His nurse is said to have foretold that a
river taking its name from a goose would prove fatal to him, and to have
lamented that her child's career of glory had been frustrated because he
had been checked in the act of devouring a live toad. This last story
sounds much like a popular version of the Grecian fable of Demophooen, as
told in the Homeric hymn to Demeter. But, as a matter of fact, it was a
legend current of the infancy both of the Regent Morton and of Montrose
himself before it was given to Claverhouse; and possibly of many other
youthful members of the Scottish aristocracy, who happened to make
themselves obnoxious to a class of their countrymen whose piety seems
to have added no holy point to their powers of invective. There is an
ingenious fancy, and, at least, as much reason as is generally displayed
in mythological researches, in the surmise that this particular legend
may have owed its origin to the French connection with Scotland, a
connection which would naturally have found little favour in the eyes of
the followers of John Knox.
Claverhouse seems to have neglected neither the studies nor the
discipline of the University. He has, indeed, in our own time been
denied enough even of the common intellectual culture of his day to save
him from ridicule as a blockhead. But there is no reason for this
contemptuous statement.
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