Flight of the Heron read-along: Part III chapters 1-2

[regshoe]

Charlie chose the place himsel', the graveyard of Culloden...

Well, it looks like Keith's prophecies about the fate of the Jacobites, at least, weren't too inaccurate...

Next week we'll read chapters 3 and 4 of part III.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Laird and Lady Mackintosh must have had some EXTREMELY chilly dinners together. I'm just imagining the two of them glaring daggers at each other down a long table.

I LOVE the part where Ewen flings himself in front of a projectile that isn't even close to hitting Lochiel. The loyalty is SO extra, and the bit where he's just lying on the ground in so much pain that it hurts to breathe, but content because he's been assured that Lochiel isn't hurt... EWEN. EWEN. And poor Lochiel is like "Oh my god if he had died when I WASN'T EVEN IN DANGER how could I ever live with myself."

In general I just love the really intense loyalty that swirls all around Ewen: if he's not flinging himself into danger to protect someone (the Prince, Lochiel), someone else is going above and beyond out of loyalty to Ewen (Lachlan usually).

[regshoe]

I have to quote this account, from Maggie Craig in Damn' Rebel Bitches: The Women of the '45, telling how the Laird of Mackintosh was captured by the Jacobites shortly after the Rout of Moy:

The Prince released him into Anne's custody, saying that he was sure he would receive the most honourable treatment in his wife's care. When he was brought to her Anne greeted him with formal politeness.

'Your servant, Captain,' she said.

Her husband was just as polite and just as brief. 'Your servant, Colonel,' he replied.

Although Craig also claims that Anne was said to be passionately in love with her husband! Hey, two people on opposite sides of the '45 nevertheless passionately in love and treating each other honourably as prisoners, it can happen. :P

The loyalty is SO extra, and the bit where he's just lying on the ground in so much pain that it hurts to breathe, but content because he's been assured that Lochiel isn't hurt... EWEN. EWEN.

:D It's great, isn't it! As Broster points out, Ewen's attitude to Lochiel is much like Lachlan's attitude to Ewen, the chain of feudal loyalty and intense emotions continuing up the social hierarchy. Nf sbe Rjra vafcvevat vagrafr yblnygl va trareny, jr ner tbvat gb frr n ovg zber bs gung sebz fbzrbar ryfr fbba rabhtu... :Q

[hyarrowen]

Hey, two people on opposite sides of the '45 nevertheless passionately in love and treating each other honourably as prisoners, it can happen. :P

LOL!

It was quite common for members of the same family to be on opposing sides, or so I understand. That way the family holdings would remain in the family. It also ensured that the Highlands, or Scotland as a whole, didn't rise as one man to throw out the invader. I think I saw a scene in one of Neil Oliver's (?) programmes on Scotland which showed the Mackintoshes in that light.

[luzula]

It was quite common for members of the same family to be on opposing sides, or so I understand.

Yes, totally. Partly from genuine conflict, such as in the Murrays of Atholl, where the first son was a Jacobite, who was dispossessed by the government in favor of the second who was a Hanoverian, and then the first one returned with BPC to take back his heritage. And then there's the third son who became one of BPC:s military commanders.

But often it was absolutely an insurance strategy. It's unclear to me whether John Cameron of Fassefern stays out of the '45 because he genuinely is against it, or whether it was one of these agreed-upon strategies.

[hyarrowen]

A Cameron of Fassefern ended up getting killed at Quatre-Bras, at Waterloo - dying for a Hanoverian king. But that's what happens when Napoleon comes along.

[regshoe]

Huh! There was a Cameron of Fassefern fighting in the War of American Independence, earlier than that—and he was standing in for a Lochiel who couldn't go due to illness, so I think everyone's loyalties looked a bit different by then.

As for the original John Cameron of Fassefern, I can understand either caution or an insurance strategy for him, seeing what happened to so many of his Jacobite brothers.