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THE parish of Fortingall was in area less
like a
parish than a small county. The Reformation supplied it with one parish minister and one parish
school-master, who lived close to each other at Fortingall village. It was a long time before
Glenlyon and Rannoch were each provided with
side-schools, the latter with one at the upper end
and another at the lower end of Loch Rannoch. It
was in the latter that Dugald Buchanan taught
during the early part of Mr Macara's long ministry.
The earliest of the Glenlyon schools was set up at
Innerwick, and the second at Roro. Mr Ferguson,
minister of Fortingall parish from 1719 to 1752, was
an uncompromising upholder of the Revolution
Settlement and Presbyterian doctrines and discipline.
He made himself a sort of terror to the Jacobite lairds of the parish, and
was accordingly much detested by them. He succeeded, in 1719, Mr Alexander
Robertson, who had been deposed for having read treasonable papers from the
pulpit at the time of the 1715 rising. Mr Ferguson during the '45 rising
acted with the full courage of his convictions, and when Prince Charlie was at Castle
Menzies, within a few miles of his church and manse,
increased rather than diminished the emphasis of his
denunciations. In 1752 he died from a cold which
he caught through having fallen into the river from
an upset boat. For over thirty years his ministry
was a long fight with ignorance, immorality, disorderliness, and adverse heritors, who, I believe,
with the sole exception of Sir Robert Menzies, were
Jacobites, and, as long as he lived, adherents to the
deposed minister, Mr Robertson, who became an
Episcopalian. It was said that at first Mr Ferguson
tried conciliation, but if he did he found it of no use,
and he soon went on the war-path, which he never
afterwards left. About 1726 he forced an augmentation of stipend on his heritors. Immediately
before his death he compelled them to renovate his
manse, which, in spite of remonstrances, they had
long refused to do. While this work of renovation
was going on, he went to lodge with his wife's
relatives at Laggan on the other side of the river
hence the river crossing and the boat accident, about
which there was a whispered suspicion that it was
less accident than a malicious Jacobite trick to give
the strong-handed minister a ducking. Be that
as it may, Mr Ferguson died of the cold he got by
the immersion. He died, was buried, and then the
groundless story arose, from a light having been
seen in the vacant manse, that after death he walked
and found no rest until he had an interview with his
successor. His successor was as much a Church
militant warrior as himself. His lot fell on happier
times, and he was able to carry much further the
work of reform which Mr Ferguson had begun. In
1715 the men of the parish of Fortingall, gentry and
commons, rose spontaneously on behalf of the Stuart
dynasty. They thought it disgraceful that a wee,
wee German lairdie should succeed Queen Anne in the place of her
brother. They had not bothered their heads much so far about the religious
and constitutional questions which came home so acutely to
hearts and minds in other parts of the country.
They had no persecution during the Restoration
period. With two or three exceptions the ministers
of the then big Presbytery of Dunkeld, if half of
them Vicars of Bray by compliance, were worthy
men who kept on the old order of worship arid forms
of discipline without innovation. The only novelty
was the re-introduction of a bishop, who was not
personally objectionable. It was remembered how
before the Restoration, Monk and his Cromwellian
troops ruled the Perthshire Highlands from Finlarig,
and how humiliating the rule was to Scotland
although it produced unwonted order, stopped the
cattle-raiders, was justly administered, and, outside
national sentiment, had little of the bitterness of
conquest. But, good or bad, they would not
tolerate Saxon rule again if they could help it, and
whatever evils Whig Statesmen and Lowlanders
might predict, they would fight for placing the right
heir on the British throne. So they fought and
were much disappointed in many ways. Mar was
an incompetent commander who by delay allowed
the Duke of Argyll to scrape together a small
army, which won the results of victory at Sheriffmuir
although the battle itself was indecisive. When at
at last the "right heir" presented himself to his
discomfited and angry army at Perth, his gloomy
countenance chilled their returning ardour. But
worst of all for Jacobitism in the parish of Fortingall
was the different treatment received by followers
and leaders after the suppression of the Rebellion.
Old Culdares then a young man whose supposed
minority was used as a plea in his favour John
Campbell of Glenlyon, and Struan, the poet chief of
the Robertsons, after a short exile in France, were
pardoned and restored to their estates, while the
common men were sent to be sold as seven years'
bondsmen to the plantations. Popular resentment
arising from this difference of treatment was
not lessened by the stories returned bondsmen
had to relate. And in the thirty years between
the two risings education had been spreading,
and the power of the Church had grown into
a real check on the old undivided sway of feudal
proprietors. Between one thing and another the
'45 rising on the south of the Grampians, and in
most places on the north side likewise, was far less
spontaneous than had been the '15 rising. In the
parish of Fortingall, Old Culdares, John Campbell
of Glenlyon, and Alexander Robertson of Struan,
who had been in the former rebellion, were still to
the fore. Culdares was still in the prime of life, but
although steeped to the neck in Jacobite intrigues,
was far too prudent to endanger that neck a second
time. He sent a gift horse to Prince Charles, and
remained at home. His second son held a com-
mission in King George's army, and he was trying
to get civil service employment for his elder son.
He wanted to be safe whatever happened. He
thought that Cluny would succeed in getting the
Glenlyon men out while he himself kept aloof ;
especially as Cluny and his Badenoch warriors had
just, under threats of fire and sword, forced out Sir
Robert Menzies's tenants, little to their own liking and far less to the
liking of their chief. The Glenlyon men flatly refused to come out at Cluny's call,
and wanted to know why he did not begin by
getting Culdares to rise with him. Culdares plotted
and would not rise. But Glenlyon and Struan, who
were now too old to fight or even to ride, were
as full of enthusiasm as they were in the former
rebellion. Glenlyon, whose eldest son was in King
George's army, and had earned praise and the right
to promotion at Fontenoy, sent his youngest son,
Archibald, a mere youth, along with a son of
Duneaves, to call out the men on the Culdares
estate, and about thirty of them responded at once
to what was to them a sort of hereditary call; for
although Glenlyon had nothing then of the old glen
barony but the empty name, he was the representative of those who in peace and war had led
the Glen men for two centuries. Struan fired the
heather in Rannoch, although stricken by age and
infirmities. The two all-daring veteran rebels did
another thing, in conjunction with a younger
Sheriffmuir comrade of theirs, Menzies of Shian,
which was both romantic and clever. They carried
the fiery cross round Breadalbane to raise recruits
for Prince Charles, and the device did succeed
in raising a few. The Earl of Breadalbane was
spending the closing years of a rather useless life
at Bath, while his capable and energetic son, Lord
Gleuorchy, was from Taymouth ruling Breadalbane
and striving with might and main to hold it for the
Government. The three Sheriffmuir veterans got
in with their fiery cross under his guard, and wiled
away some of his men, but he kept the bulk of them
in his regiment, and also as many of the Glenlyon
men as had not gone to fight and fall or fly at
Culloden. Mr Ferguson volleyed and thundered
against rebellion from the pulpit of Fortingall
Church, and the ministers of the neighbouring
parishes were working on the same side, if in a
less belligerent strain, while Lord Glenorchy was
gathering up into a fighting host the Highlanders
who had imbibed Church of Scotland political
views, and had got the keys of knowledge, reading,
writing, and arithmetic, in parish schools and
side schools. The '45 rising, which was far more
disastrous than the '15 to the propertied rebels,
possesses a dazzling amount of meteoric splendour.
Unlike his gloomy father, Prince Charles had the gift
of fascinating his Highland followers, who, through
the accounts they gave of him to their children
and children's children, exercised a reflected mesmeric influence on succeeding generations of people
who detested the principles of his dynasty, and
who knew about the inglorious latter years of
his own life.
Long and stoutly as Mr Ferguson fought for
the
Presbyterian conquest of the whole of the unwieldily
large parish of Fortingall, by the combined forces of
religion and education, he had to leave to Mr
Macara the hard task of bringing all Rannoch to the
same orderly condition as Fortingall, Glenlyon, and
Bolfracks. The lower half of Rannoch, although
Jacobite and anti-Presbyterian, was not particularly
unruly. The unruly elements gathered in the braes
and woods belonging to Struan. In the cattle-lifting days Lochaber and Rannoch raiders were
usually co-workers. These days were now over, but
thieves of both districts were still at work in a small
way. When Mr Macara was inducted as minister
of the parish, I believe that rebel and thief, the
Sergeant Mor, was still at large and living on the
country. His refuge cave was in Troscraig, between
Rannoch and Glenlyon. An incident in his early
life prejudiced Mr Macara against Rannoch evildoers, and an incident in his early ministerial career
confirmed that early unfavourable impression. Mr Macara's father was a saw miller, carpenter, and
timber merchant, at Crieff, who bought a quantity
of fir timber from Struan. Mr Macara, then a big
lad, wearing a new pair of stout Lowland boots,
came with his father's men and horses to fell and
fetch away the purchased timber. As the lad was
one day at work out of his comrades' sight and
hearing, a big thief jumped on his back, and, having
thrown him, stripped off his boots. The incident in
his early ministerial career was of a different and,
from his point of view, of a far more heinous description. He had been up to the head of the loch,
preaching and catechising, where his duties detained
him to a late hour. He was making his way to
Kinloch through the pine-wood, when he was stopped
by armed men, who pulled him off his horse, dragged
him into the wood, where were an old man, an old
woman, and a younger one with an ailing infant
child. He was ordered on pain of death to baptise
the child there and then. He knew his leading
assailant to be a married man, and had heard during
his perambulations that a servant maid had lately
born a child to him. The child got ill, and the
poor mother was terribly afraid of its dying un-
baptised. So was the father of it, who was far
from being thoroughly evil and inhuman, although
passionate and violent. The minister, telling
the man that he would call him to account
for his double misconduct, accepted the girl's father
and mother as sponsors, and there and then by torch-
light in the pinewood, baptised the child, who did
not die of its infantile ailments. Mr Macara was
not vindictive nor revengeful although a hard disciplinarian. In this case he had an opportunity for
giving unruly parishioners an impressive exhibition
of Church power and discipline. He had the offender
in a cleft stick, for had he not violated the law of
the land as well as the law of the Church? The
minister did not appeal to the law of the land, but
he carried out the law of the Church in regard to
adulterers to the utmost extent; and the man, who
was well connected, fearing the criminal prosecution to
which he was liable, escaped that danger by making
twenty-six appearances as a penitent, most of them
in the parish church of Fortingall, and some at
Kinloch and Killichonain when the parish minister
preached and baptised children there. Similar work
was going on in the less unruly parishes. A power,
as all saw, had arisen in the land which claimed the
right, in God's name, of supervising faith and morals
without fear or favour. Mr Macara had elders
ordained in every part of his parish, who, along with
teachers and catechists, formed what might be called
his field army. He had no difficulty with Fortingall, Glenlyon, and Bolfracks, and he overcame his
difficulties in Rannoch.
Church and school were in those days one
and
indivisible, although the parish schoolmaster had his
"ad vitam aut culpam" tenure. It had always been so, amidst all State
and Church mutations from the Reformation downwards. The parish schools of
the Perthshire Highlands were not neglected during the Restoration period,
but they were few and far between, and it was only after 1700 that the wide
gaps outside began to be filled up by humble but very useful side schools.
Glenlyon had three of these schools before I was born.
One was at Innervar, another at Roro, and the
third at Innerwick. The last was the oldest of the
three; for the story of the laying of the ghost in
Meggernie Castle by its schoolmaster shows that it
must have been set up before 1700. But somehow
it fell behind the other two before my birth, for
instead of having, like them, a settled teacher, it
was taught by ever-changing teachers, young men
from parish schools who were aiming at going to the
Universities, or who were qualifying for getting
parish schools. They got their board and lodging
at the farmhouses, moving about after their pupils.
It was not in all respects a satisfactory arrangement,
and it was surely very primitive, but the annually
or almost annually changing teachers diligently and
efficiently taught the three R's. In the preceding
century Glenlyon turned out three or four ministers
and two advocates, as well as some army officers
and clerks and schoolmasters. The elder of the
two advocates was Angus Fletcher, who earned the
great distinction of being called "The Father of
Burgh Reform." The younger one's career, which
promised to be a brilliant one, was cut short by
early death. He was a son of the Roro school-
master, Robert Macarthur, and a nephew of Mr
Macarthur, minister of Kilfinan in Mull. About
1800, Leyden, the border poet, made an excursion to
the Highlands in search of remains of Ossianic poetry
and traditions. Among many others he interviewed
this Mull minister, who was then an old man, and
who told him something that seems to indicate that
a learning that was never taught in the side-schools,
but had come down from ancient days, existed in
Glenlyon far down into the 18th century. Mr
Macarthur told Leyden that when he was a student
at St Andrews, he had, by means of the carrier who
brought him supplies from home, regular fortnightly
correspondence with his father, who had no command
of English, and who wrote his Gaelic epistles to
him, not in the Roman but in the Irish characters.
Another of the Glenlyon ministers of the 18th century was Mr Macdiarmid, who was minister of
Weem for fifty years 1778 to 1828. Until Glenlyon was made a quod sacra parish, the minister of
Weem had to preach a certain number of Sundays
annually in the Glen, because the Roro district
belonged to his parish, and the minister of Kenmore
also held an annual service or two there because his
parishioners crowded with their cattle to the shealing of the Rialt, which, however, was in the parish
of Fortingall. Of the schoolmasters that Glenlyon
turned out in the 18th century, one was Archibald
Macdiarmid, the maternal grandfather of Sir Noel
Paton ; another was Duncan Lothian, Dugald
Buchanan's pupil and fellow-worker, who made a
felicitously-rhymed gathering of Highland proverbial
sayings which commences so:
'Nuair a chailleas neach a mhaoin,
'S gnothuch faoin bhi 'g iarraidh meas:
Ged do labhair e le ceill,
'S beag a gheibh e dh'eisdeas ris.
Clever boys like the two brothers of
Duncan the
Fool could go direct from the Fortingall parish
school to the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, but similarly clever Glenlyon and Rannoch
boys who aspired to the higher education were much
handicapped by having to go to the parish or some
further-off and more costly intermediate school to
get qualified for entering on their college career.
But where there was a strong will, a way was found
to overcome the difficulties. |
