Lairds of Glenlyon

SO THE LAIRDS OF GLENLYON.
sons, who had fought with them under Dundee, they came
round by Glenlyon, and gratified their love of plunder and
their inveterate hatred to the Campbells, by harrying the
little property still possessed by the poor Laird of Glenlyon.
The Laird was completely off his guard ; relying on Can-
nan's protection, the raid of Keppoch was the very last thing
he feared. No opposition was offered to the marauders.
The women and cattle were just home from the sheilings,
and the men were peaceably engaged in getting in the last
of the harvest. No sign preceded the storm. The rapacity
of the M'Donalds was unexampled. In one of the huts
they found an infant in a basket cradle, wrapt in a
blanket. The child was turned out naked on the clay floor,
and the blanket taken away. One of the Glenlyon men at
the massacre of Glencoe — perhaps, except the Laird, the
only man of them there — as he was slaughtering one of the
M'lans with the sword, used, it is said, at each successive
thrust, the expressions of savage revenge — " There for
Catherine's blanket ! " " There for Colin's cows ! " Colin
was the brother of the Laird. Cambuslay, one of the Brae
farms, was the portion allotted him by his father, and, as
it lay conveniently in the way of the M'Donalds, they swept
it clean. This was not the first time that Colin's cows were
" lifted " by the M'Donalds of Glencoe and Lochaber.
Robert of Glenlyon and his brother Colin were minors in
1644-45, when Montrose ravaged and burned Breadalbane
and all the other lands of their maternal grandfather, Sir
Robert Campbell of Glenorchy. The uncle of the boys,
John Tutor of Glenlyon, who afterwards bought the estate
of Duneaves, and founded a family there, was their legal
guardian ; but they lived mostly with their mother and her