Rob Roy

A story is told of Rob Roy that brings out with ludicrous effect the difference between the famous cateran’s view of life and the view taken by the city man and the man of science. When Rob was sent by the Earl of Mar to Aberdeen to raise a part of the persecuted clan that had settled in that neighbourbood, he unexpectedly found a kinsman in James Gregory, the well-known professor of medicine in King’s College. The professor, not knowing
what course things might take, thought it prudent to be on good terms with his cousin Rob, for whom he personally had a warm admiration. Accordingly, Rob was invited to the professor’s house, and treated with extraordinary kindness by the whole family.

Affected by such a hearty and kinsman like welcome, Rob, when the day of his departure came, took the professor aside and said with much feeling:

“Cousin, you have been so kind to me that I have been thinking in what way I can show you how I appreciate it. Now, I have fixed on a plan. There’s your son Jamie, a stout-spirited lad to be only nine years of age, and you are spoiling him by putting so much book-stuff into his head. I’ll take him with me to the hills, and make a man of him.”

The professor with difficulty concealed his horror at the idea. He saw that Rob Roy was in earnest, and, being afraid of giving him offence, said, “It’s very kind of you, Rob, very kind of you; but it would be a trouble to you, far more trouble than you think. Jamie is a boy difficult to manage. No, no; it would never do.”

“Trouble!” interrupted the grateful Highlander, “never mind the trouble. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. It will be a pleasure.”

“But his mother, his mother,” said the professor, seeking another way of escape “his mother, I'm afraid, would, be irate.”

“Oh, I can carry him away without her knowing anything about it,” said Rob. And it was quite in his way. In desperation, the professor referred to the boy’s health, and said that it would be necessary to defer his apprenticeship on the hills for at least another year, till they saw that his constitution was strong enough for it.

Rob Roy reluctantly yielded the point, and went away leaving a promise that he would come back for the boy again. The boy, who so suddenly escaped becoming the henchman of the famous outlaw, succeeded his father in the the Chair of Medicine. When he showed his temper, which was somewhathat irritable, his friends used to say, “ Ah, Rob Roy would have taken that out of you.”

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