Rob Roy's Grave at Balquhidder

Balquhidder Kirkyard, Perthshire, Scotland

The outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor was buried in 1734 in Balquhidder kirkyard at the western end of his glen. His grave is said to be visited at night by a tall man in a faded plaid.

Robert Roy MacGregor — anglicised as Rob Roy — was a cattle-drover, outlaw, and minor Jacobite of the Trossachs and southern Highlands. Born 1671, outlawed in 1712 after a dispute with the Duke of Montrose, he spent the last twenty years of his life as a celebrated bandit chief of the upper Forth, conducting a private war against Montrose and protecting the smaller Highland tenants from rent-collectors. He died peacefully at home in Inverlochlarig in 1734. His grave is in Balquhidder kirkyard, beside his wife Mary and two of his sons. The slab is a flat schist of about the size of a single bed, carved with a sword laid lengthwise and the MacGregor motto Sliochd nan Rìgh — "Of the seed of the kings." The grave was largely forgotten in the 18th century, neglected in the 19th, then revived as a tourist site after Walter Scott's 1817 novel Rob Roy made the man a romantic hero. The folklore is mild and consistent. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a faded MacGregor plaid is occasionally seen at the grave at twilight or in the small hours of the morning. He stands beside the slab, facing west toward the head of the glen, and does not acknowledge anyone who approaches. He is sometimes accompanied by a smaller figure on his left — by tradition his elder son James, also buried here. The figure is most often reported around the anniversary of Rob Roy's death — 28 December — and on the longest nights of midwinter. He is not a frightening ghost. The Balquhidder caretaker has, on more than one occasion, reported finding fresh sprigs of heather laid on the grave by no one identifiable, in seasons when no living heather is blooming.