68.  Gallangad.  We do not find this name elsewhere, but it probably belongs to some part of the district referred to in Scott’s note inserted here:  “I know not if it be worth observing that this passage is taken almost literally from the mouth of an old Highland kern, or Ketteran, as they were called.  He used to narrate the merry doings of the good old time when he was follower of Rob Roy MacGregor.  This leader, on one occasion, thought proper to make a descent upon the lower part of the Loch Lomond district, and summoned all the heritors and farmers to meet at the Kirk of Drymen, to pay him black-mail; i.e., tribute for forbearance and protection.  As this invitation was supported by a band of thirty or forty stout fellows, only one gentleman, an ancestor, if I mistake not, of the present Mr. Grahame of Gartmore, ventured to decline compliance.  Rob Roy instantly swept his land of all he could drive away, and among the spoil was a bull of the old Scottish wild breed, whose ferocity occasioned great plague to the Ketterans.  ’But ere we had reached the Row of Dennan,’ said the old man, ’a child might have scratched his ears.’  The circumstance is a minute one, but it paints the time when the poor beeve was compelled

    ’To hoof it o’er as many weary miles,
     With goading pikemen hollowing at his heels,
     As e’er the bravest antler of the woods’ (Ethwald).”

73.  Kerns.  The Gaelic and Irish light-armed soldiers, the heavy-armed being known as gallowglasses.  The names are often associated; as in Macbeth, i. 2. 13:  “kerns and gallowglasses;” 2 Hen.  Vi. iv. 9. 26:  “gallowglasses and stout kerns;” Drayton, Heroical Epist.:  “the Kerne and Irish Galliglasse,” etc.

74.  Beal’maha.  “The pass of the plain,” on the east of Loch Lomond, opposite Inch-Cailliach.  In the olden time it was one of the established roads for making raids into the Lowlands.

77.  Dennan’s Row.  The modern Rowardennan, on Loch Lomond at the foot of Ben Lomond, and a favorite starting=point for the ascent of that mountain.

82.  Boss.  Knob; in keeping with Targe.

83.  Verge.  Pronounced varge, as the rhyme shows.  In v. 219 below it has its ordinary sound; but cf. v. 812.

84.  The Hero’s Targe.  “There is a rock so named in the Forest of Glenfinlas, by which a tumultuary cataract takes its course.  This wild place is said in former times to have afforded refuge to an outlaw, who was supplied with provisions by a woman, who lowered them down from the brink of the precipice above.  His water he procured for himself, by letting down a flagon tied to a string into the black pool beneath the fall” (Scott).