Quote Originally Posted by BoldHighlander View Post

Phil, I'm a wee bit confused
Was this cantle set-up you show inspired by Scott's writings & built after the fact, or is this cantle in fact something that belonged to Rob Roy?
“Rob Roy", Sir Walter Scott’s fourth novel, was published anonymously. It contains a passage describing the sporran: ‘…a small steel pistol was concealed within the purse, the trigger of which was connected with the mounting…, so that the weapon would certainly be discharged
and in all probability its contents lodged in the person of any one…who should tamper with the lock’.
The Sporran with concealed pistols dates from the 18th century and is kept in the National Museum of Scotland. It is a sporran clasp with four concealed pistols which could be fired by turning a mechanism in the clasp. It was given by Francis MacNab of MacNab to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1783. When Scott saw the sporran he was so intrigued by it that he wrote
it into his novel, “Rob Roy”.