there would be more of novelty, as well as of serious interest,
if he could succeed in gaining for him something of that sympathy
which is incompatible with the total absence of respect. Miss
Baillie had drawn a coward by nature capable of acting as a hero
under the strong impulse of filial affection. It seemed not impossible
to conceive the case of one constitutionally weak of nerve being
supported by feelings of honour and of jealousy up to a certain
point, and then suddenly giving way, under circumstances to which
the bravest heart could hardly refuse compassion.

The controversy as to who really were the clans that figured
in the barbarous conflict of the Inch has been revived since the
publication of the Fair Maid of Perth, and treated in particular
at great length by Mr. Robert Mackay of Thurso, in his very curious
History of the House and Clan of Mackay. Without pretending to say
that he has settled any part of the question in the affirmative,
this gentleman certainly seems to have quite succeeded in proving
that his own worthy sept had no part in the transaction. The Mackays
were in that age seated, as they have since continued to be, in
the extreme north of the island; and their chief at the time was a
personage of such importance, that his name and proper designation
could not have been omitted in the early narratives of the occurrence.
He on one occasion brought four thousand of his clan to the aid of
the royal banner against the Lord of the Isles. This historian is
of opinion that the Clan Quhele of Wyntoun were the Camerons, who
appear to have about that period been often designated as Macewans,
and to have gained much more recently the name of Cameron, i.e.
Wrynose, from a blemish in the physiognomy of some heroic chief
of the line of Lochiel. This view of the case is also adopted by
Douglas in his Baronage, where he frequently mentions the bitter feuds