the cause to which he afterwards devoted himself. In the
army of Prince Charles Edward, he was entrusted with important commands
at Gladsmuir, Clifton, Falkirk, and Culloden; and he was deemed of
sufficient consequence to be pursued by the government with an amount of
vigilance which rendered his escape almost an approach to the
miraculous. An able military commander, he was an excellent poet. His
"Lament for Lady Macintosh" has supplied one of the most beautiful airs
in Highland music.[146] In the second of his pieces on the battle of
Culloden, translated for the present work, the lamentation for the
absence of the missing clans, and the night march to the field, are
executed with the skill and address of a genuine bard, while the story
of the battle is recited with the fervour of an honourable partisan.
Stuart died abroad in circumstances not differing from those of the best
and bravest, who were engaged in the same unhappy enterprise.

[146] See the Rev. Patrick Macdonald's Collection, No. 106.

LAMENT FOR LADY MACINTOSH.

This is the celebrated heroine who defended her castle of Moy, in the
absence of her husband, and, with other exploits, achieved the surprisal
of Lord Loudon's party in their attempt to seize Prince Charles Edward,
when he was her guest. Information had been conveyed by some friendly
unknown party, of a kind so particular as to induce the lady to have
recourse to the following stratagem. She sent the blacksmith on her
estate, at the head of a party of other seven persons, with instructions
to lie in ambush, and at a particular juncture to call out to the clans
to come on and hew to pieces "the scarlet soldiers," as were termed the
royalist troops. The feint succeeded, and is known in Jacobite story as
the "Route of Moy." The exploit is pointedly alluded to in the Elegy,
which is replete with beauty and pathos.

Does grief appeal to you, ye leal,
Heaven's tears with ours to blend?
The halo's veil is on, and pale
The beams of light descend.
The wife repines, the babe declines,
The leaves prolong their bend,
Above,