Flight of the Heron read-along: Part V chapter 5 and Epilogue

[regshoe]

Better loved ye cannae be...

The final chapter.

I'm planning to do a sort of wrap-up post in a couple of days' time for any last thoughts, and to recommend some Flight of the Heron fic and some other books that may be of interest. I will say goodbye and thank you properly then!

Comments

[luzula]

except that class doesn't seem to be a factor in Highland relationships

Not class the way we think of it, maybe, but their society was very hierarchical and unequal! Which of course you know--maybe I'm misunderstanding you?

I am minded of a story I read in (probably) Duffy, about how some English officer said he would only surrender to a gentleman, which mightily offended the clansmen who had taken him prisoner. They all considered themselves gentlemen, because they were descended/related at some far remove to the clan elite--primogeniture kept pushing the younger sons downward, becoming eventually ordinary clansmen. Of course there's a social level below the clansmen, as well.

I guess there's something here as well about the Highland titles, Alison being considered a lady where she wouldn't be in England.

[owl]

Doesn't Davie meet someone similar in Kidnapped? One of Cluny Macpherson's men, iirc, who tells Davie he's a 'Hieland shentleman'.

[sanguinity]

Neil Roy Macrob, on the ferry at Kinlochaline:

"But if ye will pardon me to speak plainly,” says he, “there is a name that you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Alan Breck; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman.”

It was not very easy to apologise; for I could scarce tell him (what was the truth) that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so.

[owl]

Yes, exactly, thank you!