Guy Mannering.

60 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
pedigree and a short rent-roll, like many lairds of that
period. His list of forefathers ascended so high, that
they were lost in the barbarous ages of Galwegian independence; so that his genealogical tree, besides the
Christian and crusading names of Godfreys, and Gilberts,
and Dennises, and Rolands without end, bore heathen
fruit of yet darker ages,-Arths, and Knarths, and Donagilds, and Hanlons. In truth, they had been formerly
the stormy chiefs of a desert but extensive domain, and
the heads of a numerous tribe, called Mac-Dingawaie,
though they afterwards adopted the Norman surname of
Bertram. They had made war, raised rebellions, been
defeated, beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of
importance, for many centuries. But they had gradually
lost ground in the world, and, from being themselves the
heads of treason and traitorous conspiracies, the Bertrams,
or Mac-Dingawaies, of Ellangowan, had sunk into subordinate accomplices. Their most fatal exhibitions in
this capacity took place in the seventeenth century, when
the foul fiend possessed them with a spirit of contradiction, which uniformly involved them in controversy with
the ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of the
celebrated Vicar of Bray, and adhered as tenaciously to
the weaker side, as that worthy divine to the stronger.
And truly, like him, they had their reward.
Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore
Caroli Primi, was, says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish Baronage, (see the title Ellangowan,)
" a steady loyalist and full of zeal for the cause of his
Sacred Majesty, in which he united with the great Marquis of Montrose, and other truly zealous and honourable
patriots, and sustained great losses in that behalf. He
had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him by his