Rob Roy Parting Duellists Rashleigh and Francis Osbaldistone
Rob Roy parting Rashleigh and Francis Osbaldistone.
FRANCIS OSBALDISTONE meets his cousin Rashleigh in a duel. “… Eager for revenge, i grappled with my enemy, with the purpose of running him through the body. Our death-grapple was interrupted by a man who forcibly threw himself between us, and pushing us separate from each other, exclaimed in a loud and commanding voice: ‘ By the hand of my father, I will cleave to the brisket the first man that mints another stroke!’
“I looked up in astonishment. The speaker was no other than Campbell. He had a basket-hilled broadsword drawn in his hand, which he made to whistle around his head as he spoke, as if for the purpose of enforcing bis mediation. “
Scott’s “Rob Roy.” J. B. Macdonald, Artist. John« Le Conte, Engraver.
Robert Roy MacGregor (1671 – 1734), was a Scottish folk hero and outlaw of the early 18th century. Also known as Rob Roy, he was born in Glengyle at Loch Katrine. His father was Donald MacGregor and his mother Margaret Campbell. He married in January 1693 Mary Helen MacGregor of Comar, Leny Farm, Strathyre, in Glenarklet. Of their four sons were born. Rob Roy is anglicised from the Gaelic “Raibert Ruadh”, or “Red Robert” because of his red hair, but brown colored in later years. He was a cattle thief of Highlands and is known as the Scottish Robin Hood.
Rob Roy is the sixth of Walter Scott’s Waverley novels. He wrote the book in the spring of 1817 and visited Loch Lomond and Glasgow Cathedral for research. The book was published anonymously at Christmas 1817, like all novels of the Waverley series. It appeared in three volumes.
Source: Character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama by Rev. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, 1892. A revised American edition of the readers handbook. Edited by Marion Harland.
