THE HIGHLAND INN, &c. &c. INTRODUCTION. DUNCAN MAC ALPIN, M.D., of Bas Alpin, the writer of the Diary of which the following pages form a fragment, was the scion of an ancient and honourable Gaelic stock, claiming lineal descent from King Alpin*. Being a second son, he was destined to procure his livelihood by his own energies; and, consequently, received a superior education to that which usually falls to the lot of the embryon chief of a Highland family. After completing his classical studies at the Mareschal College of Aberdeen, he re * Alpin was the sixty-eighth king of Scotland, in a direct line from Fergus the First. He ascended the throne in the year eight hundred and thirty-one, and reigned only seven years. George Buchanan, in right good latin, informs us that he was the son of Achaius; and, after many battles with the Picts, he was slain, and his head cut off and stuck upon a pole; and that the place where this happened was called, in Buchanan's time, Bas Alpin, that is, the death-place of Alpin. The antiquity of the Doctor's family is, therefore, undoubted.-EDITOR. VOL. I. B |