Historical memoirs of Rob Roy and the Clan Macgregor

108 MEMOTR OF ROB ROY.
duke of Argyll, should he join the earl of Mar, — and that
he might not act contrary to his conscience, by joining
Argyll against his expatriated king.
His enemies, at all times anxious to place the motives
of Rob Roy's conduct in the worst point of view, had
propagated a report, that the duke of Argyll knowing
that his principles led him to espouse the cause of the
opposite party, had bribed him with the small sum of
eighty guineas, not to join the earl of Mar ; but it is pro-
bable that to an independent mind like his, acting on the
basis of conscious rectitude, the offer of a bribe would have
been regarded as a marked insult : and the duke was too
well acquainted with his temper, to try such an experiment.
The motives, therefore, assigned for his inaction at Sheriff-
muir, appear to be those which he himself afterwards
declared, and which seemed to be the most consistent with
the situation in which he stood. It has likewise been re-
marked by different authors, that had he joined either
party in this contest, it would have terminated de-
cisively.
There cannot, generally speaking, be a more genuine
chronicle of events than local ballads, which depict par-
ticular incidents of the times in which they were written ;
and there is perhaps, not a more correct account of the
affair in question, than the first stanzas of two songs, on
that subject.
" There's some say that we wan,
Some say that they wan,
Some say that nane wan at a' man!
But one thing I'm sure,
That at Sheriff-muir,
A battle there was, which I saw man :
And we ran, and they ran, and they ran,
and we ran, and we ran, and they ran awa' man."