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

[hyarrowen]

Hello there!

This is something that hadn't occurred to me before: I can't help but wonder if her reluctance is, at least in part, based in the fear of becoming a widow so soon after marriage. Ewen, in contrast, seems to have the complete opposite view: that any time married is precious, and that they should seize life with both hands while they have it.

Ewen isn't the one who risks finding himself pregnant and alone, after all. If Ardroy is lost, Alison will be on her own in France, with a sick father, a brother in captivity and no-one to support her. It's very like the situation in Persuasion in which Wentworth's job is so dangerous that he's not a good marriage prospect. She's taking a real risk which Ewen, and up till now, I, didn't see.

[regshoe]

Oh, good point! That's very true.

...Actually, to go off on a tangent, this touches on something I was idly thinking about for a possible fic the other day: if Ewen was killed, at Culloden or afterwards as a prisoner, who would inherit Ardroy? Without an obvious heir it's possible he's done the 'safety signing-over to a sympathetic Whig friend' thing some historical Jacobites did (and which he does to Keith in one of luzula's fics!), but we don't hear anything about it. Other than that his closest relatives are Aunt Margaret and the Stewarts of Invernacree, and I don't know how it might work out given the laws of the time and the possibility of forfeiture.

[hyarrowen]

With most of the Camerons "out" it might even be Fassefern, as the designated neutral in the family. Aunt Margaret would, of course, do the best job of them all, but as a mere female...

[luzula]

We don't actually know if Ewen owns Ardroy, or is renting it from Lochiel. This is quite complicated.

Clans could be proprietory or non-proprietory, depending on if their "oighreachd" and "duthchas" were aligned or not. In the first case, the chief owned their lands, and the clansmen paid both rent and calps (basically, protection money) to him. In the second, the chief only leased the land which someone else (often a Lowland nobleman, or another clan chief) owned, and the rents and calps went to different places. This was often the cause of feuds, because clans strove to align oighreachd and duthchas. There used to be a feud between the Camerons and Macintoshes because the latter owned much of the Cameron lands in Lochaber, which was resolved by arbitration in 1665 where Ewen Cameron of Lochiel basically bought out the Macintoshes, so their oighreachd and duthchas were now aligned. BUT he had to borrow the money from this from the Campbells, who also led the arbitration, because the land was within their heritable jurisdiction (another complication, which the Campbells seem to have used very shrewdly!) In return Lochiel had to concede that he held the lands within the feudal superiority of the House of Argyll. I'm not sure what exactly is the difference and how that was better, but...

So anyway, this also reproduced down the chain. If Ewen owns Ardroy outright, the situation is different from if he's renting the land from Lochiel. And Ardroy's tenants are of course renting from Ewen. There are all sorts of complicated terms for the leases for rents, I don't understand them all.

So if Ewen is renting it, I guess Lochiel just finds another tenant. But in fact over time, the clan chiefs sold off more and more land to their chieftains and tacksmen, because they needed the money. In my fics I've assumed that he owns it. In that case, I guess it goes to the nearest male relative. Ewen's father's brother and his sons, if they exist? Otherwise, I guess you look at Ewen's grandfather's brothers and their sons, etc? Or maybe Lochiel gets to have a say.

(All this stuff is from the book Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788 by Allan I. Macinnes (1996), by the way.)

ETA: In fact the "signing over of estates" thing which went on all the time suggests that they didn't have entails? Because in that case they wouldn't have been free to sign away their estates from their sons...

[regshoe]

Oh wow, thank you for all this information—fascinating stuff, and I did not know it was this complicated! I think we're supposed to understand that Ewen owns Ardroy outright ('Ewen... had ruled his little domain'; 'Mr Cameron was apparently a landed proprietor', though that second one could easily by Keith's misinterpretation), but you're right that it's not clear. (This isn't really a side of the historical detail that Broster gets into much!).

[hyarrowen]

Ewen... had ruled his little domain

Oooh, nice catch! I'd always just assumed it was his outright, but that was mostly due to English-centric views of inheritance which are unwarranted. But that phrase points to it being the case.

[luzula]

I think that phrasing tells us nothing of whether he owned or rented--he would have "ruled" it in the clanship sense in any case.

[hyarrowen]

Yes indeed - that was just the way I took it. This is one of the great things about this read-along - pre-conceived ideas get challenged!

[luzula]

Actually, from Ewen's POV it would in some sense be good if Alison was pregnant, if he's going to die! Because then he would have an heir (well, at least if it was a boy). I'm sure Alison is brought up to see this as an important charge, as well, though if she's having second thoughts, this would be the moment to break it off. But she wouldn't be alone--she could return to Ardroy before giving birth and have the support of Aunt Margaret, and manage Ardroy until her son (if it was a son) came of age. If it was a daughter, we're in a different situation, of course, and that's a gamble! (Heh, this is the patriarchy in a very literal sense...)

This is almost the same situation that Ewen's parents were in after the '19...Ewen's father fled the country when Ewen was only three days old, leaving his wife and son, and no one knew if he would ever return, and in fact he doesn't.

But yeah, I do think Alison and Ewen do have differing fears and hopes in that moment. One fears having something and then losing it, and the other fears never having had it...

[hyarrowen]

Actually, from Ewen's POV it would in some sense be good if Alison was pregnant, if he's going to die! Because then he would have an heir (well, at least if it was a boy). I'm sure Alison is brought up to see this as an important charge

Well, quite so! He'd have his ~legacy~. But from a woman's pov, having a child in wartime is always a big gamble, hence the baby boomers. If there were repercussions including attacks on homes, she'd be in real serious trouble.

[luzula]

Hmm. But regardless of whether there was a child, their marriage contract might well give her financial/material resources as a widow that she didn't have before. I researched the situation for widows in France when I wrote my poly fic, and they were not left with nothing! The situation varied in different parts of France, but they could in some cases be left with a fair portion of their husband's estate.

*determines to research the inheritance situation of widows in Scotland*

But yeah, obviously a pregnancy would be a risk!