Rob Roy MacGregor's Sgian Dubh?

[MacRobert's Reply]

I was at Abbotsford earlier this year and am fairly sure that the Sgian Dubh on the right of the case is (allegedly) Rob Roy's. It is just below his (alleged) purse. His sporran is also on display but he appears to have been a man of many sporrans - I have now seen about five in different locations across Scotland! I say this as a word of caution about the provenance of such artifacts. On the other hand, they are from the correct era.

[Taygrd]

Thank you for your responses. So RR MacGregors sgian is kind of like Wallace's sword That is what I was looking for. Thanks

[Jock Scot]

I was at Abbotsford earlier this year and am fairly sure that the Sgian Dubh on the right of the case is (allegedly) Rob Roy's. It is just below his (alleged) purse. His sporran is also on display but he appears to have been a man of many sporrans - I have now seen about five in different locations across Scotland! I say this as a word of caution about the provenance of such artifacts. On the other hand, they are from the correct era.

Forgive if I am a tad cynical too, don't forget Sir Walter Scott was a professional romantic. It's a bit like BPC has slept in just about every house in the Highlands, planted every tree over 10ft high, hidden in every cave in Inverness-shire, OH and I was once earnestly informed by one American that he(BPC) built the Forth rail Bridge to get his army across!

Which is all a real shame, because sorting fact from fiction in Scotland that is so full of red herrings, that the truth I fear, will never be found in many cases.

[JerseyLawyer]

Forgive if I am a tad cynical too, don't forget Sir Walter Scott was a professional romantic. It's a bit like BPC has slept in just about every house in the Highlands, planted every tree over 10ft high, hidden in every cave in Inverness-shire, OH and I was once earnestly informed by one American that he(BPC) built the Forth rail Bridge to get his army across!

We do the same thing with George Washington, so it's not in any way a unique phenomenon.

History in general is interesting enough in my mind without dressing it up. It's a shame sometimes that, especially for tourists, things tend to skew so much towards Sir Walter Scott and Brigadoon (or the local equivalent, if you're in the US.) I can't tell you how many times I heard the story of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh. You'd think nothing else happened in the City's history.

[Woodsheal]

Highlanders of Rob Roy's era did not carry the sgian dubh as we know it: the small knife worn in the hose top. That practice began nearly a century after his death! The sgian shown in that display case is NOT an early 18th C. piece, as far as I can see.

Rob almost certainly carried a sgian achlais, or armpit dagger, which was a more substantial weapon than the little sgian dubh, which is just a fancy utility knife....

[BoldHighlander]

Forgive if I am a tad cynical too, don't forget Sir Walter Scott was a professional romantic. It's a bit like BPC has slept in just about every house in the Highlands, planted every tree over 10ft high, hidden in every cave in Inverness-shire, OH and I was once earnestly informed by one American that he(BPC) built the Forth rail Bridge to get his army across!

Which is all a real shame, because sorting fact from fiction in Scotland that is so full of red herrings, that the truth I fear, will never be found in many cases.

Sounds a bit like the "Gunfight (near) the OK Corral" Jock!

[BoldHighlander]

Nice photos CMcG!

[CMcG]

Nice photos CMcG!

I can't take credit for them, but my Google image search powers are pretty OK sometimes

The first few are from flickr and clicking on them takes you back to their source. The last one is from http://www.scotiana.com/

[Taygrd]

Thanks for your responses, perhaps I should say I would like to replicate the "alleged knife of possible RRM origins supposedly to reside in Abbotsford". May need JerseyLaywer to tighten that up for me a bit
I had a fellow swear that his 1873 Winchester was used in the 1836 Battle of the Alamo. "Fanciful Embelishment" was a term I learned a way back.
Thanks again.

[JerseyLawyer]

Thanks for your responses, perhaps I should say I would like to replicate the "alleged knife of possible RRM origins supposedly to reside in Abbotsford". May need JerseyLaywer to tighten that up for me a bit

It's not allegedly a knife. It really is a knife. And it really resides in Abbotsford.

Perhaps, "The knife, now residing in Abbotsford, that Rob Roy allegedly once owned."

Unless, of course, in the words of another great Knight of the Realm, Sir Humphrey Appleby, "the precise correlation between the information [Sir Walter Scott] communicated and the facts, insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated, is such as to cause epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear." :P