History and traditions of the land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns

210 LAND OF THE LINDSAYS.
of Feme were rescued from a party of three freebooters. Per-
haps from a determination to revenge this insult, a gang of
thirteen Cateran, headed by the Haiokit Stirk* made a summary
descent on the district during the following spring. They
stole in unperceived on the evening of a Sunday, and conducting
their predatory labours during the silence of night, not only
succeeded in clearing the stalls of horses and cattle before
the domestics were astir, but were far over the mountains with
their booty.
Infuriated by constant and disastrous incursions, and the
general loss which the parish sustained on that particular oc-
casion, the inhabitants were assembled on Monday morning,
among the tombs of their fathers, by the ringing of the kirk
bell. Being anxious to regain their stolen property, the day
was spent in discussing the practicability of taking the proper
course for doing so ; but fearing the superior strength of their
antagonists, courage forsook many of them, and the pursuit
would have been wholly abandoned and the reavers allowed
to go with impunity, but for young Mackintosh, who felt so
enraged at the cowardice of his fellow-parishioners, that he
sprung to an eminence apart from them and calling out at
the top of his voice — " Let those who wish to chase the Cateran
follow me !" — Eighteen young men left the multitude and rallied
round him, and after making some hasty preparations for their
perilous enterprise, they darted off in search of the reavers,
having chosen Macintosh as their leader. The journey was long
and arduous ; but being well acquainted with the mountain
tracks, and following the trodden path of their enemy through
bogs and fens, they succeeded about daybreak in discovering the
thieves, who were crowded round a blazing fire, on which they
were quietly cooking a young cow for breakfast.
e The name of the Eawlcit Stirlr was given to this Cateran chief, from a supposition that
he was the same person who was laid down, when an infant, at the farm-house door of Muir
Pearsie, in the parish of Cortachy, and from the gudewife desiring her husband to rise from bed
about midnight to see the cause of the bleating cries which she heard ; but having a pet calf
that was in the habit of prowling about under night, her husband lay still, insisting that the
noise was merely the croon o' the hawkit stirh ! Hearing a continuation of the same piteous
moan, the gudewife rose herself and found a male child, of a few weeks old, lying on the sill of
the door, carefully rolled in flannel, and other warm coverings, and, taking it under her charge,
brought it up as one of her own family. Nothing of the foundling or his parents were ever posi-
tively known ; but when about sixteen years of age, he departed clandestinely from Muir Pearsie,
and from the resemblance of the leader of this herschip to him, they are said to have been
one and the same individual. His name is variously given as M'Gregor and Cameron.