Note 597 — Chapter XX

Among the papers of the exiled prince’s secretary is a very well composed document, called “Lord Dundee’s speech to his troops before the battle of Killiecrankie,” which he certainly never delivered, for the excellent reason that not a tenth of his audience could have understood a word of it, and he was not a man tempted either by capacity or inclination to the useless composition of flowing sentences. Burton’s Scotland from Revolution, vol. i. p. 132. Burton, however, thinks we may readily believe General Mackay’s statement as to the few homely sentences which he says he dropped to his men.