THE

SCOTTISH REVIEW.

APRIL, 1900.

T

ART. 1.-A SCOT ABROAD.

HE pathos of the story of the last century Jacobites does not lie in the Fifteen or even in the Forty-Five. The halo of romance that surrounds that magical Edinburgh week, the dignity of immortal defeat upon Culloden Moor, the marvel of those glorious months of wandering in the land o' the leal;' all these things are a crown of life to a dead cause. Nor does it lie solely in the after-life of the Prince. Rather do we find it in the records of those who spent long years in exile, sighing for Lochaber no more' and repeating ever the sad refrain—

'But the weary never come

To their ain countrie.'

It is true that there were those among them who found friends in the land of the stranger, and who lived to work for the alien and to fight against the land that gave them birth; but this is no alleviation of the story. For it merely shows what a loss this hopeless struggle caused to the country for which the best on both sides would willingly have died. In happier circumstances, the eighteenth century might have had on its roll of fame

numbers of brave and true men whose lives were wasted in miserable intrigues in Foreign Courts and who might have given new associations to great traditional names and have invested old Scottish homes with fresh memories that men would not willingly have forgotten. But all the time

Lone stood the house, and the chimney-stone was cold.'

From this great band of exiles there stand forth two brothers, who are distinguished from their comrades at once by their personality and by their fate. By the seacoast, nor' nor'east, in the farthest corner of Aberdeenshire, stood, till last year, the ruins of the castle of Inverugie. On the one side, the sea-spray dashed against its walls and windows; on the others, lay the bleak, bare treeless country of Buchan, passing, southwards, into the sands of Forvie, the deserted parish long since buried under sand hill and covered with green bents; and stretching, northwards, into the fertile Howe o' the Garioch, bounded by the haunted hill of Benachie, and almost within sight of Tap o' Noth itself. For miles and miles the great feature of the landscape was the stern castle wall, and in this corner of the country the owners of Inverugie had the guiding o't. To the great house of Keith belong many pages of Scottish history. They had been for centuries hereditary Earls Marischal of Scotland. It was a Keith who had led the Scottish cavalry at Bannockburn, and the blood of a Keith had stained the banner of Scotland on Flodden Field. The fifth Earl, the founder of the college which produced Dugald Dalgetty, had borne a great part in Reformation politics, and he had gone on that perilous voyage to Denmark to bring back King James's bride: the voyage when five witches had raised a storm such as no man could remember, by baptizing a cat, knitting to its four feet four joints of men and casting it into the sea with mystic words of hellish adjuration, the devil himself being present and being seen to carry a mysterious staff. The Ear had lived to tell the tale and to execute righteous judgment

upon such bold and presumptuous sinners. In the seventeenth century, the family interest shifted southwards from Inverugie to Dunnottar, and during the Troubles' their attitude was strangely inconstant. But in the end they are found definitely enough upon one side, and the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta was rehearsed in the dungeons of Dunnottar. As.we approach the end, we find ourselves back again at Inverugie. There, in 1693, was born George Keith, and, in 1696, his brother James, sons of the ninth Earl Marischal and Margaret Drummond, his wife, the high-spirited daughter of the House of Perth, doomed to spend her latest years in the never to be realised hope that

'I'll be Lady Keith again,

The day the King comes o'er the water.'

It is of the younger of these brothers that we are to speak -James Keith, Scotsman, Frenchman, Spaniard, and Russian ; and, finally, the Marshal Keyt, whose statue is in the Wilhelmplatz, and whose figure is to be seen on the Denkmal of Frederick the Great in the Unter den Linden. Of his earlier years a few words must suffice, for he himself begins his Memoirs thus:- Memories are commonly tedious in the beginning by the recital of genealogies, trifling accidents which happened in the childhood, and relating minucies (hardly fit to be imparted to the most intimate friend), that it renders them not only uninstructive to the reader, but often loathsome to those who wish to employ their time in any useful way.' The formative influences of his life (to use our modern jargon), were three in number—his brother, his brother's tutor (afterwards Bishop Keith the historian), and his own tutor, Peter Meston. They were all staunch Jacobites and Episcopalians, and Meston was the author of a poem of great popularity in his own days. The Knight' was an imitation of Hudibras, and consisted of a coarse satire upon Whigs, Hanoverians, and Presbyterians. When Meston was made a regent in Marischal College, James Keith followed him thither, and was pursuing the learning of that age when the news burst on an excited world that Queen Anne was dead.

After Queen Anne, the deluge. Keith has himself told us all about the intrigues that preceded the Fifteen, and he sketches with great incisive power the causes of its failure. Following his brother, the tenth Earl, he joined the Jacobite forces. Keith was under no misapprehension about the leaders of the plot. He knew men, and he spares neither Ormonde nor Mar. He was present at Sheriffmuir, the battle of which

Keith was only seventeen years of age, but the Fifteen was the first event of his life, and he has pictured it with much detail. But we must hasten on. In May, 1716, Keith escaped to France, where the Queen Mother, the unfortunate Mary of Modena, received him most graciously. Had I conquered a kingdom for her, she could not have said more.' Next year he had a never to be forgotten meeting in Paris with Peter the Great, but he failed to attain a position in the Russian service. Not Peter, but his daughter, was to profit by Keith's genius, and, ere that time came, Keith was once more to fight on Scottish soil. In 1718, he took part in the mismanaged Spanish invasion, and was defeated in the skirmish of Glenshiel. Curiously enough, he made his way from the West Coast to the East, instead of making straight for France, and, in the summer sunshine of 1718, he looked his last upon Inverugie and Peterhead, and betook himself to Spain. In the Spanish army he fought with distinction. He was present at the siege of Gibraltar in 1726-7, and made a suggestion which might have led to its capture. He pointed out that the English considered it scarcely worth while to guard against the little Spanish troop, that they allowed the Spanish soldiers to enter the town without any hindrance, that 'at less than