Glencoe

Cabinet 9

‘The Massacre of Glencoe is an event which neither can nor ought to be forgotten. It was a deed of the worst treason and cruelty – a barbarous infraction of all laws, human and divine; and it exhibits in their foulest perfidy the true characters of the authors and abettors of the Revolution.’

So wrote William Edmondstoune Aytoun (1813-1865) in the preface to ‘The Widow of Glencoe’ in his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (1849), a set of Jacobite (a supporter of James VII and II of England or of the Stuart pretenders after 1688) ballads, which first featured in Blackwood’s Magazine.

The ballads – with their Scottish historical subjects and heroes – achieved great popularity, and were important in furthering the romantic revival of things Scottish in mid-Victorian Britain.

This is the 5^th edition of 1852.

William Edmondstoune Aytoun, Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers: and Other Poems. 5^th ed. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1852.