side sheep-pen--"Son of my love," a heraldic bar sinister, but
history reveals a reason for the birth among the willows far other
than the sinister aspect of the name': these are the dark words of
Mr. Cosmo Innes; but history or tradition, being interrogated,
tells a somewhat tangled tale. The heir of Macgregor of Glenorchy,
murdered about 1858 by the Argyll Campbells, appears to have been
the original 'Son of my love'; and his more loyal clansmen took the
name to fight under. It may be supposed the story of their
resistance became popular, and the name in some sort identified
with the idea of opposition to the Campbells. Twice afterwards, on
some renewed aggression, in 1502 and 1552, we find the Macgregors
again banding themselves into a sept of 'Sons of my love'; and when
the great disaster fell on them in 1603, the whole original legend
reappears, and we have the heir of Alaster of Glenstrae born 'among
the willows' of a fugitive mother, and the more loyal clansmen
again rallying under the name of Stevenson. A story would not be
told so often unless it had some base in fact; nor (if there were
no bond at all between the Red Macgregors and the Stevensons) would
that extraneous and somewhat uncouth name be so much repeated in
the legends of the Children of the Mist.

But I am enabled, by my very lively and obliging correspondent, Mr.
George A. Macgregor Stevenson of New York, to give an actual
instance. His grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-
grandfather, and great-great-great-grandfather, all used the names
of Macgregor and Stevenson as occasion served; being perhaps
Macgregor by night and Stevenson by day. The great-great-great-
grandfather was a mighty man of his hands, marched with the clan in
the 'Forty-five, and returned with spolia opima in the shape of a
sword, which he had wrested from an officer in the retreat, and