Culloden Page #6

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This is one of them,

sheltering from the rain 1,500 feet

up the side of a hill face.

Andrew McEachan, aged 25,

who stood at Culloden,

and who now, because of the patrols,

has to hide in the hills

like an animal.

This is his wife, child

and a friend called Mrs MacInnis.

They have each been out in the open

for the past eight days.

This girl is suffering from

severe ux

as a result of damp clothes.

The last meal this baby ate

was a small fish caught yesterday

and shared between the children.

This little girl, forced

to leave her home suddenly,

has only a thin dress,

a damp shawl and no shoes.

At approximately 12 noon, May 30th,

the family is sighted by the patrol.

This is what happens.

Right, then!

NO! No!

I dunno.

All these officers keep telling us

these people up here

are a load of savages, but...

I dunno, they looked like ordinary

women and children up there to me.

I didn't like it, what We did.

I didn't like it at all.

Look, let me tell you something.

I had a mate at Falkirk.

He had his head split open.

Like that.

So don't try and make me

go all weeping, like,

over what happens

to these bastards. Eh?

Just don't try it!

Well satisfied with the result

of his military occupation,

Cumberland is to leave

Scotland on July 18th.

He leaves behind him, to finish

the destruction of the rebel clans,

not only an immense concentration

of English and Lowland troops,

not only the zealous help

of all the Whig clans,

but even the help of the chief

of a rebel clan, Ludovick Grant,

son of the Gram clan chief,

who has hastily

reorganized his loyalties

and just delivered 82 of his own

rebel clansmen to Cumberland

for transportation to the Barbados,

as proof of his unswerving allegiance

to the Crown.

Cumberland himself is to receive

from London a tumultuous welcome.

From the Government,

a raise in salary of 25,000.

From George Frederick Handel

a choral work,

See The Conquering Hero Comes.

From the public,

his name for a ower, Sweet William.

From the Scots,

his name for a weed, Stinking Billy.

Month after month,

the British army patrols

scour every hill range and glen

of northern Scotland

in an attempt, as Cumberland puts it,

"to wear down this generation

until there be peace in the land.".

The patrols leave behind them

a trail of brutality and suffering

that is to earn for their commander

undying loathing

and the epithet

Cumberland the Butcher.

These three of his officers have

already burnt, smashed, raped,

looted and bayonetted their way

from Glenurquhart to Moidart,

committing,

in the name of pacification,

the worst atrocities

in the history of the British army.

Captain Caroline Frederick Scott,

Lowlander.

I agree with

the senior staff officer,

who has proposed that 5 be paid

for the head of every rebel

brought to Fort Augustus.

Major lain Lockhart, Lowlander.

Those found in arms are ordered

to be immediately put to death

and the houses of those who abscond

are plundered and burned,

their cattle drove, their ploughs

and other tackle destroyed.

Lord George Sackville, Englishman,

third son of the Duke of Dorset.

We have detachments

in all parts of the Highlands.

The people are deservedly

in a most deplorable way

and must perish,

either by famine or by the sword.

A just reward for traitors.

We hang or shoot everyone that

is known to conceal the Pretender,

burn their houses, take their cattle.

The Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart,

object of the largest single manhunt

in British history,

now disguised

as an ordinary clansman,

much addicted to the little bottle

he carries in his hip pocket,

suffering from dysentery,

is to spend the next five months

scrambling amidst the rocks and hills

of the Western Highlands,

sheltered by its people, who remain

loyal to him and never betray him,

until, in September, he takes a ship

for France and security,

leaving behind him nothing,

nothing but a legend,

"Bonnie Prince Charlie."

My bonnie moorhen

My bonnie moorhen.

Up in the grey hill

Down in the glen.

Charles Edward Stuart,

the bonnie moorhen,

is to walk out of the lives of the people

he has led into so much suffering

with scarcely a backward look

in their direction.

The year of the Prince had ended

but for the English Government,

this was just the beginning.

Systematically and with

clue parliamentary legislation,

they proceeded to eliminate ail

the things that made this man unique

and that gave him

the strength they so feared.

They penalized the wearing

of his Highland dress,

penalized the weaving

of his Highland tartan,

penalized the worshipping

at his Church,

penalized the carrying

of his weapons,

penalized the playing of his music.

They removed

the authority of his chief

and, in one blow, smashed forever

the system of his clan.

They then encouraged his chief

to lose interest in him,

to evict him and to replace him

by the more profitable sheep.

Thus they reduced him

to a homeless, unwanted oddity

and finally forced him,

in his hundreds of thousands,

to leave the land of his birth

for the canning industries

of the North,

for the disease-ridden slums

of the South,

for the lumber camps of Canada

and the stockyards of Australia.

And wherever he went,

he took with him

his music, his poetry,

his language and his children.

"On an April morning.

"I no longer hear birdsongs

"or the lowing of cattle on the moor.

"I hear the noise of sheep

and the English language,

"dogs barking

and frightening the deer.".

Thus, within a century from Culloden,

the English

and the Scottish Lowlanders

had made secure forever

their religion, their commerce,

their culture, their ruling dynasty

and, in so doing,

had destroyed a race of people.

They have created a desert

and have called it "peace."

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