' The man is far advanced in years
and is a schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of Rannoch."
Sir Walter says that "the feeling of superstitious awe annexed to the
catastrophe could not have been improved by any circumstances of
additional horror which a poet could have invented." But is there not
something more moving still in the boatman's version: "they were never
seen again . . . they were not found indeed till this day"?
The folklorist, of course, is eager to know whether the boatman's much
more complete and connected narrative is a popular mythical development
in the years between 1820 and 1890, or whether the schoolmaster of
Rannoch did not tell all he knew. It is unlikely, I think, that the
siege of Seringapatam would have been remembered so long in connection
with the Black Officer if it had not formed part of his original legend.
Meanwhile the earliest printed notice of the event with which I am
acquainted, a notice only ten years later than the date of the Major's
death in 1799, is given by Hogg in "The Spy," 1810-11, pp. 101-3. I
offer an abridgment of the narrative.
"About the end of last century Major Macpherson and a party of friends
went out to hunt on the Grampians between Athole and Badenoch. They were
highly successful, and in the afternoon they went into a little bothy,
and, having meat and drink, they abandoned themselves to jollity.
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