Pair of Highland Flintlock Pistols

The blued barrel is in three stages, octagonal at the slightly flared muzzle, round in the center, and grooved and ridged at the breech; the surface is chiseled with floral scrolls and arabesques against a hatched background. The touchhole is lined with gold.

The lock is of the type used exclusively in Scotland and conventionally classified as "Scottish snaphaunce": its mechanism incorporates a long sear lever, with a hooked half-cock sear protruding through the lock plate to engage the front of the cock at the safety position. This reliable safety device was particularly important since the Scottish pistols were carried at the belt and had no trigger guards. The trigger takes the form of a silver button engraved with a four-petaled flower. The flash screen has a slot to let out moisture from the frizzen. On the lock plate is the engraved signature John Campbell (in script), a member of a family of gunmakers active during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Doune, Glasgow, and other Scottish towns (Neuer Støckel, p. 185).

The stock is entirely of steel, engraved and silver-inlaid with Celtic ornaments, and on the left side is a long belt hook of steel chiseled and pierced with scrolls, foliation, and roping. The ramrod is also of steel, with chiseled moldings at the fore-end.

This pistol represents well the most typical form of all-steel pistols worn in Scotland both with military uniforms and as an accessory of Scottish national dress from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.