MacWalrick

IT is not many years since there lived in an old house with high-walled garden in the heart of Rothesay, two old maiden ladies whose pride and regret were that they were the last in this country of the great old house of the MacDonells of Glengarry. They were women of noble appearance and strong character, and one of them at least took a considerable part in public affairs. Many stories regarding them were told in the town. Among these one may be cited as characteristic. When the late Marquess of Bute, as a young man, called upon them on the eve of his marriage to a daughter of the great Roman Catholic house of Howard, it had become known that he was likely himself to become a member of the Church of Rome. Of this proceeding the Misses MacDonell did not approve, and they took the opportunity to inform him that if he did enter the Roman Communion they would “no longer be able to call at Mount Stuart.” Among the treasures which the survivor of them took delight in preserving was a tall Shepherd’s crook of hazel which had been sent home to her by her nephew, the young Chief of the Clan in Canada. That hazel staff represented the tragedy of the race, for after the death in 1828 of the seventeenth Chief of Glengarry, who is said to have been the model in part of Pergus Macivor in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, his impoverished successor, gathering together between 500 and 600 of his clansmen, emigrated with them in a body to Canada, where they still perpetuate the traditions of the race which had its headquarters on the lovely shores of Loch Oich in the Great Glen.