Flight of the Heron read-along: Part I chapters 3-4

[regshoe]

I have just finished reading a Mary Renault novel and feel, predictably, absolutely awful about it. Time to distract myself with some Jacobites!

Next week we'll finish Part I with chapters 5 and 6.

Comments

[tei]

“He was wearing the kilt to-day, and for the first time Keith Windham thought that there was something to be said for that article of attire— at least on a man of his proportions.” o.O SUBTLE.

The entire incident with Keith nearly being drowned made me very curious about… the cultural context for this thing of “I am keeping a prisoner in my house, family, please be nice to him.” Is this… a Done Thing? Why is Keith here? I’m assuming that killing him outright would have been too agressive for the stage of the war they were in…? But then, Keith’s regiment certainly didn’t seem to have any doubts that the Highlanders would kill them if they tried to cross the bridge, back when they thought there were enough of them to actually do so.

The tension between the prophecy aspect of the narrative and the resistance to it is very interesting!

[regshoe]

:D

Keith has given his parole—essentially, he agrees not to try and escape in return for Ewen promising not to physically stop him from escaping—hence why he's just hanging around Ewen's house rather than being locked up somewhere. Yeah, possibly killing him outright in their initial encounter would have been too aggressive, and from Ewen's perspective there's not really any reason to (Keith is injured, he's not a serious threat to Ewen and it would hardly be fair!). Meeting a regiment of Highlanders in battle, where it's kill or be killed, is a different thing (although, in the end, most of the recruits at High Bridge were only taken prisoner—again, I suppose, no reason to kill them).

Parole prisoners turn up a lot in Broster's novels—she loves the situations created by those gentlemanly codes of honour (this option was only available to officers i.e. gentlemen). There was a bit of a debacle later on in the '45 where a group of Hanoverian officers on parole were forced by their own commanders to break their paroles, escape and return to fighting—which some of them resisted, seeing it as against their code of honour.

[tei]

Ooh. That makes a lot more sense, if this was a kind of… regimented type of agreement! Also explains the modern usage of the word “parole,” I suppose.

[regshoe]

It's a very sensible arrangement, really—like, we both know how this whole 'keeping you prisoner' thing is going to go, so why not just skip all the fuss?

I suppose it being a regimented type of agreement, generally respected in wartime, probably plays into the thing where the Jacobites were being very careful to present themselves as legitimate wagers of war, on a level with recognised states, because to them Charles was the rightful king, while the Hanoverians saw them as rebels and therefore not legitimate 'real' enemies.

[ethelmay]

The business about "parole" kept reminding me of Antonia Forest's The Thuggery Affair: "But Jukie stiffened: to Patrick's astonishment he looked genuinely insulted. 'You weren't listening, noddy-boy. I said parole.' " In other words, he had really promised and it was a matter of honor.

[owl]

And we know AF was familiar with Broster; the twins read TFotH!

[cahn]

Ohhhh, I hadn't realized that! (Well, I wouldn't have recognized the name when I first read the Marlowe books...)

[regshoe]

Antonia Forest!—I've been meaning to read the Marlowes books for ages. FotH references sound like another good reason to do so...

[impala_chick]

Thanks for this! Now I can see the connection to the word "parole" in modern times.