Scotching some of the myths

Rob Roy (1671-1734) is one of the most famous of Scotsmen. Whiskies, hotels, pubs, and junior football teams have been named after him. He has been portrayed on stage and screen. The 1994 Hollywood film, written by Alan Sharp, is a fine western set in 18th-century Scotland. He was already famous in 1817 ‘when’, as David Stevenson writes, ‘Walter Scott decided that Rob Roy would be a good title for his latest novel, even though Rob was a fairly minor character in the book. Scott’s motive was simple: marketing … The novel launched Rob as a great Romantic hero, persecuted but surviving against all the odds…’ Rob indeed is Scotland’s Robin Hood, but with this difference: that he was unquestionably a real historical figure, as the dates of his birth and death attest. Scott, after all, had talked with men who remembered meeting him, or who claimed to have done so.