PHILIP ROLLO;

OR,

THE SCOTTISH MUSKETEERS.

BY

JAMES GRANT,

AUTHOR OF "ROMANCE OF WAR," "JANE SETON," &c. &c.

"'Tis a tale of campaigning, of love, and invading, Of marches, of routes, bivouacs, enfilading; Of batteries and breaches, howitzers and mortars, Of posts and intrenchments; of in and out quarters; Of advancing in line, by columns, divisions, And fighting whole days without rum or provisions."

IN TWO VOLUMES,

VOL. I.

LONDON: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET. 1854.

M'CORQUODALE AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON.—WORKS, NEWTON.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

Book the First.

CHAPTER

I.—Of my Family, and the Misfortune of not having a Large Mouth II.—How I became a Soldier of Fortune III.—Sir Donald and his Regiment IV.—We Sail for the Elbe V.—Glückstadt VI.—After escaping a fall into the Elbe, I am in danger of falling in Love VII.—The Repast VIII.—Our Cantonment IX.—The Mysterious Door—a Discourse on Nymphs

Book the Second.

X.—Full effect of a Spanish Petticoat XI.—My First Guard XII.—Who Prudentia's Spouse proved to be XIII.—Two Kisses for ten Doubloons XIV.—I prevail on Prudentia to accept of a Ring XV.—My Goddess deceives me. I quarrel with the Haüsmeister, and run him through the body

Book the Third.

XVI.—The Scottish Standard XVII—The Sconce of Boitzenburg XVIII.—How our old Scottish blades pommeled the Imperialists XIX.—The Crown of Fire XX.—Rupert-with-the-Red-plume XXI.—The Fair Hair and the Dark Hair

Book the Fourth.

XXII.—Dandy Dreghorn XXIII.—Ernestine and Gabrielle XXIV.—Probability of escaping, and leaving my Heart behind me XXV.—A serious Mistake, and a learned Discussion on Women XXVI.—The Scout, and the Effect of a Sneeze XXVII.—The March towards Lauenburg XXVIII.—Count Tilly's Opinion of the Presbyterians XXIX.—Cairn na Cuimhne! XXX.—The Jesuit XXXI.—Of the Good Deeds our Musketeers were undoing

Book the Sixth.

XXXII.—The Merodeurs XXXIII.—The Hunter's Cot XXXIV.—I obtain a Company of Musketeers XXXV.—Proteus again! XXXVI.—A Forest on Fire XXXVII.—The Prisoners of the Pistoliers

Book the Seventh.

XXXVIII.—The Pass of Oldenburg XXXIX.—The Night of Horrors at Heilinghafen XL.—We sail for the Isles of Denmark XLI.—On Board the good ship Anna Catharina XLII.—The Rittersaal XLIII.—March for the Castle of Nyekiöbing

INTRODUCTION.

At a sale of the effects of an eminent antiquary lately deceased, it was our happiness and good fortune to become the possessor of a certain little MS. volume, closely written, in a neat small hand of the 17th century. It is very thick, contains nearly a thousand pages, is bound in black leather, and is fastened by two brass clasps. On the title-page was written, "The Storie of my Lyffe, concludit to this year 1660."

On examining our literary and antiquarian treasure, which we did with ardour, we found that it was the adventures of a Scottish gentleman, of that stirring period indicated by the date, who had served for a time, as a soldier of fortune, in the armies of Denmark. We found the book interesting, from the glimpses of wild adventure, hair-breadth escapes, high military courage, and raciness it exhibited; thus, the more we read, the more pleased did we become.

Philip Rollo, for such was the name of the writer, seemed to be beside us relating his own startling adventures; and we were upon the point of handing over the MS. to our enterprising friends of the Bannatyne Club, when, lo! we discovered that there were two serious gaps in it. Though having little doubt that the archaeologists would gladly publish these curious memoirs even in their mutilated state, we preferred to restore the thread of the narrative, so far as we could do so, from the quaint pages of the Amsterdam Courant, the Swedish Intelligencer, the warlike story of Colonel Monro and others, and, after modernising the spelling and language of the whole, so as to make it more generally readable, handed over our transcript to our friend Mr. Routledge, of London.

Those portions of the work which have been made up from contemporary authority, we are much too cunning to point out; though we have little doubt that the critical reader will easily recognise them. But we may add that, historically considered, we have found the military details to tally so closely with those given in the Low Dutch "Relation," "Ye Danish Warres," and other works, that our soldier of fortune may defy the closest scrutiny.

When we read the memoirs of any eminent man of whom no portrait is extant, we are naturally curious to know what like he was—the colour of his eyes, of his hair, and so forth; and, most fortunately, before entering upon the adventures of Philip Rollo, we are enabled to afford the reader a pretty good idea of these matters; for at the same extensive sale, where it was our fortune to find the MS., a portrait of the cavalier was "knocked down" to us for a comparative trifle—nothing, absolutely, when we consider that it was a real and well-authenticated Jamesone, an artist, so justly esteemed the Vandyke of Scotland, and who studied with Sir Anthony under Rubens at Antwerp.

This portrait, which appears, by a date inscribed thereon, to have been painted about the year 1630, exhibits an eminently handsome cavalier in the gallant and picturesque costume of that time. The face is oval—the forehead white and high—the mustaches and imperial well pointed—the eyes are dark—the hair long and of the deepest brown. The left hand rests in the bowl hilt of a long Spanish rapier, which hangs in a magnificent baldric, worn sash-wise over the right shoulder; the right hand rests on a helmet, to show that it is the portrait of a gentleman and soldier. We have also an admirable example of the Scottish costume of the period. This cavalier's doublet having loose sleeves, slashed with white, the collar being covered by a falling band of the richest point lace; a short crimson cloak hangs jauntily on the left shoulder; the breeches are of blue velvet, fringed with point lace, and meet the long riding boots, which have tops of ruffled lace. A military order sparkles on his breast, and a dagger dangles at his right side. Under the helmet there peeps

out a slip of paper, on which is written, Philip Rollo, hys portraitoure.

There is a proud and lofty expression in the face of this old portrait (which is now hanging above my writing-table), that is remarkably pleasing and impressive. While gazing at it, the dark eyes seem to fill with dusky fire—the proud lips to curl, and the manly breast to expand with the high military spirit the original once possessed, while the clouds of battle, which envelope the background, seem once more to roll around him on the wind. This is power of the Jamesone's pencil—that magic power which the lapse of more than two hundred years has failed to obliterate; and we hope that the reader will, erelong, be as interested as we are ourselves in the fortunes and misfortunes, loves and adventures, of Philip Rollo, whose personal memoirs appear to have been compiled by himself for his own amusement, rather than for that of others.

PHILIP ROLLO.

CHAPTER I. OF MY FAMILY, AND THE MISFORTUNE OF NOT HAVING A LARGE MOUTH.

I was born in the year after King James VI. acquired the dominion of England, at my father's tower of Craigrollo, which overlooks the great bay of Cromartie. The youngest of four sons, I was (God knows why) a child of ill-omen from my birth; for, before that event came to pass, my mother had various remarkable dreams, which were darkly and mysteriously construed by certain Highland crones of the district; and the whole family made up their minds to expect that I should never be the source of aught else but discomfort and disgrace to them.

All unconscious of the disagreeable impressions regarding me, I was ushered (poor little devil!) into this world on a Friday, the most ominous day of the week for such an arrival; when a furious storm of wind was rolling the waves of the North Sea against the Sutors of Cromartie; and a tempest of rain was lashing the walls and windows of the old tower, and drenching the older pine-woods that surrounded it. A knife and spade had been placed below my mother's bed, a Bible below her pillow, and the room was plentifully sprinkled with salt, to avert the mal-influence of the fairies, and every way the old fashions of the Highlands were complied with strictly.

My father had been particularly anxious for a daughter, that he might marry her to his nephew, M'Farquhar of that Ilk, to whom he was tutor or guardian; and various wise women, who had been solemnly convened in council before I was born, had all been morally certain that my mother would have a daughter.

"You have long loved French apples," said old Mhona Toshach; "your ladyship is sure to have a daughter."

My sudden appearance upset all their calculations, and none more than those of my father.

"The devil's in the brat!" said he. "There goes the estate of M'Farquhar, with its five hundred broadswords;" for, in our Scottish fashion, he was what we call the tutor of the property.

As if to increase the general prejudice against me, I squalled right lustily, which made all the old crones of the household, and the wise women of the parish, with Mhona Toshach, my mother's nurse, at their head, tremble and predict that, through life, "sore trials and evil would attend the course of the Friday's bairn." All the crickets in the bakehouse disappeared that day for ever, a surer foreboding of dire calamity.

Though we were a branch of a Lowland or Perthshire family, the gallant Rollos of Duncruib, my father, partly to humour my mother, who was a daughter of the race of M'Farquhar, and partly to please his Highland neighbours, resolved to celebrate my arrival in the old country fashion. The old family banner, with its azure chevrons, on which the spiders had been spinning their webs since it had been last unfurled on the birth of my brother Ewen, (for my father was eminently a peaceful man,) was displayed on the old tower; and more than one gallant puncheon of ale, and bombarde of Flemish wine were set abroach in the yard. I was baptized over a broadsword. Then came the solemn and important ceremony of placing in my mouth "the Rollo spoon," which was done in presence of the whole household; and which, from the consternation it occasioned, requires some explanation.

An ancestor of ours, Sir Bingan Rollo of that Ilk, who had accompanied Earl Douglas (afterwards Marshal of France and Duke of Touraine) on his successful invasion of England, in the year of God 1420, when sacking the manor-house of a certain English squire, found therein a silver spoon of great size and curious workmanship, which he brought home with him to Cromartie, leaving in place thereof his right eye, which he lost by an English arrow in the assault. This spoon, doubtless the palladium of a long race of well-fed Saxons, became the heirloom of the house of Rollo, on which it produced a very remarkable effect—not unlike that which Rigord tells us the loss of the true cross at Tiberiade, had upon all children born afterwards in Christendom—for instead of thirty teeth they had but twenty. So all the future Rollos of the Craig, came in time to be distinguished by the unusual size of their mouths from the first year after this spoon was deposited in the oak charter-chest of the family. I had a great-uncle whose mouth, when born, extended

from ear to ear; but still it was almost insufficient to contain this capacious English spoon, which was quite round, measured three inches in diameter, and on which our valiant ancestor had engraved his crest, a stag's head, with the legend,

"This spune I leave in legacie To the maist mouthed Rollo, after me. RINGAN ROLLO, 1421."

Thus, whenever a son or daughter of the family was born, the insertion of this remarkable heirloom into their mouths was one of the usual ceremonies, and was considered as indispensable as marriage or christening. Such a trophy was considered something to be vain of, by the Rollos of the Craig, who were sorely jealous of their neighbours, the Urquharts of Cromartie, who deduced their descent from Alcibiades the Athenian!*

* See Sir Thomas Urquhart's Works.

It had been remarked that every Rollo of the Craig, whose mouth would not admit this spoon, or at least a portion of it, was remarkably unfortunate; thus, of my father's ten brothers, three, who were so unhappy as to have mouths like other people, after being distinguished for their facility in getting into quarrels and turmoils, were all cut off, early in life; one being slain by the English at the Raid of the Redswire; a second with Buccleuch in the Lowlands of Holland; and the third, who had become an officer in a Scottish frigate, being taken by the cruel pirates of Barbary, who basely murdered him. Most happily for themselves, my three elder brothers were blessed with enormously wide mouths—in fact, they were like nothing that I can remember but the mouth of a cannon, or the stone gutters of a cathedral; but I—poor little wretch!—had a mouth so remarkably small, that no part of this capacious spoon would enter therein—not even a segment of it; and from that moment I was unanimously considered as a lost, an untrue Rollo. My father

turned his back upon me from that day, and vowed there was less of the Rollo than the M'Farquhar about me; so, from thenceforward, I was, as it were, delivered into the hands of mischance and misfortune.

A goodly volume would be required to narrate all the heart-burnings and sore taunts I endured in boyhood, for the smallness of my mouth; the studied coldness of my father; the gibes and laughter of my brothers; the ominous forebodings and doleful anticipations of the old nurse, Mhona Toshach; and the equivocal taunts of the good-natured friends and tenantry, among whom I seemed to be viewed like the poor dog, that should be hung after acquiring the bad name, the mob and their misdeeds, have given him. That diabolical old spoon was the bane of my existence; and, influenced by certain hints from my poor mother, who, having a very small and very pretty mouth herself, sympathised with me, I made more than one essay, to obtain possession of it, for the purpose of throwing it into the deepest part of Cromartie bay, with a pretty heavy stone attached thereto. But the ancient charter-chest, with its iron bands and triple locks, defied all my efforts; and many a hearty kick I gave it, in pure rage and despite, after every attempt of myself and Mhona had failed to

widen my mouth to the family size, by the simple mode of inserting our fingers therein, and pulling the corners in contrary directions.

Had my father (worthy man!) been of a jealous disposition, I doubt not that it might have occasioned some dispeace between him and my mother, who told him often, that "he ought to love my mouth the more for being so like her own;" but, wedded to his own opinions, based as they were on the traditions and predictions of two hundred years, the old gentleman, who had himself a singularly open countenance, was inexorable, and sorely dreaded that little Philip was foredoomed to bring disgrace, or at least mischance, on the Rollos of the Craig.

Save this peculiar prejudice, he was one of the best men in the county; and was one of those old gentlemen who are always looking back and never forward: he stuck manfully to the bombasted doublets and fashions of his father's days, and never allowed a Michaelmas to pass without eating a St. Michael's bannock, or a Christmas without seeing the yule log laid on the hearth, and never was known to kill a spider, in memory of the good service once rendered to Scotland and the Bruce in the days of old.

Though I suffered severely from his strange pique, it was perhaps the source of good to me ultimately. Instead of being retained at home, like my brothers, spelling over the Auld Prymar, and trembling under the ferrule of Domine Daidle, the tutor, fiddler, and factor of the family, and spending three parts of the day in hunting, shooting with the bow, banqueting, dancing, and learning to handle the claymore and target, I was despatched to the King's College at Aberdeen, where I was duly matriculated in 1621, about the time when the battle was fought in Leith Roads between the Spaniards and the Admiral of Zealand; for I remember well that it formed the constant topic of conversation among my brother students, many of whom were from the south country.

Here my usual mischance accompanied me, for I was always involved in quarrels with the ruffling gallants of the Brave City, or lost my money among cheats and sharpers at post and pair, or the old game of trumps. Lord knows! I never had much to lose, and I nearly reached the end of my wits and my purse together. Then, to crown all, I fell deadly sick of that terrible pestilence which has so frequently desolated Aberdeen, having swept away its citizens no less than ten times between the years 1401 and 1647. So great was the panic latterly, that the classes of the universities were removed to Peterhead; but I, unable to accompany them, was borne to the huts erected for the sick on the Links, where we were strictly guarded by soldiers, to prevent the infection spreading.

While there, I received a letter from my father condoling with me on my doleful case, and hinting broadly, that, had my mouth been larger, I could have eaten more, and should assuredly have escaped, like my brothers, who were strong and well. As I had been robbed of my last plack by the cruel nurses, a few silver crowns had been more welcome, and I crushed up the poor man's letter, for the least mention of my "small mouth" was sufficient to make me tremble with rage. My dear mother sent me two jars, one filled with usquebaugh, and the other with honey; but as the soldiers drank the first, and the nurses eat the second, I got no use of either. There, among the pest-stricken, I lingered long, hovering, as it were, between life and death, sighing to be beside my mother, to feel her gentle hand on my hot and throbbing brow, and to hear her kind voice whispering in my ear; for, boy like, I thought if I were only once again beside that kind parent, and she touched me, I should become whole and well.

I thought of the old tower too, though, save one, none loved me there; I saw the dark pines that shaded its old grey walls; the whin rocks, the heath-clad hills, and the blue bay of Cromartie, with the great Sutors, like two Cyclopean towers, that overhang its narrow entrance; and sorely I longed to see them all once again, before I died.

Weary, weak and feeble, I hoped to die soon; but by the blessing of God, and the strength of my own constitution, I recovered; nor must I omit to make honourable mention of that worthy chirurgeon, Donald Gordon, author of the learned "Pharmaco-pinæ, or Table and Taxe of the Vsual Medicaments contayned in his Apothecarie and Chymicall shope, in New Aberdene;" and but for whose skill and kindness, I had never lived to write these my memoirs.