On this much-disputed ground, the sons of Alpin were in touch with many neighbours, more or less hostile, their relations with whom are darkly commemorated in such traditional tales of bloodshed, ravage, and treachery as too much stain the rags of Highland history. Some of these tales we have already come upon in passing through Breadalbane. For a time, the Macgregors seem to have shared Balquhidder with other clans, notably the Maclarens, an older stock of occupants, who claimed the right of being first to enter the parish church. This right of precedence is said to have been given up in return for the help of the Macgregors in a hot combat with a neighbour clan, that still darkens a pool of the Leny as “Linn of the dead”; but afterwards the pretension, again raised, led to a fray in the very church, when the priest, a Maclaren, was killed. In the end the Macgregors evicted their rivals, who mainly took refuge among the Appin Stewarts; yet so late as Rob Roy’s time, we shall see a Maclaren fall victim at Balquhidder to that ancient feud, to show how inveterately those clansmen clung to the soil beset by enemies, as well as to hereditary hatreds rooted among them for centuries.
Among so many memories of hate, one tradition stands in relief as illustrating the guest-right owned by Roderick Dhu. In a casual quarrel the Macgregor’s son had been slain by a young Lamont, who fled hotly chased through the night, and by dawn sought refuge at a house he knew not as the home of his victim. To the chief he confessed that he had slain an unnamed man, and was taken into sanctuary. Quick on his heels came the pursuers, their news filling the house with cries of rage and woe. But the weeping father would not let the guest suffer harm: “He has Macgregor’s word.” With an armed band he even escorted the slayer of his son to Inveraray, and there took leave of him with the warning: “No longer can I, or will I, protect you: keep out of the way of my clan.” As edifying sequel it is stated that when Macgregor came to be proscribed and hunted for his life, he in turn found asylum with the man whose life he had saved. In Spain, the same tale is told of Moorish and Christian foemen, as no doubt similar stories came to be passed round Arab camp-fires.