’Stevenson—­or according to tradition of one of the proscribed of the clan MacGregor, who was born among the willows or in a hill-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 which is in the possession of my correspondent to this day.  His great-grandson (the grandfather of my correspondent), being converted to Methodism by some wayside preacher, discarded in a moment his name, his old nature, and his political principles, and with the zeal of a proselyte sealed his adherence to the Protestant Succession by baptising his next son George.  This George became the publisher and editor of the Wesleyan Times.  His children were brought up in ignorance of their Highland pedigree; and my correspondent was puzzled to overhear his father speak of him as a true Macgregor, and amazed to find, in rummaging about that peaceful and pious house, the sword of the Hanoverian officer.  After he was grown up and was better informed of his descent, ’I frequently asked my father,’ he writes, ’why he did not use the name of Macgregor; his replies were significant, and give a picture of the man:  “It isn’t a good methodist name.  You can use it, but it will do you no good.”  Yet the old gentleman, by way of pleasantry, used to announce himself to friends as “Colonel Macgregor."’