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Most visitors to Scotland today will be frequently thinking of the Jacobite cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, and having the songs in their minds of the "Skye Boat Song", or the "Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond", and may even listen to a tape or CD of Scottish music in their car, to fuel the romantic image of the Highlands. The depopulated glens and little ruined crofts, with the tangle of ivy growing on the walls, with the clumps of rife nettles even now defying anyone to venture near, make good tourist attractions, with old battlefields close by, and the Monument to visit as well, to Raising the Standard to commemorate the start of the Uprising. The cars hum along, pull up, the metal frameworks glittering in the sunshine sometimes peering from behind ominous black clouds. The occupants of the vehicles stroll through the few shops, filing down the narrow streets to buy their mementoes and write their post-cards, perhaps leaning on the very walls against which the Royalist Troops may have stood the brave Highland rebels. Some sit under the Scots Pines, after a long drive up from the Lake District, on a hot June day, eating their pre-packed sandwiches and true traditional Scots delicacy in the sunshine, while the little birds of the woodland call quietly to each other, and maybe a red squirrel will jump nimbly nearby, over the mossy tussocks. How could anyone in this sheltered, peaceful atmosphere, conjure up the aspects of a physical battle with fierce fighting not very far away, let alone picture the scenes of valour and despair, the final carnage? Farther down the hill, to our right, it is still open and boggy, which witnessed the last defiant stand, but the memory of the Jacobites, along with their much-loved Prince, still remain, wrong but romantic. Loyal legend has done its best to make Charles Edward Stuart a solo hero, although it only took a half-hour rout of the weakling Prince and his proud, brave, quarrelsome followers to become part of that last myth of a lost cause. Among all the songs, poems, books and stories handed down by hearsay and the recounting from the memories growing now dim from generations long gone, one hard fact emerges: - the battle, the wild charge of the Highlanders, the waving of heavy claymores and the fearful shouts and yells of courageous clans, was the end on their own soil against an invader. When the Scots charged again, it would be as fighting, disciplined Regiments of the British Army against a common foe. What can we make of it all now, this long time past? Perhaps, as we all thrill to the massed Pipes and Drums leading the marching kilted famous Scottish Regiments, at a Parade to honour the British Monarch, there may be hearts which will still think the battle of long ago was won, after all, on that misty chilling Scottish moor, long, long ago. Rosemary Goulding |
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page last updated 1 JUNE 2001 |
