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Hosted by journalist and broadcaster Jackie Bird, each episode of our Love Scotland podcasts tells some of the thrilling stories behind the Trust’s people and places, showcasing how everything we do is for the love of Scotland.

Digging for history at Culloden

A green title card with a black and white photo of a man holding a metal detector and wearing a high-vis jacket. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Digging for history at Culloden.
A green title card with a black and white photo of a man holding a metal detector and wearing a high-vis jacket. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Digging for history at Culloden.

Season 10 Episode 7

Transcript

10 speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Derek Alexander [DA]; Ellen Fogel Walker [EFW]; Gary Craig [GC]; Lorne MacLeod [LM]; dig volunteer [DV]; Christine McPherson [CM]; Gail Boardman [GB]; Flora Fraser [FF]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[Bagpipes play]

[JB]
The morning was cold and stormy as we stood on the battlefield, snow and rain blowing against us. Before long we saw the red soldiers in battle formation in front of us, and although the day was wild and wet, we could see the red coats of the soldiers and the blue tartan of the Campbells in our presence. The battle began, and the pellets came at us like hailstones. The big guns were thundering, but we ran forward and Oh dear, oh, dear, what cutting and slicing there was, and many the brave deeds performed by the Gaels.

That was an account of the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, written by eyewitness Donald Mackay and translated from Gaelic. It was a battle that lasted barely an hour but it changed Scotland forever.

And this is where you join me today. The moorland around me, with its clan markers and memorial cairn, is still haunting. On this land, it’s estimated 1,300 men were slain, about 1,250 of them Jacobites. Culloden was the last major battle fought on British soil, and it’s in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. But Culloden still holds its secrets and that is why we are here.

As the Trust continues to protect the sites, it’s the job of its archaeologists to try to unearth evidence that helps us understand what happened here on that snowy afternoon. Well, today is one of a number of organised digs run by the Head of Archaeology, Derek Alexander. So, let’s go and find him at work.

Hello, Derek. Now, you are organising your own troops today. So, what’s happening?

[DA]
Yeah, we’ve got a regiment of volunteers with us here at Culloden. It’s our fourth year of archaeological investigations on the battlefield, looking for battlefield archaeological remains but anything else that’s historical or prehistoric as well.

[JB]
I had no idea that these digs only restarted in the last few years after a gap of about 20 years?

[DA]
Yeah, often archaeology is a bit like that. It takes a wee while for the results of previous work to settle in, and then you go away, and of course you know what the Trust is like – we have lots of other priorities. The previous work was related about the development of the new visitor centre back there in 2006/2007.

[JB]
Because that unearthed the whole space for you.

[DA]
Yeah, exactly. And in fact, if you go into the visitor centre here, most of the artefacts that are on show, the musket balls and things like that, were recovered during that field work. So, it’s part of that process that we’ve been able to interpret the landscape better through the project.

[JB]
Well, before we get into the nuts and bolts of what’s happening today, sometimes literally, for those who don’t know much about Culloden, why is it so significant in British history?

[DA]
The most significant thing is it’s the last battle of the Jacobite uprisings. And after that, the Jacobites never again attempted to get James or any of his successors onto the throne. And by then we had what would be called, I suppose in government parlance, that pacifying of the Highlands.

So, they broke up the clan system. They made various things illegal: the wearing of tartan, the playing of pipes, that side of things. They cracked down heavily on Gaelic tradition. The reason for that was because the government at that time was very afraid of the clan system in general, because they could raise large amounts of troops at the drop of a hat, so they could get thousands of men into the field very, very quickly.

Now, if you want a modern state and you want it to be stable and you want to fight your wars abroad, which is what the British were doing at that time – a lot of fighting in France and the Netherlands – they want to free up troops to go and do that. They don’t want people rising in rebellion at home. So, they cracked down very, very heavily on the Highlands.

[JB]
I think another interesting thing is this was not England versus Scotland. This was a civil war and it involved troops from other countries too.

[DA]
Absolutely. Here at Culloden, we have troops from France, we have troops from Ireland, descended German troops and things like that in the British Army, and of course the Jacobites, there are Highland clans on both sides and there are Lowlanders on both sides. We have regiments …

[JB]
It split families, didn’t it?

[DA]
Absolutely. And so, it was really quite a fraught period and it was very unsettling for the entire country.

[JB]
Tell me about the sizes of the opposing forces on that April afternoon.

[DA]
We think that somewhere in the order of 4/5,000 Jacobites to about 6/7,000 Government troops. The Government troops had probably been better organised. They had gathered at Aberdeen and had made their way north-west-wards in the preceding month or so, and made their way all the way to Nairn by about 14 April 1746.

[JB]
And how many miles is Nairn away?

[DA]
From here it’s about probably about 20 miles, I think. The Jacobites were based around Culloden House on the outskirts of Inverness. Inverness for them was important because that’s where their supplies were – all their munitions and their food and all the paperwork and things that go with organising an army. They needed to protect Inverness, so they needed to block the route to Inverness.

[JB]
So, we are sitting here just sheltering outside the visitor centre from the notorious Culloden wind. How big was the battle site?

[DA]
The trouble with battlefields is that it’s difficult to draw a line around them because they’re mobile things. They’re happening all the time. You’ve got the advance of both armies coming out and forming up, and then you’ve got the battle itself, and then you’ve got the rout and retreat of those things. So how big do you say a battlefield is?

But where the main part of the battlefield is, we’ve marked out where the Government/British Army troops are lined out. There are four flags and they mark three regiments. The three regiments are probably about 80 yards/80 metres long with about 400 men that would have stood in each one, three ranks deep. And so, we’re looking at the bit that we’ve got on the Trust land is Barrel’s Regiment, Monroe’s Regiment and the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

[JB]
This dig is different from previous digs because you’re using a digger. What difference does it make?

[DA]
Seems daft, doesn’t it, that we wouldn’t do that before! In previous years, we’ve done small-scale test pitting and metal detecting. Because what you’re doing in battlefield archaeology is you’re looking for individual artefacts that relate to the battle. Most of those are munitions. Most of them are things like pistol shot, musket balls, grape shot, canister round shot – all the things that they were firing at each other, because those survive and they mark the concentrations of where the battle was at its fiercest.

We’re using test pitting because all we’re looking for is in the top soil. These fields have all been ploughed, so everything has been mixed up over years and years of ploughing. All we’re doing is digging down through the topsoil and metal detecting for artefacts around that. Now, this year we’re going a step further because we’ve got a big 360 tract excavator, which is an archaeological dream because it means you don’t have to dig all the top soil yourself.

[JB]
A labour-saving device?

[DA]
Absolutely a labour-saving device. The machine driver strips off, under archaeological supervision, the turf on the top and we metal detect before he top strips that. Then we metal detect once he’s stripped it, and then we strip down in 10cm goes – spits we call them – taking off a horizontal 10cm horizon until we get down to the underlying glacial subsoils, which is about 40 or 50cm deep here. And as we go down, we’re picking up more and more artefacts.

Now, this is a technique that Professor Tony Pollard has used at the Battle of Waterloo. Tony was the guy who did the original work here when we did the visitor centre.

[JB]
Yes, he’s out in the field just now, actually doing some work, unlike us, who’s sitting gabbling here! But we will be joining him!

[DA]
That’ll be the first time; it’s good to keep him working! So, it’s a technique that we haven’t used here before. We’re really excited to see what the results are going to be because it might be that in fact we’ll pick up more evidence that is buried further down, that previous metal detecting surveys haven’t been able to pick up.

[JB]
Or less, I suppose, because it’s important it tells you where not to look.

[DA]
Well, we have previously excavated in the second line of the Government/British Army troops where they deploy, and we got a couple of musket balls. We’ve excavated over on the left flank between where the infantry and the dragoons were, we found nothing. So, it’s good; you need to look in the blank areas too in order to understand where you’re getting concentrations of materials.

And by doing that over time, you won’t do all at once. People always say, why can’t you just go and dig it all? It’d take years to do that. And we find thousands of … So, by doing it in small chunks at a time and recording precisely where we find things, we can always build that picture up over time. One year you might find lots of things, and another year you might find nothing.

But you might go back to the same place in a couple of years, and there might be more showing, depending on the conditions of the soil and how good technology is. Technology has moved on. Metal detectors are much better now than they were in the 80s and the 90s, and even better than just back in 2006/2007 when they did the first survey here.

[JB]
And there’s so much more demand, I suppose, because it’s so popular now. This is day what of your week-long dig?

[DA]
This is day three.

[JB]
OK, now between us on the table you have a very small selection of what you have already found. It’s difficult just with audio only, but I’m sure you can do it. Give us a show and tell.

[DA]
We’re looking at a big ice cream tub here, aren’t we, of the nice things. But we’ve got something like 200 artefacts that have been recovered through the excavation and the test pits and the metal detecting. The thing that people get excited about straight away is our musket balls.

[JB]
A perfectly formed, rusty …

[DA]
It won’t be rusty because it’s lead.

[JB]
Oh! Just dirty, corroded musket ball. And that’s an exciting find. I was chatting to the volunteers earlier and I held a coin. Tell me about this coin you found.

[DA]
We find things obviously related to the battle, but we find … the Battle of Culloden lasted for an hour or so on 16 April 1746. But of course, there’s 10,000 years of history in this landscape going right back to the Mesolithic and through to modern farming. So, the coin that we recovered, which was recovered by Lorne, who was very excited, who’s one of the estate workers here and has worked here for years, is a small, silver, hammered, long cross penny of – we think – Edward I of England and it dates to probably the late 13th century.

[JB]
What a find. How exciting!

[DA]
What’s that doing here? So, you find background stuff as well.

[JB]
That’s the question. And that’s the joy of archaeology – you find something, it’s not necessarily answers; it throws up questions.

[DA]
And as you’ll see when we go and have a look at the site, when the machine’s revealing things on the ground, we’re finding pits and gullies and features. Now, those aren’t things that were dug at the time of the battle. Those are things that probably are maybe going to date back to the Bronze Age or the Iron Age, and they’re in the ground underneath and we’re just finding them purely by chance. So, it’s nice that we can build up not just a better picture of the battle, but a better picture of how people have lived at the Culloden landscape for thousands of years.

[JB]
Right, I could talk to you all day. So, we’d better crack on! One more question: what else have you found before we set off to see the real work being done?

[DA]
The musket balls are good because the musket balls – and this is largely on the basis of Tony’s work – come in two different calibres. The Brown Bess that the Government troops use is a larger calibre, .75 calibre. The smaller ones are .65 calibre and tend to be the French muskets, which the Irish and French troops and some of the Jacobites used. So, you can then differentiate between the two.

And then the other thing we’re finding: a smaller shot, which would maybe interpreted as musket balls. And of course, many of the Jacobites would have held pistols, and as they go in close range they’ll be firing. You can’t fire a pistol at long range. Once you start finding pistol balls, you know you’re close to where the hand-to-hand action is. You’re firing your pistol before you draw your broadsword, if you have one, and going in.

Most of the Jacobite gents would have had a couple of pistols, fire them and then draw their broadsword and go in from there. They’re probably firing those at a range of about 30–40 metres, enough that you have a good chance of hitting something, and then you’re screaming and you’re going in hard.

So, musket balls, coins, buttons … we’re finding a lot of buttons.

[JB]
Buckles. I think that’s one of the most significant finds. This was the last dig, wasn’t it?

[DA]
Yes. We found an impacted piece of a broken buckle, which we think is a shoe buckle, and a piece of grape shot. And the grape shot is, as I say, the stuff that’s fired out of the cannons – and that’s one that we found this year, not the one we found last year, but you can feel the weight of that.

[JB]
That’s about an inch and a half in diameter. I’m an imperial kind of gal. It’s heavy!

[DA]
It’s 3cm or something like that. Those are fired out of a cannon and would have been bound together in a canvas bag, tied around with rope. And that burns off and when it fires, it comes out like a shotgun almost. But those are very, very heavy and nasty. One of those hitting you, and you’d know all about it.

[JB]
And before I leave you, tell me the story of the buckle, because that filled in some fact to something that had just been potentially legend.

[DA]
Yeah, well, one of the stories of the attack on the right flank of the Jacobites as they come forward. We have the Appen Brigade and we have the Camerons. And leading the Camerons is Cameron of Lochiel, basically the clan chief. He gets his charges across the battlefield, running across that gap that’s about 400 metres to get to within about 50 yards of the Government position, Barrel’s Regiment.

And he fires his pistols like we were talking about. He’s drawing his broadsword, when he gets wounded in the ankles by grape shot. Now, we found last year in the same pit, side by side, in a metal detecting hole, a broken shoe buckle and an impacted piece of grape shot. Now, I can’t prove that that was the shot that hit Cameron of Lochiel, but it’s really nice just to tie those stories together graphically with the artefactual evidence. That’s not something you can ever prove, but it’s in the right position. It’s in the right part of the field. It’s currently within about 20 metres of where we think the British Army Barrel’s Regiment was. So, it’s in the right sort of the field. The more things like that we can tie together, the better our understanding is. It was a fantastic discovery and it’s a good story.

And actually, one of the other things we’ve been finding this year, which I think we’re maybe just more aware of because we’re doing it, is with metal detecting we’re finding lots of little curved, horseshoe-shaped iron pieces. They’re too small to be a horseshoe. These are the heel plates from shoes.

[JB]
I didn’t know shoes had metal heel plates.

[DA]
Yeah, just anything to stop them wearing down. Now, I would have to do exactly a lot of research into what 18th-century shoes were – they certainly had buckles on the front, but I would imagine they had heel plates on the back too. I’d be interested to see whether those were shoes that were lost in … can you imagine running across that open ground and people firing, and you’ve got slip-on buckled shoes. They’re going to come off, aren’t they? And even if you’re not a casualty, that’s the sort of thing that gets left behind.

We’re finding quite a few of those, so that’ll be interesting to start to plot where we’re finding those out on the map.

[JB]
Right. Listen, I better let you go out. All I think when I see this, and when I see the buckles, is the fact that although this is old rusting ammo from nearly 300 years ago, each one has a human story. These are tales of terrible, terrible conflicts and loss and terror and horror, and it brings it to life.

[DA]
It does. I mean, there’s something very gruesome about it, but it’s really important as well, I think, to understand. And not just to understand, it helps you understand what people on the day went through. It is horrific. You look at those impacted musket balls and that impacted grape shot, and the wounds must have been terrifying and horrible. You can imagine how scared you would have been charging on both sides. And that’s the thing: on both sides. It’s just so graphic, and you hold it in your hand, and you think, God, that happened on that day.

[JB]
That was a human being. Right, let’s go off and we’ll catch up with you later, Derek, and hopefully there’ll be a few equally exciting finds.

[Bagpipes play]

[EFW]
My name is Ellen Fogel Walker and I am the Estates & Conservation Manager here at Culloden Battlefield and Visitor Centre. The lure of taking part in a dig at Culloden is unlike any other opportunity that you’ll get. We are on a stage, so to speak, of a special place around the world.

People come to Culloden for a variety of different reasons. They come to us to connect with their heritage, to look at a landscape set in the Highlands, for 360° views of sweeping Highland landscape. They look to us for a way to connect with the not-so-distant past. And we’re a turning point in Scotland’s history. Culloden has been instrumental in what we’ve been doing here, as the National Trust for Scotland, and it brings together both the natural heritage and the cultural heritage that we have to share as an organisation.

[JB]
It also informs the visitor experience because you have a fabulous exhibition here, and Derek Alexander was just telling me that a lot of it has come from previous digs.

[EFW]
Absolutely. One of the main reasons why we wanted to reinvigorate our archaeological research here at Culloden was because we wanted to better understand the story itself. We have a very passionate team of people and network of people that we associate ourselves with and refer to for guidance. But one of the best sources of guidance that we can look to is the archaeological evidence.

While the historian Professor Christopher Duffy was alive, who researched Culloden for over 50 years, we were blessed in a way to take a forensic lens and look at the history here at Culloden using primary evidence, evidence from the people that were here at the time of the battle, and also look at the history beneath our feet.

You have big players here at Culloden. You have Hugh Mercer, who was here at 20 years old beside the Jacobites, who ends up being a pioneer – going out and finding refuge in the Americas and ends up being the physician to George Washington, saving his life on several occasions.

And on the side of the Government, you have a young James Wolfe who ends up being the hero of Quebec in the Seven Years War. So, really pivotal moments in history were forged here and to be a part of that unearthing, and really shaping the narrative as we understand it now, and to know that it’ll change even afterwards, is really incredible.

[JB]
And in terms of enhancing the visitor experience, the dig isn’t doing too badly at the moment because all the visitors are flocking around!

[EFW]
No, it’s been great. Each year we’ve been able to grow the visitation here at Culloden.

[JB]
How many people come here each year?

[EFW]
Each year we see about 300,000 visitors on the battlefield itself, into the visitor centre. And because we’re open all year long, onto the battlefield, we don’t restrict visitation, we estimate that it’s even more than that.

[JB]
It must be one of the most visited battle sites in the UK?

[EFW]
Not only is it one of the most visited, Jackie, it’s also one of the most complete battlefield landscapes that we have here in Britain. It is intact – and that integrity and authenticity is unlike any other place that we can see left in Great Britain.

[Bagpipes play]

[JB]
We are racing to a corner of the dig. Why?

[DA]
We’re going to see what Gary and Lorne have found. They’re working with the machine and they’re doing the metal detecting in the spits to see what’s come up. So, we don’t know what they’ve found, so we’ll just nip under this fence here.

[JB]
But, you think there’s some activity here?

[DA]
Well, there’s activity here and they always look excited. So, what have you got guys?

[JB]
Have you found anything in particular?

[LM]
Just a little bit of iron. Once it’s cleaned up, we’ll find out a bit more about it.

[DA]
Oh, excellent.

[JB]
Is this the most exciting find that you’ve found so far in this dig?

[LM]
Not for me, Jackie, no. I found a hammered coin about 900 years old; an Edward I.

[JB]
I was able to hold it and I was beyond excitement. How did it feel when you actually discovered it and knew what it was?

[LM]
Oh, fantastic. Yeah, really fantastic to be the first person to pull it out the ground since it was maybe dropped all those years ago. It’s, for me, a big highlight of the last few days.

[JB]
Now, you actually work here, but you’ve taken time off to be part of this dig; is that correct?

[LM]
I’ve taken holidays to come to work with archaeologists! I’ve done this for the last four years with them and I really enjoy it and it’s a big interest of mine.

[JB]
And, I suppose it adds to the experience of the whole battlefield that you are more informed, that you’re actually hands on.

[LM]
Definitely. I’ve been interested in Culloden and the battlefield since I was a child. And now that I’m working here and getting involved in this, it’s really bucket list stuff for me. It’s really filling in all the gaps for me.

[JB]
Well, talking of buckets, the bucket from the digger is perilously close, so I think we should move out of the way. Thank you.

[DA]
Brilliant, Lorne. Do you want a wee shot of the metal detector?

[JB]
I’d love it.

[DA]
Well, let’s go speak to Gary. Gary’s an experienced metal detectorist.

[JB]
Hello, Gary. I’m Jackie.

[DA]
He’s been working with Tony Pollard at Waterloo for how long?

[GC]
Well, nearly ten years on the Waterloo Battle site.

[JB]
So, this is your first time at Culloden, is it?

[GC]
This is my first time at Culloden, so we’re here to use the methodology that we used in Belgium on the trenches.

[JB]
So, you are detectoring just now – is that the right word, detectoring? Right. So, can I have a go?

[GC]
You certainly can.

[JB]
How do I do this?

[GC]
Just lift it about two inches off the ground and swing it left to right.

[JB]
Ooh, it’s going beep. I presume that … It’s important to swing it.

[GC]
Yes, you have to swing it. Usually when I’m doing it, I’ll swing it a metre one way and a metre the other way, so we can cover all of the ground.

[JB]
It’s going beep, but does that necessarily mean there’s something under there?

[GC]
No, no. It’s just a little bit of chattering because there’s a bit of mineralisation.

[JB]
Chattering. I like that. So, what am I looking for? Am I looking for it to go berserk?

[GC]
I’ll show you what I’m wanting. I have a button here, so if you go left to right … if you do it faster, it’ll go even faster. That’s the tone you’re looking for.

[JB]
So, then you know there’s something special.

[GC]
Yes, that’s when you start getting excited.

[JB]
And what have you found today?

[GC]
This morning I found some buttons, some musket balls, small buckles.

[JB]
You’re saying things like buttons and musket balls as if you find them all the time in places. That’s hugely exciting.

[GC]
I know it is hugely exciting, but I’ve been on the battle site in Belgium for 10 years so I’m finding them constantly. I like to see other people getting excited finding them when I’m teaching them.

[JB]
That’s the thing about this, you are unearthing rusted bits and bobs from the earth. But it’s human history in the main, isn’t it? Is that the lure for you?

[GC]
The lure for me is … the thing I like the most is if I’ve got veterans here. If I’m teaching veterans in the trench, they’ve got a connection with the stuff that’s coming …

[JB]
These are military veterans who are taking part, who are volunteers? Why?

[GC]
These guys are from Fort George, Royal Engineers, so they’ve been coming in. Yesterday when they were finding stuff, they were just getting so excited. It was just great to see.

[JB]
That’s super. Right, I’ll let you get on with it. Give us a shout if you get anything.

[GC]
I will do. Nice speaking to you.

[JB]
And you began volunteering at digs about 15 years ago, and you liked it so much you changed career?

[DV]
Yeah, absolutely. I used to work in IT. I used to sit at a desk on a computer. And I started studying for a history degree, and then I found archaeology. It was a revelation to me.

[JB]
There are about, how many, 40 or so volunteers here. I’m surprised at how labour-intensive it still is. I thought technology would play a bigger part in archaeological digs.

[DV]
Yeah, it is a labour-intensive thing. That’s the tangible thing that people are touching history. If you’re using a machine that’s just reading the ground from above and telling us information, we can use that technology. It helps us decide where we’re going to put trenches and things like that. But actually kneeling down on the ground and scraping the soil and actually discovering what’s there is the only way you’re going to find out what’s underneath the ground. So, that labour-intensive thing in all weathers is still … it’s very cathartic. I find it a very fulfilling kind of job.

[JB]
And there’s great camaraderie here.

[DV]
Yeah, there absolutely is. We’ve got so many people that have maybe … we’ve got archaeology students here; we’ve got people who have never held a trowel before. We’ve got some serving personnel from Kinloss and Lossiemouth here today. We’ve got a group that’s just arrived, veterans; I’ll be giving a tour, and they’ll be doing some digging in a wee bit. We’ve got a very good mixture of people: ages, experience, backgrounds, distances that people have come from. And, it’s just like a family. It really is. And that’s why I now do archaeology.

[MV]
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[JB]
Most of the people here on this dig are Trust archaeologists and very interested volunteers. But there’s some extra help today from Tony Pollard. Now, Tony is Professor of Conflict History and Archaeology at Glasgow University and a man who knows this battlefield better than most. Tony, this is an area that you know very well. What’s your history here?

[TP]
Well, I guess I cut my teeth here at what is sometimes called battlefield archaeology. And in 2001 I did an episode of a series for the BBC called Two Men in a Trench. At that time, battlefield archaeology in the UK was quite a rare beast. But I stuck with it and started to develop it as an academic subject. And then in 2006, I was invited by the National Trust for Scotland to do a project here, because this was prior to what I still call the new visitor centre, and they wanted to basically update their interpretation of the battlefield.

By then we had established that that’s the sort of thing that archaeology could do – shed new light on old events. And so, we came up here with a team of local detectorists and archaeologists and students, and we worked away in the area behind us, which to this day is still known as the Field of the English – a Victorian label. We were amazed to find the evidence that we did, and we’ve had a real snapshot into the realities of the battle that was fought here in 1746 through the objects that we’d excavated.

[JB]
What I found really surprising when I was researching what had taken place here is that there have been so few digs.

[TP]
Certainly, when we first voiced an interest in doing some archaeology here, we weren’t welcomed with open arms. There was a lot of suspicion, a lot of uncertainty as to what exactly you’re doing with archaeology. You’re coming here to dig up the graves of the Highlanders that are just behind us again.

And we had to reassure that we were here to enhance our understanding, and we would do that with the least amount of disturbance possible, which we did. And it developed from there. And once certainly the National Trust for Scotland had got an insight into what could be done, they became very enthusiastic.

We were quite worried at the time. There are stories here that we debunked: the red barn, for instance, that was burned down. We discovered it was a Victorian vegetable garden. But yes, the interpretation panel that was there prior to that saying that Jacobites had been burned to death in this building, which wasn’t a building, that was taken away.

The National Trust for Scotland embraced this new path to reinterpretation. And what you see now – the footpaths, the position of the panels – quite a lot of that is based on the archaeological work that we did, obviously alongside the work of historians. I call myself a historian as much as I do with an archaeologist.

So, for me, Culloden is home turf. And to come back and see what Derek and the team and Ellen are doing here now is amazing, because Derek and I have been talking about doing what we’re doing today, which is stuff we developed while I was working in Waterloo.

[JB]
With a digger which is taking up much bigger areas than normal. And what I find astonishing is that yes, you are looking for less than an hour of activity over thousands of years of human habitation. That is needle in a haystack stuff.

[TP]
Well, to be quite frank, Jackie, that’s one of the great attractions that drew me to here. I was a prehistorian. I did my PhD on Mesolithic hunter gatherers and the Neolithic in Scotland. I then got a little tired of that, but I’d always had an interest in military history, and then learned from the Americans who were working at Little Bighorn what archaeology could add to our understanding of battles.

And the idea that we have these events that do take place in just a few hours, or even minutes, and are detectable archaeologically was a real appeal. And you’re right, the main thrust of the battle here probably lasts about half an hour, and to actually find the evidence is a huge challenge.

But as you say, this is a landscape which has seen activity for thousands of years. I describe a place, if you can read a place on an oscilloscope, where you’ve got just background noise, which is day-to-day activity going on for thousands of years, and then all of a sudden there’s a battle and it’s a blip.

[JB]
There’s a spike!

[TP]
That spike is what we’re looking for. And that spike, if you know what you’re doing and the circumstances are right, is detectable.

[JB]
You’ve also said that battlefield archaeology helps you determine the nuances of battle. What did you mean by that?

[TP]
Oh indeed, a parallel is crime scene investigation. I’ve done my share of work with the police on real crime scenes. What we do is we collect data and evidence and piece all of that together alongside, if we have them, historical accounts. And what it does is it adds an extra layer of evidence. A good example is I’ve just taken a group of military veterans around the battlefield on an hour-long tour. Now, a traditional battlefield tour would be based on the history, based on the landscape, and even at times with military input because they are used as training exercises. They’re called staff rights.

But we can also add the story that comes out of the ground. So, I can walk past there with these people. And yes, we’ve got the flags marking where Cumberland’s army was. But then we enter the area where people are using metal detectors. And even if that work wasn’t ongoing, I could say this is where we found this. This is where we found that. Exactly where you are standing, we found a cannon shot and a bit of broken Brown Bess musket. You can see those in the visitor centre.

Now, when we walked through there today, Gary gave me the nod and brought over a Jacobite musket ball and a button which had just been found.

[JB]
Thrilling!

[TP]
And I allowed them all to hold those objects, and they are the first time that anybody has held them since the day of the battle, 16 April 1746, which is phenomenal. Archaeology adds that physicality; well, I’ve always said that archaeology is the closest we will ever get to a time machine.

[JB]
And it’s also, I keep saying to everyone I chat to today, because this is done with respect. This is human history. Things like shoe buckles and there’s been Celtic crosses; someone maybe held that cross before they went into that battle.

[TP]
I was there – that was part of our project. I remember very well when that was found and I still, when I’m teaching my students about how to do this sort of archaeology, but also what the objects mean. With that, it’s a pewter take on a standing cross, transferred into a little medallion. What I tell my students in relation to that, it was found over on the Jacobite line. It’s got a hole in it where it’s been suspended around the neck. It may have come off a Jacobite who was killed either by cannon shot in the charge or perhaps the melee afterwards.

But what I say about that is, if we are looking at the way that people viewed the world and behaved in events like battles, we’ve got to consider their beliefs at the time. What that cross reminds us of is the religion that people held very dear. Now, I’m not saying there that the Jacobite wars were all about religion. That’s false, that’s a misconception; it’s just part of it. But the point is that the vast majority of people on this battlefield in 1746 would have believed in God and they would have believed in an afterlife – that makes you behave in a very different way than I would today.

So, a professed atheist, I don’t believe in any of that. And I think I might be a little more interested in saving my own skin than people who had that faith. And we have to make that leap of understanding that we don’t necessarily believe what they believe, but it’s there embedded perhaps in that object.

[JB]
And Culloden still holds its secrets.

[TP]
Oh, very much so. There are still things that we will never know. We cannot. And I never pretend that we are walking in the footsteps of those who fought and died here. I feel very humbled even walking around with military veterans. I’ve never been in the Forces. I almost joined the Army and then thought there’s too much organised sport and didn’t! But, some of these people have done what we call ‘seeing the elephant’. They’ve been in battle, and so I feel very humble showing them around this site, because in some respects they are far more connected to this hallowed ground than I am.

[Bagpipes play]

[JB]
Christine, you are a stalwart of archaeological digs. How long have you been doing this?

[CM]
I’ve been doing this for about 23 years.

[JB]
So, you must like it! You’re a volunteer. What do you get out of it?

[CM]
It’s entertaining and it makes you think. It teaches you about Scotland’s history and it informs Scotland’s history.

[JB]
And what has been your most exciting find?

[CM]
People ask me this and I always say it’s a bit of burnt daub. It was found on a roundhouse at Culzean, and it was about the only thing that we could use to date it because we could do carbon-dating on it because it’s been burnt.

[JB]
Excellent, I get it, and that is thrilling.

[CM]
I was right there from the beginning. We did the geophysics which showed us this beautiful round feature and then when we dug it down, there were occasional stone tools. But the only thing that really gave us information was that bit of burnt daub.

[JB]
Gail, what’s your back story?

[GB]
I’ve been volunteering for 20 years this year. My first dig was on Canna in 2004. And I’ve come back whenever the opportunity has arisen.

[JB]
It’s pretty physical work. We’re in a trench. You’ve got your trowels, you’re on your knees, you’re bent double. So, the finds must be worth it, and the experience.

[GB]
The experience is worth it because you are concentrating on what you’re doing. Nothing else can get in the way. You’re looking, you’re moving, and that’s all you’re doing. So, when you find something that’s evidence of another human being having been there all those years before, that’s quite a privilege, I think, and it’s one of the things that I really appreciate about doing it.

[JB]
And have you found anything of great interest? Because everything that’s found is of interest, but of great interest here at Culloden?

[GB]
No is the honest answer.

[JB]
But that’s part of it. It’s back-breaking and sometimes you come home and you have nothing.

[GB]
But you’re part of something that can find something of interest. And this dig, everyone thinks Culloden is 1746. That’s great. Over there is something that’s potentially thousands of years old and made by people. Culloden has been here for a lot longer than 300 years. People have been living here and cooking and eating and fighting and doing all of that forever.

[JB]
So both of you, bent double, on your knees, all sorts of weather for a week. How do you feel at the end of it?

[GB]
Very satisfied. You get a feeling of camaraderie. It’s just fun.

[JB]
I’ll let you get on with it. Thank you very much. Good luck. Good luck!

[Bagpipes play]

[JB]
It has been a fascinating day here at Culloden. It is living history, and you cannot overstate the impact of the battle fought on this land, both on the way of life in the Highlands and for Scotland as a whole. Historians are still debating Culloden’s legacy and while they do, the National Trust for Scotland has been acquiring and caring for parts of the battlefield since 1937.

But this field and the views around me are under increasing threat from development. If you’d like to support the Trust’s work to protect it, you can donate to the Culloden Fighting Fund. And as people come here from all over the world to visit Culloden, if you’re a resident of the USA, you can show your support through the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA. All the information you may need is in our show notes.

Thank you for listening. Until next time, goodbye.

If you’d like to hear more about the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, look out for our episode ‘Young Rebel’ and learn about the fascinating life of Flora MacDonald, who took her Bonnie Prince over the sea to Skye.

[FF]
Contrary to some people’s belief that Flora rode the Prince 30 nautical miles in the middle of the night in storms over to Skye, there was a crew of five. They could see it was a man, but they were told it was a Jacobite rebel who needed to escape.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Jackie joins the merry band of archaeologists at Culloden hoping to unlock more of the battlefield’s historic secrets. With the Trust’s Head of Archaeology, Derek Alexander, she discovers how modern techniques are helping to unearth musket balls, coins and buttons.

Though the battle on 16 April 1746 may have lasted just a short time, it was hugely consequential, and new elements of its story continue to be discovered through archaeological digs. Find out how decisions are made about where to excavate and what inspires people to devote their time to the quest for hidden artefacts.

This podcast was first released in November 2024.

Stories and songs of Scottish battles

A blue title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Stories and songs of Scottish battles | Alistair Moffat and Derek Alexander join Jackie for our first live recording.
A blue title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Stories and songs of Scottish battles | Alistair Moffat and Derek Alexander join Jackie for our first live recording.

Love Scotland Season 7 Episode 1

Transcript

Five voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Alistair Moffat [AM]; Derek Alexander [DA]; Iona Fyfe [IF]

[MV]
Love Scotland – brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird.

[Applause]

[JB]
Hello and welcome to a special live recording of the Love Scotland podcast. We’re in Aberdeen with an enthusiastic audience to explore a turbulent period in Scottish history. For the majority of people who study history, it involves hours in libraries, poring over manuscripts and leafing through textbooks. But my two guests today are very physical explorers of history.

War Paths is the title of a new book by acclaimed writer and historian Alistair Moffat, in which he sets off in the footsteps of the fighting men of Scotland’s clans, taking us through key historical moments and battles that would change the country forever. Meanwhile, Derek Alexander is the National Trust for Scotland’s Head of Archaeology – our very own Indiana Jones! Derek has dug his way around much of Scotland; the Trust has approximately 12,000 archaeological sites. But unlike the movie action hero, Derek’s adventures are real! Welcome to our guests.

[Applause]

[JB]
Now Alistair, your book deals with a number of battles across the Jacobite era. And although all the strategic battle details are there, your quest was human. You said you wanted to understand the clansmen and the warriors. Why?

[AM]
Because they fought essentially with bladed weapons, just as the Roman legionaries did, just as the Greek hoplites did. They had pistols and muskets to some extent – as Derek will attest – but most of them had a dirk and a sword, and a little shield. And so, they were extraordinarily successful fighting against modern armies who were equipped with muskets, who had cannon, who had pistols and so on. And yet they won again, and again, and again. And I wanted to try and understand why that was. I think there were really two approaches I had. It was clear to me that because their major, their sole tactic in fact was the Highland Charge. That’s how they won, and I wanted to understand why that was so effective. That was the first thing. The second thing that I was interested in was courage – sheer, physical courage. To charge ranks of often professional soldiers with cannon in place and their muskets at the ready, and you have a bladed weapon. Now that takes guts to do that; that takes physical courage. I wanted to try to understand that.

You mentioned in your very generous introduction – thank you! – that I like to go to places in order to understand what happened. I believe profoundly in the idea of genius loci – the spirit of place – except I translate it as ‘places of spirits’. If you go to somewhere that’s atmospheric … and we’ve all been to places like Iona and so on which are like that, that have atmosphere. But to try and understand how a battle happened and why it happened in a particular place, if you go to the place you also understand the mechanics of it, the physical logistics of it, as well as the spirit of the place. Derek will confirm this, because we were talking beforehand, these are places where many people died. They deserve respect without any doubt, and some of them are even unmarked – like Tippermuir outside Perth. You can’t find it, whereas Killiecrankie the Trust do a great job, and at Culloden too. And so, I wanted to go to these places to understand how the clansmen’s physical courage was translated into victory, what happened. As I said, the Charge was their sole tactic; if the Charge failed, they lost.

[JB]
That’s a great start. We will go into the Charge in greater detail because it was phenomenally successful. Derek, what about you? When you are out and about, as the job necessitates, is it all about the science? Or do you ever get that spine-tingling moment?

[DA]
Every now and again. As an archaeologist, my job is about understanding people in the past from what they’ve left behind. Very much we joke about it in the department – a department of 2 – that we’re landscape detectives. Understanding things in their context and how they came to be and what’s the evidence for telling those stories. That’s really key to understanding. I very rarely get that ‘have you found something that makes the hairs stand up on their back of your neck’ vibe. But I did when we were digging at Glenshiel – a Jacobite battle of 1719.

All of my volunteers had left and I went to check one of the sites that they had previously found a number of remains of ammunition that had been fired by the thing that won the battle at Glenshiel, which is these Coehorn mortars. They could fire uphill and the Jacobites were in these wonderful positions that they should have held because it was up slopes like that. I’ve walked up those slopes, and it gets back to the understanding of topography and what an effect that has on battles. It’s impossible. The only way government forces there were going to do that was to have the support of this artillery. I was out on my own with a metal detector, just checking a couple of spots and I found more parts of the mortar shell. A mortar shell is basically a spherical bomb with a fuse in it. If you think ‘comedy bomb’ – somebody running about like that with a fuse burning, this is exactly what it was. I bent down and picked out this, which is a fragment of Coehorn mortar shell that still has the hole where the fuse went in, which burnt down and exploded and basically sent the Jacobites – Lord George Murray on that side on the Jacobite right wing – heading for the hills. I looked around and there was nobody to share that moment with! It was like 300 years to the day that it had been fired, and it was in my hand. That’s probably the most recent time that that moment of spine tingling had actually happened. As an archaeologist you find a lot of things, but that was great.

[JB]
Do battlefields present any specific challenges to an archaeologist?

[DA]
Absolutely, because what archaeology is normally about is structural remains – you’re looking at houses and burials and that sort of thing. Battlefields are very irregular. They’re mobile things; people are moving all the time. Certain types of archaeology will survive. All the organic remains in Scotland’s acidic soils – leather, clothes, bones – will disintegrate. The things that we end up looking for are the things that survive best. You’re not looking here at pottery and glass, which is what you get on domestic sites; you’re looking at munitions like lead musket balls, pistol shot, pieces of artillery. If you were very very lucky, or unlucky, then you’re looking for a mass grave or something. But even then, the only thing that would probably mark that out would be a concentration of metal artefacts because the bones probably don’t survive.

[JB]
Mmm. Well, let’s talk about one of the earliest battles on the site, which as you say Alistair, happens to be looked after by the National Trust for Scotland: Killiecrankie. I’ll briefly set the scene. July 1689, part of the Jacobite Rising led by John Graham of Claverhouse, known to most of us as Bonnie Dundee, in support of the exiled king James VII & II. Alistair, why choose Killiecrankie?

[AM]
If you go there, what you see, even though the A9 slashes right through the middle of the battlefield, if you go there to the NTS centre and then walk down by the gorge – because Killiecrankie is a very very steep gorge – you see the concentration of roots and roads and railways and so on squashed into this. You understand the strategy, the importance of it as a strategic place. If you walk past the centre, down into the gorge and then up through the village and you get to the battlefield, even though the artics are thundering up to Inverness and so on on the A9, you nevertheless get a sense of the ground immediately. What Dundee liked, and the clan chiefs liked, was the sloping ground – that was important. It was really important for the Charge that they had what the Gaels called the advantage of the brae. George Murray, whom Derek mentioned, joked after the ’45 that even a haggis could charge downhill. If you’re charging downhill, clearly your momentum is greater.

The other good thing about Killiecrankie was that it was not boggy, and it still isn’t boggy! There’s a river – the Gurnock – that runs down into the Garry on one side, which is very rocky with huge boulders. You’re protected on one flank. What Dundee does is dispose the clans up the hill. General Mackay marches the government army through the gorge and he’s downhill, and he knows he’s got problems.

[JB]
Before we get to the action, what would the Highland army have looked like?

[AM]
What they looked like? I think they would have looked absolutely splendid. People think that Highlanders are sort of raggedy vagabonds – the bare-arsed banditti as they called them – but they were not. Some of these chiefs were dressed in their war splendour. They wore costumes that were scaly with gold and so on; they really dressed up. They looked fantastic; they rode white horses. There’s a description of the muster before Killiecrankie in Lochaber, which is extremely detailed, written by a man called James Phillip. It details what the chiefs wear. They are a rainbow of colours. The ordinary clansmen would have looked a little less splendid, I think, but nevertheless you went to war looking terrific. That was very important because it fed your sense of yourself; it fed your courage, that you looked the part, you were a great soldier.

[DA]
I think also it probably would reflect a full range of society – you’re going from the chiefs to the guys at the bottom as well. Also, there would have been that range of different dress and armaments.

[JB]
Let’s talk about this Highland Charge. It was there to create – I think it’s in your book – ‘operational paralysis’. That was its aim. What was the arrangement? Because it wasn’t just a load of ferocious warriors running amok.

[AM]
That’s right. It wasn’t a crazy melee of ululating savages running down the hill at all. It was perfected by an extraordinary man called Alistair McCulloch …

[JB]
Who wasn’t Scottish?

[AM]
He was a Macdonald general; he was a Macdonald.

[JB]
But he was of Irish descent?

[AM]
People forget that the Clan Donald have an Irish and Ulster branch. He is a Gael – let’s call him that. Alistair fought in Ulster in the 1640s and there is documentary evidence that he did something different. The Charge used to be as you described Jackie, but what he began to do was to perfect it, essentially the format. It didn’t always happen – it didn’t happen at Culloden – but I’m pretty certain it happened at Killiecrankie. What the clans would do would be to charge within about 50 yards of the lines of musketeers, let’s call them. As Derek will confirm, muskets are not accurate over 50 yards. That’s where courage comes in. You charge and you stop, and they fire at you. Then, what the Highlanders did was to charge even closer, and any that had muskets or pistols would fire them. When you’ve got the old flash in the pan, when you’ve got gunpowder, gun smoke is billowing; there’s loads of it, it’s like a fog. In the fog, McCulloch got his men to form wedges. 12, 10, 14 men, all related to each other, brothers …

[JB]
Why all related?

[AM]
Because the clansmen were. Wedges were put together with people who were brothers, who were uncles and nephews and cousins and so on. Although modern soldiers fight for their mates and fight for their country and for their king, the clansmen fought for their families. You put the oldest man in front because he knew what to expect, and they charged, and the wedges broke through. Once they got in behind a Redcoat line (let’s call it), the battle was over because these men were tremendous swordsmen. They were taught from childhood as swordsmen. Their weapons would have been razor-sharp; a glancing blow would slice into you. Once they got behind, it was all over.
At Prestonpans, which takes place in 1745, the battle lasted less than 10 minutes, because the Highlanders (the Camerons) broke through immediately.

[JB]
There’s a great passage in your book – you have your book in front of you, could you find it for us? – it tells us what it was like – it’s a primary source – of what it was like to be on the receiving end of a Highland Charge.

[AM]
That’s right. And this is at Killiecrankie. The lovely thing, Jackie, is that this is a guy who was a private solider; he wasn’t a general or an aristocrat or a clan chief or anything like that. He’s a man called Donald McBane, who was a tobacco spinner from Inverness! He left a record of what happened:

‘The Macdonalds came on down the hill upon us without either shoe, stocking or bonnet on their head. [The Highlanders stripped off to charge.] They gave a shout and then the fire began on both sides and continued a hot dispute for an hour. Then they broke in upon us with sword and targe and Lochaber axes, which obliged us to give way. Seeing my captain sore-wounded, and a great many more with heads lying cloven on every side, I was sadly affrighted. A Highlander attacked me with sword and targe and cut my wooden-handled bayonet out of the muzzle of my gun. I then clubbed my gun and gave him a stroke with it, which made the butt end fly off. Seeing the Highland men come fast upon me, I took to my heels and ran 30 miles before I looked behind me. [Laughter] Every person I saw or met, I took for my enemy.’

It’s a wonderful description because the other thing that I forget anyway is the sheer terror of watching this coming at you; and to stand fast, not to move, was an achievement. These men were terrific swordsmen and absolutely committed. As I was saying earlier, they won again and again and again. We think of Culloden as a disaster. But before Culloden, they were undefeated.

[JB]
Poor old Donald McBane. He was from Inverness – the background to Alistair’s quote there is that he joined the British army for some excitement. I think he got it!

[AM]
He did.

[JB]
All that ammunition – that must be manna for you, Derek. We hear about government troops carrying lead balls in their mouths and spitting them into their muskets.

[DA]
Well, that allows you to load quicker instead of going to your pouch to get the cartridge out, if you’ve not got the cartridge with the charge in it. Most of them would have had them in a pouch at the front and would be putting it in and ramming it down and then trying to fire it. Of course, at Killiecrankie some of them are using matchlock muskets which are quite old – you need to fire flash in the pan. Some of the others will have flintlocks, where that’s what’s firing. That’s what forms the archaeological record. You’re talking thousands and thousands of these things. If you’ve got, at Killiecrankie, 2,500 Jacobites on one side and 3,500 government troops on the other side all firing muskets, even if the government troops only get 3 rounds off like they say before the Charge hits home, you’re talking tens of thousands of musket balls. They should be out there marking concentrations.

[JB]
Have you found much?

[DA]
The National Trust for Scotland owns the area of the Pass going through, and Soldier’s Leap where McBane jumps across; we don’t own the bit beyond, which is where the main battle is. But as part of the A9 improvement, the widening of it, a lot of archaeological work has been undertaken there by commercial archaeology companies. What they use, and one of the best methods for doing battlefield archaeology, is metal detecting. They’ve got lots and lots of concentrations of musket balls, buttons – if people are coming and swinging a sword at you, it’s not just bits of flesh that are flying off. Anything like belts, …

[JB]
Buckles would be the least of your worries, wouldn’t it?!

[DA]
Exactly! That’s the sort of material culture that would be distributed on battlefields that you’ll get in concentrations.

[JB]
Alright. Let’s just say that Killiecrankie, although they were vastly outnumbered, was a great victory. 3 weeks later, not so much. A hasty second Rising at the Battle of Dunkeld. Briefly, I’d like to talk about the Battle of Dunkeld just before we go to the break, because that is where that advantage of the braes did not work. It couldn’t work because it wasn’t in such a rural hill.

[AM]
That’s right. Dunkeld is a beautiful town and it was a substantial settlement then with a cathedral that had been completed 50 years before. What happened was the government forces occupied the cathedral precinct and built up a wall around it. I often think of a parallel with Rorke’s Drift and Zulu, that amazing film. Dundee was killed at Killiecrankie, which was a great blow to the rebellion. Nevertheless, they carried on and they attacked Dunkeld. But they have to attack up the streets of this town.

[JB]
They’d been lured into Dunkeld, hadn’t they?

[AM]
Well, it’s not clear why strategically they thought it was so important. They could have bypassed it, frankly. Nevertheless, they take on the Cameronians, who were occupying the precinct, and they charged up what’s now Cathedral Street. And it’s narrow. The houses are still the houses they were then – it’s not much wider than from the edge of your chair to the edge of Derek’s. It’s really narrow. Of course, there’s no mass. So what the Cameronians are able to do is pick off the Highlanders frankly – the absolute smash of the Charge is not possible because they’ve also got this barrier. Eventually, after a day of this approximately, they retire; they have to give up because the ground is wrong. It will not work for them.

[JB]
Derek, have we managed to extract anything from there?

[DA]
From Dunkeld, we’ve excavated an area around Stanley Hill. The National Trust for Scotland owns that part of the town, and that side – the north side – was the bit that was burnt. One of the parts of the tactics of the attacking Jacobites and the defending Cameronians was to set fire to some of the thatched buildings where people were taking cover and firing from. A big part of the town was actually burnt and we’ve lost one of the streets that used to lead up to Dunkeld House, which did survive the battle but in fact burnt down a couple of hundred years later. There are elements there that we can pick up, and people have come to us with musket balls from their back gardens in Dunkeld over the years. It’s an interesting site and it’s a forgotten side of things.
We’re talking about Killiecrankie as being a great victory, but the impact on some of the charging – the Macdonalds on the left flank of the Jacobite force – they took a huge number of casualties from the volley fire as well. Even though the Highland Charge could work, it could take big casualties as you were exposed coming in. Troops that were able to withstand the terrifying sight of these guys coming at them.

[AM]
They were disciplined; that’s the key.

[JB]
Absolute discipline.

[AM]
Apart from Donald McBane, who ran for it!

[JB]
Let me instil some discipline here. We’ll stop for a second because, as befits a live podcast, we also have some live music. In a few short years, Aberdeenshire’s Iona Fyfe has become one of Scotland’s best known traditional folk singers. We are delighted to have her here today. Appropriately, the Battle of Killiecrankie offers us the perfect chance to hear some songs. First, Iona will be performing ‘Ye Jacobites by name’, a song that I only recently discovered was in fact anti-Jacobite and anti-war in nature, despite seeming to be a rousing call to arms. Please join me in welcoming Iona Fyfe.

[Applause]

[Iona sings ‘Ye Jacobites by name’]

[Applause]

[JB]
Thank you to Iona. And there will be more from Iona later in the podcast.

[MV]
A donation to the National Trust for Scotland, no matter how small, will help to protect the places that make Scotland so special. With your help, we can respond quickly to mountain wildfires or fix damage from winter storms, and we can carry out vital work to ensure historical sites and fragile wildlife survive for future generations.
Just search National Trust for Scotland and click Donate.

[JB]
Welcome back to this special Love Scotland podcast where we are discussing the strategic and physical history of some of the conflicts of Jacobite Scotland. Alistair Moffat, we’ve discussed the Highland Charge and how it was exceptional when it worked. We’ve already alluded to Culloden when it did not work; that was another destination in your journey in your book. You called your chapter on Culloden ‘The army of the dead’ – why?

[AM]
Because of something unique to clansmen that happened that day, what the Gaels called beul-aithris – literally ‘mouth history’, something that wasn’t written down. When they decided to fight in April 1746, the ground was a huge issue. It was not properly settled. There was also an idea that the Jacobite army, knowing that the Duke of Cumberland’s forces were approaching essentially from here, from Aberdeen, from the east – that they would march to Nairn and surprise them in their camp. But it didn’t work. It was also raining, and they were very very short of supplies, and so when the Jacobite army drew up at Culloden on Drummossie Moor, they essentially stood as they always did in clan groups; as I say, these were family armies. The government army march onto the field with their standards snapping in the wind, and they’re twiddling their drums, and their sergeant majors are shouting at the men ‘look to your fronts’, ‘stand fast’ and so on. They hear something coming across the battlefield; they’re about 400/500 yards away I think, Derek? So, they’re not close, but they hear what they think are psalms being sung. Soldiers often did that before battle because they were going to be closer to their god, many of them, by the end of the day.

But the Highlanders were not singing psalms. What they were doing was reciting their genealogy. Each man could go back 25 generations and they would recite and go back through the generations. The reason they did that was to centre themselves before the Charge. They had to remember who they were. They called Lowlanders cow-herds and people with no ancestry to speak of. Their ancestors were important and what they were doing, as you said Jackie, is they were summoning the army of the dead. The dead and all of their ancient glory, all of their war prowess, all of their splendour – they would charge beside them as they charged across the moor. It didn’t happen like that, sadly. But this was something that was attested at the Battle of Harlaw, as early as 1411, that the Highlanders did this. It’s unique to Gaelic culture, and it gives a sense of why they were there, why they were fighting. They were fighting for their history, for their land, for their homeplaces, for their culture. And of course, Culloden turned out to be a disaster.

The ground was disastrously bad, and still is very boggy. If you go to the NTS site, you will see it – pools of water. It forced the clans to slew into each other, so they were never able to form the wedges properly. The government army were much more disciplined this time. They got off lots of cannonade; in fact that’s what made the Atholl Brigade charge. They fired what they called canister shot, also called grape shot, which one government officer said ploughed lanes through the clansmen. It was devastating.

[JB]
What were the numbers in the battle?

[AM]
It’s difficult to be accurate. As ever, the government army outnumbered the Jacobites. At Falkirk, the January before, there were 8,000 Jacobites – it was the largest army that ever fought for them – but it had thinned out. I guess there were about 4,000/4,500 – something like that.

[JB]
Derek, how much of Culloden has been excavated?

[DA]
Oh! Hardly anything.

[JB]
Really? I imagine you’ve gone over that with a fine tooth comb.

[DA]
Again, it comes down to the opportunities to undertake fieldwork. The National Trust for Scotland owns everything to the south of the current road that was moved in the 1980s. That really takes in only about half of the deployment of the government troops; there’s more of the Jacobite troops on that side, on our ground. But then you look at the areas outside that, where the cavalry engagements took place on the left flank of the government troops (and even on their right flank). The opportunities were taken when the new visitor centre went in, when the car park’s going in – these things are done over time. Tony Pollard and I did research excavations before we built the visitor centre in 2007 to get a better understanding of the battlefield. In fact, if you go to the visitor centre now, many of the artefacts that were uncovered in that piece of fieldwork, which was mostly metal detecting, are on display.

[JB]
Ok, so whenever anyone says we’re going to build a visitor centre and car park, that’s manna for you as an archaeologist!

[DA]
Yes!

[JB]
Why can’t you just pick a site and say ‘we’re going to dig here’?

[DA]
We do as well. One thing about battlefields and understanding battlefields is doing a big area probably won’t help you. It’s about understanding the concentration of artefacts and how they’re distributed across the landscape, and understanding how that landscape has had an impact on the way the battle evolved over time during the day. Over the last few years, we’ve been doing further bits of fieldwork – we’ve been looking at the second line of the government troops. We were looking at the left flank, where the dragoons went out to go through the Culwhinniac Enclosure. In a couple of weeks’ time, we’ll be going to look at an area closer into the concentration of the fighting actually took place.

[JB]
Is that how you determine who was where, by the nature of the armaments? How does it work?

[DA]
There’s a bit of that, but Culloden is one of these battles that we’re very blessed with in terms of having multiple varieties of battlefield maps drawn at the time that pretty much show where individual regiments were, and we can start to play about with how they would have moved over the course of the battle. There are a couple of points that you can fix them in the landscape. We know where the edge of one of the enclosures were – the Culwhinniac enclosure formed the right-hand flank of the Jacobites as they lined up. We know approximately where the Culloden Parks were. That was the line when the Jacobites march out from their camp, they’re in columns and they march out onto the battlefield and they just take up a line onto that and then they turn and face the government troops as they’re coming forward. So, we know where those places are.

We know that they were actually set up slightly obliquely. A lot of these maps shows them as being like that, parallel. But because one side had moved forward to take cover of some stone dykes on the right-hand flank, that actually obliquely shifted the whole line, which meant the right-hand side of the Jacobites was closer to the government troops. [Much closer] They had less ground to cover. That’s the side of Jacobites that actually managed to engage, but they take such a beating because of the close musketry and cannon fire and then the second line coming in, that the other side of the line doesn’t actually reach. The left-hand flank of the Jacobites – the Macdonalds – get so far, let off a few volleys – but in fact by the time they’re over there, the right-hand side is already being repulsed. When you see that happening, there’s no way you’re going forward, so you start coming back yourself.

[JB]
Why such a bad choice of location, as we’ve heard, that did not play to their strengths?

[AM]
Well, one of the good things about Culloden is that in addition to the maps there’s also lots of written record. But it doesn’t always tally. People have different views of why what happened, happened. George Murray was in no doubt that the ground was wrong and they shouldn’t have fought in that place. Colonel John O’Sullivan, who was the Irish advisor to Prince Charles, he wanted to fight somewhere else – behind the visitor centre in the car park!

[JB]
Let’s hide behind that visitor centre!

[AM]
The car park was good ground! But nevertheless, there was lots and lots of dispute. The difficulty was that also, crucially, when the government army start this cannonade, there’s a kind of operational paralysis. They don’t do anything. Prince Charles doesn’t give an order to charge and when he does, the young man who had the order, had his head blown off with a cannonball. That’s why Colonel Harry Kerr is riding up and down the line, and the MacDonald regiments who are out on the left are 700 yards away? A long way away. And there’s bog between them. So, the government army is like that … and the Highlanders are like that. The Camerons are on the right and much closer, and so Kerr rides to try to get them to charge in echelon. He starts with the Macdonald regiments, who are insulted to be there on the left – that was a disaster for them, and their chiefs were not happy.

[JB]
Why?

[AM]
Because the place of honour is on the right. When the Clan Cameron, judged the bravest of the clans, they charge and despite the canister shot ploughing lanes through them, they actually break the first line. They break through, which is extraordinary. The second line, which was some distance away – you think 100 yards?

[DA]
Probably 100 yards because they have to leave enough room to manoeuvre that entire regiment, which is about 80 metres long.

[JB]
Even though we’re talking about the extraordinary bravery of the clansmen, they were not always well served by their commanders. There’s something in your book that George Murray was regarded, perhaps until then, as a great strategist. You wrote that someone had written at the time ‘if Prince Charles had fallen asleep for a year after the muster at Glenfinnan, he would have awakened with a crown on his head if it had all been left to Lord George Murray.’ So, Prince Charles didn’t cover himself in glory.

[AM]
He didn’t, and I agree with that estimate. Murray, I think was the outstanding strategic mind. He didn’t want to fight; he wanted the Jacobites to control the whole of Scotland because his judgement was that the Seven Years War that was taking place in Europe would soak up so much government material as well as men that they could hold Scotland, that they could do that. Prince Charles – I don’t believe that he was as feckless as he may appear. He was clearly a charismatic young man; he was only 24. He comes with one ship, drops anchor off Eriskay and he’s got seven old men with him and a few Clanranald soldiers. He comes to Glenfinnan and there’s nobody there! It looks like a disaster until the Camerons come. He’s clearly got charisma; he’s clearly got something about him. There’s no question in my mind about that, at the beginning.

[JB]
But he was no battle strategist.

[AM]
He was no battle strategist; I think he was an inspirer of men. I think he did that. For goodness sake, they got to Derby within 120 miles of London – that was an amazing achievement. Prestonpans sent a shiver of shock through Britain, that these primitive savages with their swords whirling above their heads could cut to pieces a government army in 10 minutes. Everybody thought ‘my god, what’s coming’?
But of course, in the Council of War (let’s call it that) the clan chiefs had different views; Murray and O’Sullivan were generally at daggers drawn; and so on. It was not a unified command, I don’t think. I think that’s the import of what you just quoted, Jackie. If Murray had seriously been in charge, with total control, yes I think it could have gone differently.

[DA]
But then the big issue with that is that you can’t plan for the unexpected. The night march went wrong. The surprise attack didn’t happen. They were tired …

[JB]
They got back, they hadn’t slept, they hadn’t eaten …

[DA]
They didn’t expect the government army to be coming so quickly. That’s war; that’s the nature of warfare. No matter how well you plan, there’s going to be things you’re not expecting. Actually, the ground at Culloden, they actually had their flanks pretty secure. If they’d held the right flank and stopped the government dragoons getting through the walls of the enclosure – there was a bit of debate about who was going to defend that side, it seems to have fallen through. If that had been held, they’d have had more of a chance.

[JB]
What about your methods? You mentioned earlier metal detectors, which sounds a very 20th-century tool [yeah!] – is that still the best?

[DA]
You know what? It is for battlefield archaeology because what you’re doing is you’re plotting concentrations of munitions and that tells you roughly where people were standing. What we have been using for modelling the terrain is LiDAR – laser scanning from Bourne’s Survey. That gives us a 3D model of the landscape, and the landscape is a key thing in the understanding of the Battle of Culloden in what you can see. It’s on a ridge. The guys on the left can’t see the guys on the right. They guys going through the enclosures can’t see folk, so they don’t know they’re being out-flanked on the right flank, the Jacobites, because they can’t see over that side. So, when you’ve got cavalry suddenly appearing in your rear, that sends a shiver through everybody. When that happens, you know … You can hold it off for so long but then it starts to go downhill quite rapidly from there.

[JB]
Do we know everything there is to know at this stage about the weaponry, about the injuries?

[AM]
Yes, I think there’s a good deal of information about that. Most Highlanders, as Derek was saying, you see shot fired on both sides. Many of them did have firearms although they were not their primary weapons. If a Highlander was right-handed, he would have a targe, which was not much bigger than these books. A shield, and a dirk, and his sword in his right hand. The targe was for parrying. It wasn’t for protecting your whole body like a legionary’s shield. If you were facing a bayonet, or ranks of bayonets, you knocked them up. The way the Highlanders charged was called ag dul scios, which means ‘going down’ because they ran at an angle. Also to avoid musketeers, because they tended to fire high, and so they wanted to avoid the musket balls. They were ready to knock up a bayonet and thrust – that was how it worked. That’s why the wedges were successful because they were able to get through one rank. If you got through one, momentum was everything. Absolutely everything.

Again, at Tippermuir for example, outside Perth, they broke through in many places. Alistair McCulloch’s Irish Brigade in particular broke through in many places. The Covenanter army commander, Lord Elcho, just froze because it was all falling apart. When that happened, it was all over. But at Culloden, the impression I have is that it all got bogged down. It wasn’t dynamic; there was no momentum. Although the Camerons broke through, James Wolfe, of Plains of Abraham fame, closed it up with Barrel’s Regiment.

[DA]
He comes in from the second line.

[AM]
That’s right. There’s a very very good description of that and how they did it. What happened at Culloden was the ferocity and the elan of the clans was cancelled by the terrain, by their exhaustion as you said – they were hungry and tired – but also countered by really terrific discipline.

[JB]
Derek, it seems unbelievable almost that such an important battle in Scottish and British history – global some say because of the ramifications had it gone the other way – such an important site is under threat. It’s constantly under threat.

[DA]
It appears to be constantly under threat. We’ve managed to check quite a few developments over time. There have been some house sites that have been built round some of the farmsteads and things that are there in the 19th century. Of course, it’s an ever-evolving landscape and it changed from 1746 onwards. Things were knocked down. The Culloden Parks were removed and are no longer visible. Parts of the turf dykes that formed the Culwhinniac enclosure have been ploughed flat, and we’ve actually rebuilt parts of those so people can fix themselves in the landscape again. We’ve had roads going through and things moved. Landscapes will always change.

The threats are real, but I would say Culloden is one of the better-protected battlefields in Scotland, probably because we know so much about it. We know very much where individual elements of it happened. As soon as you draw a line round anything on a map, there’s always a boundary and something close to the edge; there’s something you’ll see from the viewpoint. One of the things about Culloden is its sense of place. I think the biggest threat to Culloden is an impact on the feeling that you get when you go there. That open landscape, the wind blowing – if you go there in April and you’re on your own, it’s ‘wow, this is some place’.

[JB]
I interviewed Diana Gabaldon recently, the author of the phenomenally successful Outlander, who was moved to tears by just describing being there.
Let’s end where we started, Alistair. You said in the book’s introduction that you wanted to understand the warriors and where that much-feared courage had come from. What did you discover at the end of your journey?

[AM]
I think what I found was that these warriors in the 17th and 18th century were amongst the most feared in Europe. They almost toppled the British state; that is something that needs to be remembered. This was seismic; and Culloden, as you were saying earlier Jackie, was a place where history turned. There’s no question about that.

What I found – you try and put yourself in the position of both sides – in terms of the Highlanders, it was kinship, it was the sense of the past, and so on. But it was also the belief that you were with people who would protect you as well as fight alongside you. That’s not necessarily the case in many armies. I think that was the main thing. The other thing that was clear to me was the Culloden really was … I’m always suspicious about stories that talk about turning points, but Culloden was; there’s no doubt. It was followed by a genocide. It was followed by mass theft, rape – all sorts of dreadful things went on in the summer of 1746, but most of all people began to leave. They began to depart. The theme of Highland history after 1746 was departure, and Culloden was the huge stimulus in that. There were many other factors but that was a huge and dramatic moment in Highland history. That blasted heath, that empty place is more than a metaphor; it’s how the landscape began to look after April 1746.

[JB]
How evocative. Thanks to Alistair Moffat, whose book War Paths is out now, and to Derek Alexander who’ll continue to dig deep into Scotland’s history for the Trust. And thanks to you all for listening, whether it’s here in Aberdeen or through the Love Scotland podcast.

As you may already know, Culloden Moor is under threat from increased planning applications. The National Trust for Scotland has launched a Fighting Fund to help push against insensitive developments. It allows the Trust to continue to protect this hugely significant site, so if you’d like to support the Fighting Fund, you can do so at nts.org.uk/donate or by texting CULLODEN to 70970, which will donate £5. You can find out more information on the Fighting Fund by clicking the link on the online details for this episode.

We’re going to finish with some more music – a haunting song that perhaps best captures the poignant end of those daring Jacobite campaigns. My thanks to Iona Fyfe, who will take us out with ‘The Skye Boat Song’.
From all of us here, goodbye.

[Iona sings ‘The Skye Boat Song’]

[Applause]

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird.
For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

After the Trust’s AGM in September 2023, Jackie recorded the first episode of Season 7 in front of a live audience of National Trust for Scotland members in Aberdeen. Two of the nation’s foremost experts on battles joined Jackie on stage to discuss some of the most significant conflicts in Scotland as well as the people who fought in them.

Alistair Moffat is an award-winning writer and historian whose new book, War Paths: Walking in the Shadows of the Clans, follows in the footsteps of Jacobite fighters and leaders from 1613 until 1746. Derek Alexander is the National Trust for Scotland’s Head of Archaeology.

Their discussion covers the importance of the Highland charge, the two main Jacobite campaigns, and the battles of Killiecrankie and Culloden. Former BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year finalist Iona Fyfe provides some musical interludes inspired by these battles.

This podcast was first released in October 2023.

Six places that show Scotland’s global impact

A green title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Six places that show Scotland's global impact | Jackie is joined in the studio by Professor Murray Pittock
A green title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Six places that show Scotland's global impact | Jackie is joined in the studio by Professor Murray Pittock

Season 5 Episode 8

Transcript

Three speakers: Murray Pittock [MP]; Jackie Bird [JB]; male voiceover [MV]

[MP]
As long as he is in office, the Scotch may beget younger sons with a most perfect impunity. He sends them by loads to the East Indies and all over the world. 

[JB]
An observation there by the Reverend Sydney Smith, an 18th-century writer and wit, summing up the peripatetic and opportunistic ways of Scots abroad at the time. Or, how about this unattributed observation from around the same era.

[MP]
No man of any other nation can serve and survive in an Indian Province where the chief is a Scot and where there is a Scot to be found. 

[JB]
Well said! I will reveal that voiceover artist in a moment, but first hello, and welcome to the Love Scotland podcast. And today we are on our travels. The history of Scots who made their mark across the globe is as fascinating as it is remarkable for such a small country. From notables like Alexander Chalmers, the mayor of Gdansk in the 17th century, and Duncan Stewart, the president of Uruguay in the 19th century, through the many thousands of Scots who innovated and advanced but who also colonised and exploited, their stories and more are brought together in an engaging book: Scotland: The Global History: 1603 to the Present, written by one of our leading historians: University of Glasgow’s Murray Pittock, who is my guest and voiceover artist today. Hello, Murray.

[MP]
Hello, Jackie. 

[JB]
It’s nice to have something to fall back on. That’s a whole new career, should this history business not actually work out. 

[MP]
That’s really good to know. It’s always nice to be able to moonlight.

[JB]
Now, those quotes, so beautifully read, are from your book, which I say genuinely is a great read. Why firstly write about Scots from this global perspective?

[MP]
Because Scotland has always been a Scotland and culture, and it’s always been at its best as ‘Scotland and’. When it’s prevented from being ‘Scotland and’ or is too inward-looking, it actually performs less well than it does at its maximum capacity. So, in a way, the global history of Scotland is the history of Scotland that matters to the world, and it’s the best reason for Scotland to matter to the world. And at times, it seems that Scotland is too bound up in itself.
So, that’s why the history was written. It was originally pitched to me as a request to do a history of Scotland. I said: you have got enough of those; what you need is this. 

[JB]
The difficulty here, Murray, is trying to reflect a story of such scope and scale. You came up with the idea of linking key moments to six National Trust for Scotland places. Now, this is a canny move because you are on the Board of the Trust – huge brownie points there. But, and this has to be asked, are you shoehorning them in?

[MP]
They do tell a significant number of the stories in the global history. I also spoke to NTSUSA last autumn with a number of sites, some of which were the same as these and some of which were different. Actually, across the NTS, a huge number of our sites tell stories connected with Scotland’s global history.

[JB]
Well, before we hear about the places, were Scots abroad disproportionately successful for our size and scale? 

[MP]
The short answer and the long answer is yes, it was the case. And it’s linked to the fact that Scotland has always had to project itself abroad, going back centuries. For example, Scots wanted to import luxuries, but they didn’t have that many luxuries to export. So, one of the things that Scots merchants did was to start to control the export industry of other countries into Scotland – whether at the staple port at Veere or whether the Scots dominated trading ports in the Baltic and Norway – and control their own export trade from those countries.
But also, Scotland very early on crystallised regionally, and regionally linked to institutions – from the cathedrals to the cathedral schools, which became the burgh grammar schools; from the burgh grammar schools to the ancient universities. The fact that Scotland’s major cities in 1500 are still its major cities today; there hasn’t been a vast switch in league tables as you would have in many other countries, not least England. All of those things crystallised very strong regional networks, linked to relations but also linked to associations just as much as relations – associations of place, of education, of institution. Those helped Scotland network itself into the world.

[JB]
We will definitely talk about that networking later, but I think another telling quote from your book says Scots were regarded both by others and themselves as having the ability to negotiate satisfactorily with native peoples, due to a chameleon-like ability to adapt to local circumstances. That was our skill as well, wasn’t it?

[MP]
Absolutely. That goes back to that need to adapt in order to control, because that was adapting to, for example, the society of the Netherlands or the Baltic or the Holy Roman Empire. It was all part of what Scots did so that they could better exercise control in it. And that capability to be somebody else or to be ‘Scotland and’, if you like, instantly transferred itself. There are quite a number of individual cases from, for example, the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, to the English East India Company.
So, from the continental engagement to the British Empire was, for many Scots, a very short step.

[JB]
Your first place is Culloden. Why is that significant as part of a global history?

[MP]
Well, I have to choose Culloden because it’s the most visited battle site in the UK, because it is central to the direction in which Scotland and the British Empire went.
It’s a decisive battle in the history of the world, not so much what happened on the moor that day but the defeat of the Jacobite cause was necessary for the development of the British Empire. We often see today adaptations of the Napoleonic Wars or World War I and II, where everything is dominated by English voices, but the proportion of Scottish and Irish troops in the British army from the mid-1750s onwards in many of these theatres was enormous, disproportionate and dominant. 
If the Jacobites had won, there would not have been the face-off, the Seven Years War, arguably the first world war, which led to the British Empire emerging as top nation. There would have been more of a stand-off with France. The American colonies would not have been able to rely on themselves to rebel in 1775 because of the presence of such large numbers of French troops in Canada, as well as elsewhere in North America, and a Catholic power on their doorstep.
If France had not overextended itself in the way it did in the Seven Years War – the 1776–83 War – then they would have been better able to cope with the agricultural bad years of the 1780s. And there probably would have been no French Revolution, in which case there’s no Napoleon. 

[JB]
Good grief. It’s a whole parallel universe, isn’t it? It’s extraordinary. 

[MP]
Victory for the British army at Culloden at the end of the Jacobite rising of 1745 changed the world, or could have been seen to change the world, that much because the critical issue was whether there would be a stand-off with France or a winner-takes-all final battle – and it was the latter.

[JB]
One of the key parts of that, as you mention, was the demilitarisation after Culloden, and then the remilitarisation that resulted in such a Scots force within the British army.

[MP]
That’s right. One of the interesting things that happened after Culloden, in the aftermath, is that a lot of negotiations of military and civil policy flow from that, because there was a really intense desire for the military to treat this as a colonial situation, and an intense understanding for the politicians that you couldn’t, as they wished, deport entire populations because they were not found guilty of any crime. And because of the Union, they were British citizens and all the rest of it.

[JB]
But they actually considered it, didn’t they? They considered deporting the clans.

[MP]
They did, or large numbers of them did. They got very frustrated that they couldn’t do it. And one of the outcomes of that was the deportation of the Acadian French Canadians in 1755 – le grand dérangement it’s called – in 1755–56.
The population movement, and the expulsion of large numbers of those people from Nova Scotia and elsewhere, in order to preserve a more anglophone and Protestant colonial situation was the application, as Cumberland himself said, I wish we had been able to do this in Lochaber.

[JB]
Move on to your second choice: The Pineapple. Now, for people listening who don’t know what on earth the Pineapple is, do you want to describe it or shall I? Go on, it’s your choice!

[MP]
The Pineapple is an absolutely wonderful piece of 18th-century stonework, which is partly a folly and partly an expression of the delight in what was the power fruit of Scotland in the 18th century. Often pineapples were put in the middle of dining tables and left there – not for eating but actually for show – until they fell apart, rather like pigs’ heads were at banquets. They were a leitmotif of Scottish power and authority, and the rank of a noble house.
So, for example, Charles Edward Stuart, though he’d grown up in Italy, he ate his first pineapple at Blair in Atholl. We could get pineapples. And this pineapple – a stone pineapple – I’m sure he had many of the real ones too – is in the house and property of John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, who began as page to Charles Edward Stuart in 1745 and then became a British imperial servant – Governor of New York, Virginia and then the Bahamas. 

[JB]
So, the Pineapple, which is in Airth, takes us ostensibly to the American colonies and tells us a lot about it. I suppose John Murray, he followed that usual route, almost a template, for wealthy well-connected Scots at that time we’re talking about. When was he born? Around the 1730s, is that right?

[MP]
1731.

[JB]
So, military, good marriage, inherited title, networking and sent off by his pals for a cushy number in America … or not, as it turned out to be at the wrong time, just as the Americans were revolting.

[MP]
Absolutely, but he was very innovative, because in 1775 as war loomed, he made an offer of emancipation and he invited any black enslaved persons to leave their ‘Patriot’ masters, those to whom they were enslaved, to create the Ethiopian Regiment in the service of the British Crown. First of all, just the private soldiers were black, and the officers and NCOs were British Army but eventually some of the NCOs became black as well. It was the first in the series of black loyalist regiments, who supported the Crown in the war with what became the United States of America in 1783. 

[JB]
Was this forward thinking in terms of emancipation or just born out of necessity?

[MP]
Well, it’s quite hard to tell with Murray, but he was responsible for the design of the uniforms. The desire of the uniform wore the sash ‘Liberty to slaves’; and everybody who served, served on the promise of emancipation on the conclusion of their service. And after the war, some 4,000 black servicemen in the British army were resettled in Nova Scotia alone, as a consequence of them being effectively outlawed by the victory of the United States. So, they were given refuge and citizenship in the North American colonies, Canada – what was to be Canada – that remained with the British Empire.

[JB]
And what happened to the Earl of Dunmore? Was he forced home?

[MP]
Well, he was forced out of his role as Governor of Virginia, but then he was nominated to be Governor of the Bahamas. And that’s very much a slave society and a slave culture. So, we can’t be too nice to John Murray, Earl of Dunmore. But that was a major role in the 18th century because of the wealth being produced off the backs of enslaved people in the Caribbean. It wasn’t just a rest home for a former Ambassador or something, as it might have been in more recent years. It was a major job itself, and he discharged that well. He died at nearly 80 in the early 19th century. 

[JB]
The Pineapple and the connection there also talks to us of the incredible Scots success in America. Another fact from your book is that, post-18th century in the emerging US, 25% of university-educated men coming to America had attended Edinburgh, Glasgow or the two Aberdeen universities. That is astonishing! 

[MP]
It underpinned the fact that the American university curriculum is still based on the Scottish university curriculum. The Scottish universities taught rhetoric in the 18th century and they didn’t by the end of the 19th, but by that time it was being taught in the United States. They still have the pattern of Scottish traditional higher education, which is to do the General Degree first and then to do law.

[JB]
That Scottish influence also fed into the Declaration of Independence. Again, forgive me, I’m quoting your book back at you, but I just find all these facts astonishing – that half of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence were of Scottish descent.

[MP]
They were very strongly influenced by not only Scottish 18th-century philosophy, but arguably by the much older Declaration of Arbroath. Some of the arguments over what rights the state should have, which were discussed by John Witherspoon, who was one of the signatories of the Declaration, were really about how they shouldn’t replicate the situation in the Anglo-Scottish union. And the states should have embedded rights, so that there would be some guarantee that the states would have a say in the Constitution of the United States.
So, all those strands, which ultimately derived from Scotland, came together. 

[JB]
Let’s squeeze in your third choice, just before the break. It’s actually two locations: The Hermitage and Dunkeld, and the island of Staffa. What is their global significance?

[MP]
The global significance is linked to James Macpherson, who wrote or adapted the Ossian poems Fingal and Temora in the early 1760s, which became central to the development of European Romanticism and began the global reception of the Scottish brand, as we now have it.
One of the things that it’s really important to remember in this period: this is the period of the Seven Years War, 1756–63. In that war, where about a million men are killed … 

[JB]
So, it was a huge conflict, it was a global conflict. All the great powers of Europe were involved.

[MP]
Yes. They were involved in the American theatre; they were involved in the Indian theatre; they were involved right across the globe. It is a world war. 
And in that war, for the first time, the term nostalgia appears, where people want to remember better times. What Macpherson did was he created a myth of Scottish warrior ancestry, which was meant to be an evocation of Celtic Scotland of long ago, but actually was suffused with nostalgia and sentiment to allow it to become a kind of receptacle for memories of heroism in war celebrated in peace. You might call it almost its own remembrance service. It caught on right across Europe.
Now, the Hermitage, which was originally built in 1757 by James Murray who is one of the officers involved in the British army occupation of Scotland, became transmuted in 1782 into Ossian’s Hall. So, it became fictionalised as the hall of Macpherson’s Ossian 26 years later, which was just about 10 years after Fingal’s Cave – the hero of Ossian Fingal – had been identified in Staffa for effectively the first time.
In other words, the landscape that the Hermitage came to represent, and that visitors come to Staffa for, is a mythical landscape of the 18th century. Macpherson’s influence translated into German, translated into Russian – discussed by two Russian generals the day before the Battle of Borodino. Napoleon slept with Ossian under his pillow, and Ossian gave rise to the 19th-century European nationalist epics like the invented Finnish epic, the Kalevala, and De Hollandse, the Dutch epic of ancient derring-do of their lands of long ago. All of these things derive from Macpherson’s text, which is really about uniting Celtic Scotland with the memory of a now-victorious Britain but allowing Scotland its place in the sun.

[JB]
I feel like this podcast is a bit of a cross between Room 101 and Desert Island Discs! So, I will give you the Hermitage and I will give you Staffa and I will give you Ossian. Well, let’s take a break from our travels around the global history of Scotland with Professor Murray Pittock.
And when we come back, we will be talking about a man whose reputation still stretches far and wide – that of Robert Burns.

[MV]
Scotland’s history: think battlefields, think castles, think great glens and historic homes. But think tenements too, and townhouses, and doocots, mills and humble cottages. The National Trust for Scotland works hard all year round to safeguard the stories of all sorts of Scots for future generations to enjoy.
They do it for the love of Scotland and you can play your part too. Just head to nts.org.uk/donate

[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. Before the break, we were hearing of the poetry purported to come from a 3rd-century bard. We now have The Bard: Robert Burns. The place is Burns Birthplace in Ayr. Professor Murray Pittock, I think I already know that Burns is a global phenomenon. The question is why? 

[MP]
Well, Burns is a global phenomenon for different reasons. He’s a global phenomenon in Europe because his reputation took off very early on in Germany, because he was seen as doing two things – he both was a one-stop-shop for the folk tradition … Germans were very interested in the folk tradition; the Grimm Brothers were collecting their tales and so on. Suddenly, this wasn’t a vast heap of all material. It was one writer. You could get it all through him, so he is a one-stop-shop. He’s also the poet of universal progressive poetry, as Schlegel and the other German idealist would have put it. He’s somebody who represents radical modernity and also the folk tradition. So, that’s Europe. 
In America, he becomes somebody who shows that American values still mattered in Europe and that there were Americans, or spiritual Americans, in Europe. Burns was their great poet, their avatar. 
And in the British Empire, he was used as a means of Scots networking. That doesn’t exhaust matters, but those cover the major three areas. 

[JB]
Was Burns premeditated in this? Did he know that the themes within his work could be perceived in different ways?

[MP]
If you read the poetry, when he seems to be committed to things, he’s largely committed to the sentiments that underpin the views you think he has, which is one of the reasons that Burns is used by nationalists, he’s used by socialists and he’s used by conservatives – because it’s about feeling and sentiment; it’s not actually about commitment. He looks as if he’s committed, but actually there isn’t a great deal of commitment to women, to politics, to anything in the poetry. But what there is is the supreme expression of the sentiments that we associate with that commitment. And that’s why he was able to have a universal influence of different kinds.

[JB]
So, you pays your money and you takes your choice. You have a long list in your book of how his writings and his poetry is used. Can you give us some of the examples?

[MP]
‘Auld Lang Syne’ first crosses the Atlantic to be sung at a Burns Supper in Philadelphia, has become a New Year song by 1822, is associated with Royal Naval ships leaving port by the 19th century, is played at the exit of the British administration from Hong Kong in 1997, is played at closing time in Japanese supermarkets and pubs today, and is played at funerals in Taiwan. It is a song with an absolutely global footprint, of course popularised by Guy Lombardo in 1929 as a New Year song. Hollywood is full of it, not least in rom-coms from When Harry met Sally to Sex and the City, and it became a Christmas song in Hollywood too from It’s a Wonderful Life in 1946 onwards.
So, it’s become a global song, and if you think about it – I mean in When Harry met Sally, the question is what’s the song about? I never knew what the song’s about. That’s a very good question. What is this song about? It’s about sentiment and it’s not actually about any solution to the losses it invokes – only the sentiment of good fellowship and old times. 

[JB]
And that ties in with that ambiguity that you were talking about – Burns’s great skill. Got it. Burns’s global significance: easy one. Next, Mar Lodge in the heart of the Cairngorms. Why include this one?

[MP]
Mar Lodge is one of the few places, which is readily available or accessible in the UK, which has got nearly 2,400 stags’ heads in the ballroom. It has got the full panoply of Victorian hunting of the deer, which is such a critical part of the representation of Scotland and what you can enjoy in Scotland in the British Empire in the 19th century. By the mid-/late 1890s, some 10% of Scottish land was deer forest. There were reports on land use, on the overuse of Scottish land for deer.
The symbolism – very popular of the deer hunt at Balmoral, very popular at Mar Lodge, where of course, HRH Princess Louise, the Princess Royal, was the wife of the Duke of Fife and it’s built for them both in 1895 – but also typified in Landseer’s The Monarch of the Glen, The Deerhound, The Deer Hunt – the natural conflict between animals and Scottish life, which was seen to be part of the earthbound, original savagery, and life of Scotland. Brutal – a place of life and death, of superstition, of hunts, surviving animals and their conflicts, symbolising something about the martial nature of Scotland and Scottish society and particularly Scottish men itself.

[JV]
But it’s also a romanticisation of a Scotland. And why has that romanticisation travelled around the world? There are other equally beautiful places. I’m sure that’s not heresy. Why Scotland?

[MP]
Scotland, because the reinforcement of its global image happened in several ways. It happened through Macpherson’s Ossian. It happened through the footprint of Burns and particularly of Walter Scott, who provided for the first time a historical model, which could be mapped onto and was mapped onto other countries and cultures, facing what they perceived to be similar problems and conflicts. 
It was mapped through the distribution of tartan, which once the rebel cloth of the Jacobites, absorbed into the British army became part of the visualisation of the military and Scot family by the 19th century. Interestingly, it became absorbed into the Paris fashion season in the 1820s because the majority of troops, or a large proportion of the troops, sent to occupy Paris after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo were Scots. There are numerous contemporary cartoons of how interesting the Parisian ladies found men in kilts.

[JB]
Hmm. Of course they did, they’re only human! But in terms of that romanticisation and what in a previous podcast was described as Highlandism – the irony of a small part of the north of Scotland, that was perceived to have been filled with savages and menacing countryside, became romantic. You must visit. And it just became such a strong brand.

[MP]
Well, it did, but one of the things about that is that where the Highlands begin and end is something that no two Scots tend to absolutely agree on, which is very interesting in itself because the Highlands and Scotland were elided depending on your political and cultural viewpoint.
Many times in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, it’s difficult to know where the Highlands begin. And so, they could stand in for the whole country very easily, and often did. If you look at British military maps of the 18th century, they tend to exaggerate the contours because no matter how small the Lammermuirs might be in Scottish terms, if you happen to come from Shropshire they’re enormous!
There is once again an ambiguity which allows Scottish Highlands to stand in for Scotland easily and readily because there isn’t really a foreign border between them. 

[JB]
Your final choice: Broughton House, the home of Edward Atkinson Hornel, the artist. It’s in Kirkcudbright. Take it away.

[MP]
There are two reasons why I’ve chosen this. The first is that it is Hornel’s Japanese garden, and the house itself. The Japanese garden has been a Scottish staple. Some of the most developed Japanese gardens outside Japan are in Scotland. There’s a similarity in climate and there was also a very strong influence which came through the universities and the university botanic gardens. It came partly through two routes, both of which ultimately came from one man, Thomas Blake Glover whose house in Nagasaki attracts some 2 million visitors a year in Japan. So, he’s better remembered there than here, that’s for sure. And he was a critical part of the formation of modern Japan.
Then, perhaps the piece de résistance is, because of the connection with Glasgow in particular, the 1903 Barr & Stroud – Archibald Barr was Regis Professor of Civil Engineering, and he’d set up his spin-out company, which was Barr & Stroud. The spin-out company developed various pieces of naval technology; one of them was the rangefinder. The latest model range finder, the FA3, they introduced in late 1903 after satisfactory testing. It was ordered almost immediately by Admiral Tōgō, who is Glover’s friend, for the Japanese Navy, and it sank the Russian Pacific fleet at the Battle of Tsushima Straits in early 1905 because it could sight guns to more than 5,000 metres. That connection with shipping, with naval technology, is also a connection with the great shipping families as well as the professoreate of Glasgow.
Not least Sir William Burrell. And it was Burrell who financed the Hornel trip to Japan, where Hornel first encountered Japanese art in the 1880s. 

[JB]
Your book tells stories of exploration, of innovation and advancement, but as I said in the introduction, also of colonisation and exploitation. I suppose today, the ongoing question is how we reconcile both sides of that story?

[MP]
That is, of course, a very big question. I think you have to be aware of both sides, or all aspects, of the story. We have to be aware of what it was that drove Scots out into the world and what made them succeed there, and the price that they made other people pay for being there too. Sometimes, that was extraordinarily cynical.
There’s a double-mindedness about Scot servants of Empire, where they know they’re playing a game. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.

[JB]
Well, there were actions down the centuries not to be proud of certainly, but let’s end with a quote from your book: Scotland’s intellectual elite made a disproportionate contribution to British power, innovation and dynamism, which has never been surpassed. 

[MP]
I think that’s a very fair assessment. It’s an enormous global footprint for a country which even now is no more than 5.5 million people.

[JB]
Well, a thumping great read that. Scotland: The Global History: 1603 to the Present by Professor Murray Pittock. Murray, thank you so much for giving us your global tour.

[MP]
Thank you, Jackie! 

[JB]
And if you’d like to visit any of the locations we’ve talked about, all the details are on the website. That’s also where you can donate to help the Trust care for and protect those places. You can find it all at nts.org.uk
I hope you’ve enjoyed this podcast. You can listen anytime for free, or subscribe to the series for free and never miss an episode. Just press that follow button. Until next time, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Professor Murray Pittock joins Jackie to discuss some of the Scottish places that have had the biggest influence on global history. From Culloden to Robert Burns’s birthplace, the episode charts moments of great cultural, political and military importance.

Professor Murray Pittock’s book, Scotland: The Global History: 1603 to the Present, is available now.

This podcast was first released in April 2023.

Clans: from kinship to capitalism (Part 2)

A navy and purple title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Clans: from kinship to capitalism | The second part of our look at the story of Scottish clans with Sir Tom Devine.
A navy and purple title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Clans: from kinship to capitalism | The second part of our look at the story of Scottish clans with Sir Tom Devine.

Season 5 Episode 2

Transcript

Three voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Tom Devine [TD]

[MV]
Love Scotland – brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
‘Upon Thursday, the day after the battle, a party was ordered to the field of battle, to put to death all the wounded they should find upon it. Which accordingly they performed with the greatest despatch and the utmost exactness, carrying the wounded from several parts of the field, where they arranged them in due order and instantly shot them dead.’

Those chilling words are from an eye-witness account of the aftermath of the battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle to be fought on British soil, in 1746. This civil war pitted clan against clan, and even brother against brother. Today, visitors to the battlefield, which is in the care of the Trust, can see stones commemorating the fallen and their proud clan allegiances. Its outcome was to change a way of life that had existed in Scotland for centuries.
Welcome to the Love Scotland podcast, and to the second part of the history of the Scottish clans. I’m pleased to say that I’m joined once again by Sir Tom Devine, Professor Emeritus of Scottish History at Edinburgh University. Welcome, Tom. Are you ready for our next epic leap into clan history?

[TD]
I’m absolutely frantic to get started.

[JB]
In the last episode, we ended at a bloody point in clan history: the Massacre of Glencoe. However, as we’ve just heard, there was more violence to come. So, in terms of the clans, how do we get from the massacre in 1692 to Culloden?

[TD]

The storyline of course, the historical line, is bound up with the history of support or opposition to Jacobitism – that is the restoration of the Stuarts. Because the Massacre of Glencoe was bound up with an attempt to destroy Jacobitism at Glencoe. And the final battle you just referred to, Culloden, was the final stand of the Jacobite forces against the new regime of Hanoverianism, the new regime of Protestantism, Presbyterianism if you will. So, that is the linkage. Let’s not forget that between 1692 (the first Jacobite rising) and the final one in 1745/6, there were no less than four others between the two. In other words, five all together.

[JB]
So, what part were the clans playing in these uprisings, in terms of the division of their loyalties?

[TD]
They were on both sides. The classic example again is the Campbells, who were root-and-branch committed to the Hanoverian state; their whole fortunes were locked up in that loyalty. On the other extreme, you have clans who were pro-Jacobite in their allegiances. But, the thing to bear in mind is the numbers of people on both sides who actually came out during those Risings varied enormously. Because the Jacobite leaders, the clan chiefs for example who had loyalties to the Jacobite cause because of James VII and II, they had to calculate every time the opportunity occurred – is this now the best opportunity available? Should we throw our weight behind this? Because remember for failure, and if they were caught, they were going to experience the terrible death in English treason law of a traitor.

[JB]
Is it possible to tell how many clans there were? We’re talking early 1700s.

[TD]
We’re talking somewhere in the order of – because you obviously have cadet branches of clans – but I would say between 45 to 50 at that particular period.

[JB]
Was this peak clan, or post-peak clan?

[TD]
In my view at least, between 1707 and the last Jacobite Rising, you’re beginning to see aspects of clanship fading away. The most important one is chiefs are already in the process of limiting their connections with their people and becoming more interested in a materialistic way of life, perhaps even sometimes in Edinburgh or London.

[JB]
Yes. Mentioning Edinburgh, because we’re talking a lot about the Highlands here, but the density of population was even then still the Central Belt. What interaction, if any, did they have with the clans? Did they know that this existed up there?

[TD]
Of course. Right down to the mid-18th century, there was a great fear in Lowland Scotland of Highland clanship and indeed of the Highland population. They were regarded as thieves and demons who wanted, above everything else, to steal cattle in the fringes of the Lowlands. Plus, it was the last part of Scotland where there was still a Catholic minority in certain parts of the Highlands. I mean, Charles Edward Stuart was known in the folklore of the rebellion of 1745/6 as the ‘limb of Satan’ – Satan of course being the pope. And of course, Episcopalianism, ruled by bishops, was also in conflict with Presbyterianism.

[JB]
What effect did the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 have on the clans?

[TD]
It helped for example to increase commercial traffic and trade between the Highlands and the Lowlands, especially the cattle trade. Because, as the Union allowed for more opportunity into the English market and to sell beef for the Royal Navy’s salt beef, that also became very important. The whole of Scotland was affected by this. There was one very interesting aspect to it, however: Jacobite clans opposed the Union because they thought the Union, if it succeeded, would strengthen the anti-Jacobite cause, would strengthen the position of those who had evicted the Jacobite king in the late 17th century.

[JB]
And on the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the last of the Stuarts, what effect did that have on the clans?

[TD]
Well, of course it made it more imperative and pressing for those who continued to hope for a Jacobite counter-revolution to try to ensure that the remaining kinspeople of the Stuarts in exile in Europe, would eventually come back and succeed. And that would be their only hope of a Jacobite counter-revolution. There were still people who could be potential figureheads for a pro-Stuart movement living in exile.

[JB]
So, power was shifting as far as the pro-Jacobite clans were concerned. And they had to make a big move, perhaps their final move – and this takes us of course to 1745.

[TD]
One of the questions about the ’45 is why, more than 40/50 years after the Stuarts lost their crown in Scotland, why was that still something that many clans – and not simply clans, people in Lowland Scotland, especially the North-East Lowlands – wished to achieve, to bring back the Stuarts? And one of the reasons is, as I think you indicate, it had to be a last gamble. This was the very last chance there had to be. Of course, there was also the strong sense that French support in 1745 might be, at the end of the day, once and for all, forthcoming.

[JB]
And it didn’t just pitch clan against clan. As I said in the lead-in, brother against brother, husband against wife. Because I read about a particular lady – Anne Mackintosh – an ardent Jacobite who raised 300 men to fight, but her husband fought for the Government.

[TD]
Yes, and he found out about his wife’s behaviour much to his chagrin. Because not simply did this happen, but she was a superstar in terms of the Jacobite side. They used much propaganda to emphasise this significant thing of a family split, and the wife actually coming over to the cause.

[JB]
Spoiler alert: we know how that ended on the battlefield of Culloden, and I think one of the reasons why that has echoed in history is the barbaric nature. You heard my quotation at the start of the episode. We’ve touched on it but tell us more about the barbarism of the victors. Why?

[TD]
You’ll notice, for example, that you don’t find the French troops who fought at Culloden or the Irish mercenaries who fought at Culloden treated in this way. They were treated as prisoners of war. The problem with the Jacobite army, mainly civilian and therefore not an official force, their position was that they were regarded as rebels and therefore had to be treated as such. You’ve also got to think of the attitude of the English army and perhaps also a lot of Lowland Scots to the Highlands: a primitive society, a society of savagery and therefore had to be dealt with accordingly.
And of course, the other and final point to make is Jacobitism had come too close to success in the march as far south as Derby. Now it was time to end this problem forever. Cumberland actually thought of a plan to emigrate, to transport the majority of the Jacobite clans to North America and the Caribbean before it was decided it was going to be far too costly.

[JB]
What was the death toll at Culloden, in terms of the Jacobites?

[TD]
We can’t be absolutely certain because we’ve got a rough reckoning that something like 1,000–1,500 possibly died in the battle. But as you’ve already indicated, there were also people dying of their wounds or even being slaughtered in the two days after the battle itself. So, I would reckon we’re going to go up to about 2–2,500.

[JB]
Simplistically, it’s widely believed that Culloden did for the clans. But as you’ve hinted at, they were coming under stress after the Union and the rise of commercialism – would that be fair?

[TD]
Correct. Trade and commercialism and also the appetite of the landed classes, namely the clan elites, for a different way of life based on income, based on money and the expenditure that went with a luxury way of life. In other words, they were being much very influenced by the culture of their fellow elites in Lowland Scotland and even indeed in England.

[JB]
But in legal terms it did seal the fate of the clan system because it was effectively banned?

[TD]
It was. There were laws to ensure that clanship was basically outlawed. The Disarming Act prevented them from bearing arms. You can’t actually have a warrior society that’s not allowed to bear arms. That was quite clearly one of the most obvious effects there. It is a law, said one Whig lawyer or official in London, for ‘disarming and undressing those savages’. In other words, that was the law to ban plaid and tartan because that was regarded as the badge of disaffection.

[JB]
And even children’s education – they weren’t allowed to be educated in ‘rebellious principles’.

[TD]
Put it this way, it was a full-frontal, extensive assault on every aspect of clan culture – political, economic, military, familial – that was planned in such a way that it would have effect. It wasn’t simply an uprooting of the warrior ethos, and the control and pacification of the area; it was also to change the mindset. That is why they cracked down heavily on Roman Catholic chapels and also on Episcopalian churches, because they regarded these two religious formations and identities as the ideology of disaffection, the ideology of anti-Government feeling and anti-Hanoverian feeling.
But then historians have got to stand back and say: this is creeping up on the clans because, after Culloden, why did clanship disintegrate so rapidly? Well, my argument would be because it was already under pressure and eroding before that. And the second major reason is, two to three decades after Culloden, Highland society was hit by the impact of the Lowland Industrial Revolution, in terms of demand for Highland cattle, wool, linen and kelp (that’s the manufacture of seaweed). So, that whole impact of Lowland industrial and English industrial demand destroyed any infant growths of industrialism there were in the Highlands and at the same time ensured that the way forward was peaceful, because you can’t have economic development without peace.
So, there’s two aspects therefore in my own thinking; and not everyone will necessarily agree with one historian’s perspective. A) Clanship was already dying, although not dead, by 1746. And secondly, you’ve got to look at the entire history of the impact of these other historical forces on the Highlands and clanship in order to understand why by the time Dr Johnson visited the Highlands in the 1770s he noted that the clans had lost almost entirely their history of savagery and had been, in his view, civilised.

[JB]
From kinship to capitalism. [Correct.] This is a huge question. We’ve not got long because I really need to take a break now, but before I go – migration (voluntary or otherwise) that also plays a part.

[TD]
You’re beginning to see the first evidences of significant migration – obviously the Highlands had always haemorrhaged people – but you’re beginning to see the first evidences of it from about the 1760s. It is indeed caused by the new commercialisation, because we know from the evidence of the 1760s and 1770s that a principal reason why people are deciding to cross the Atlantic and transport their way of life there was because of rent increases and the other aspects of commercialisation. It’s the early stages which then reached a climax in the 19th century on expulsive clearance.

[JB]
But, as we know, the clans didn’t disappear. We’ll find out what happened to them in a moment.

[MV]
From coastlines to castles, wildlife to wilderness, when you become a member of the National Trust for Scotland you can enjoy the very best of what Scotland has to offer as often as you like, and you can help to protect it.
You’ll join thousands of others who’ve all played their part to care for the places we love, for generations to come. Join us and become a member today. Just search National Trust for Scotland.

[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. Before the break, we had explored the fall of the clan system after the battle of Culloden. And you might have thought that the clans would gradually fade into obscurity but, Professor Sir Tom Devine, they didn’t. How did the tide turn?

[TD]
Well, the tide turned obviously for a number of reasons. Ironically enough, Jackie, one of the reasons was that old Highland clanship (if you want to call it that) had been comprehensively destroyed during and after the battle of Culloden and its subsequent changes. And therefore, because Jacobitism was no longer a political force, all its potency had gone, it could be sentimentalised. Therefore, the pacification of the Highlands was the essential pre-condition for what I term Highlandism – that is a romantic interest in everything to do with the Highlands, from traditional clanship to the old literature of the Highlands, which was apparently rediscovered in this period, and at the other extreme the impact that the formation of the Highland regiments – I call it neo-clanship – caused from the Seven Years War of 1756–63. If you look at that date, it is very shortly after Culloden that we begin to see Highland soldiers, but this time under Government pay, dressed in tartan and steadily becoming world famous in the British empire by the mid-19th century.

[JB]
Fascinating change there. And also, equally fascinating is even the view of the landscape, which previously had been described as a bit dreich and uninteresting. That took on a new life.

[TD]
The Highland landscape in the previous period was to be feared because it was seen to go alongside the kind of society it was – a barbarous society, a society of threat in that particular period. But then you have an aesthetic revolution in landscape. It doesn’t simply affect Scottish society; it affects Western Europe. Mountains become attractive; they become not daunting as they used to be, but they become places of beauty. What you’ve got to recall of course in this period is you’re beginning to see, in these later stages of the Enlightenment, a view taken that primitive peoples retained certain positive characteristics that the new modern era, the new era of industrialisation, was losing. And where to go and see this? One of the very few places in the whole of Europe, certainly in Britain, you could go to see it were the Highlands of Scotland, which had retained so much of the characteristics, including the landscape, of a past era.

[JB]
And clans? The perception of clans?

[TD]
Well, the statement always made by government ministers once they started to recruit Highland soldiers was that a) they were descendants of the clans therefore must be good warriors; and b) that they were now in government employ. And in fact, they were increasingly used by the early 19th century. The late 18th and early 19th century was a period of almost continuous warfare: the Seven Years War, the American War of Independence, the French Revolution wars and then the long period of the Napoleonic wars. And more and more Highland not only regiments but volunteers dressed in tartan were being used in this. One lady novelist and painter of the late 19th century put it: ‘they’re so beautifully pictorial’, meaning men dressed in skirts. The Highland regiments with pipes and drums led the march into Paris after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. They became superstars. That also helped with one aspect of the development of Highlandism, because for the first time they wore coordinated kilts. Before that, plaids were extremely confused – there was no sett or pattern. But with the glorification of the regiments, the military authorities had to ensure that there was one sett for one particular corps; another sett for another particular echelon. And a very famous firm in Bannockburn became the art producer of these tartans. And it’s a very short step from that to clan tartans, which didn’t exist in the previous period, and family tartans.

[JB]
Ok, because that’s very important that it didn’t actually exist in previous periods as you would have thought.

[TD]
It only existed when it was no longer of any great significance.

[JB]
Because we know that in the 1780s and beyond, we have things like the Repeal of the Dress Act, and I suppose popular history would have us believe it was all down, latterly, to Sir Walter Scott?

[TD]
I think Sir Walter Scott was in a sense – I mean obviously his literature became world famous – the most influential Scot, even including the inventors and all those famous names of the 19th century. He was probably the most famous Scot by name of the whole 19th century period. The extent to which his books, especially the series dealing with the Highlands Waverley, had the most extraordinary sales. We cannot underestimate the Scott influence. But these other influences that I’ve described are also equally important. Scott was able to attract an international audience because they were already becoming interested in the old Highlands, even if some of that interest was actually confection, was actually spun and not necessarily close to reality.

[JB]
Talk to us briefly about this famous visit by King George IV to Edinburgh.

[TD]
Again, orchestrated …

[JB]
By Sir Walter!

[TD]
The arch-impresario. But it’s very interesting and this is why I think we should not over-emphasise Scott. Because George wanted to see Scots as Highlanders.

[JB]
This is 1822?

[TD]
1822

[JB]
It’s said that whenever George was in Edinburgh, the dress code was to wear your own ancient clan tartan. This goes back to what you were saying before. Your ‘own ancient clan tartan’ led to a stampede to the shops of Edinburgh of various landed gentry saying ‘I want a tartan and I want it now’, which gives the lie to this idea of your own family ancient tartan!

[TD]
Yes, and my clan tartan … the vast majority of these were members of the Lowland aristocracy and the Lowland gentry class, with no connections at all to what was going on. But that event, because it was so publicised and because it involved a reigning monarch, made Highlanders legitimate.

[JB]
And the Victorians took this and ran with it!

[TD]
They took it even further. Then, with the extraordinary expansion of the British empire, with the Highland regiments as the shop troops of empire, national heroes, no longer rebels.

[JB]
Those clan warriors had been rehabilitated.

[TD]
They had been rehabilitated to the extent that they were regarded as traitors, villains and (worse) papists in the mid-18th century. By the mid-19th century they were national heroes, much to the discontent of many other British regiments including Scottish regiments. In the early 1880s, even what became the King’s Own Royal Scottish Borderers, a Lowland regiment, were forced into not Highland kilts but into trews. The victory of Highlandism, as I say in one of my books when I mention this, was complete.

[JB]
And while we’re shattering these myths, what about (we’ve touched on it before) this idea of lineage, that someone called MacGregor today is a direct descendant of the MacGregors?

[TD]
It’s obviously nonsense, but it’s harmless nonsense. And it’s not just the Scots who are doing this. My last graduate student at Edinburgh was German, called David Hesse. He has written a book based on his PhD called Warrior Dreams. He’s calculated there were nearly 600 (this is in 2010) organisations in Europe, from Moscow to Stockholm, with pipe bands, military enactments and Highland games. Hardly any of these individuals had even been to Scotland. There is something …

[JB]
Yes, what is the reason for this? Why are people captivated by it?

[TD]
When I was told about the early stages of David’s findings, I said maybe we should get as a second supervisor, a social psychologist or a psychiatrist to explain because one cannot do it. There’s no doubt about it, what it has done in terms of that extraordinary co-mingling of legend, of history, of Scottish landscape, of the attractions of that part of Scotland. What it has done is produce an alchemy that few can resist. And of course, that’s shown by the global appeal of this new development, this new dynamic adding to this. My favourite book reviewer, Diana Gabaldon, who wrote a review of one of my books – the Clearances book – …

[JB]
Diana who wrote the Outlander series, which has been phenomenally successful.

[TD]
Correct, globally. And it’s given a tremendous new impetus to Highlandism. The Scottish Tourist Board thought Highlandism was beginning to perish as a consequence of the behaviour of historians bringing us the reality rather than the romance. They have been soundly vanquished in this, because this is probably, since Scott, the most important literary influence and now television influence on this continuation of the Highlandist obsession. Fascinating.

[JB]
What is the legacy of the clan system?

[TD]
The lineage runs right through people today. Very happy, not least the Scottish Diaspora, as a way of connecting to the homeland. And it’s usually the second, third, fourth generation – it’s the multi-generational group, not the first migrants to the USA a few years ago, or to New Zealand or South Africa. It’s the multi-generational group who use Highlandism, and neo-clanship as I would call it, as a way of associating with the land of their forebears. As many professors in the USA in particular have said, in terms of our academic analysis we can try and demonstrate that a lot of this is bogus, but very very few countries in Europe would not envy the fact that the Scots have this ‘badge’ of history, of landscape, of scenery and lore. It seems to have a tremendous influence, this alchemy of all these things, on human spirit and the human imagination.

[JB]
The irony that this way of life and the people who were described as savages and looked down upon, have now become emblematic globally of Scotland as a whole.

[TD]
Exactly. And also, don’t forget, Jackie, a Scotland which is one of the most urbanised societies on Earth, has selected a part of the country – they haven’t done it consciously because of historical trends and forces – but one part of the country which is the badge, the culture, the landscape which Scotland is happy to show to the world.

[JB]
That’s a great place to end, I think. Professor Sir Tom Devine, thank you.

[TD]
My pleasure, Jackie, and I’ve been very impressed by your incisive interrogation and questioning.

[JB]
Oh! Thank you! Well, it has been a fascinating romp through the history of the Scottish clans. And to put Highland history into Scottish context, look out for two of Sir Tom’s many best-selling books, notably The Scottish Clearances: A history of the dispossessed and The Scottish Nation: A modern history.
And if all of that has stirred your interest in either the Culloden battlefield or maybe your own clan history, there’s a wealth of information at the Culloden Visitor Centre. You may be interested to know that the National Trust for Scotland has set up a Fighting Fund to help protect the battlefield from unwelcome development. For details of that and for many other Trust places which have links to clan history, do head to our show notes or of course to the Trust website: nts.org.uk.
Thank you for listening. Until next time, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Jackie and her guest Sir Tom Devine look at the Battle of Culloden and how it changed the course of clan history. They then turn their attention to the centuries that followed, taking the story right up to the modern day.

If you missed the first episode, scroll down to hear Jackie and Sir Tom discuss the origins of the clans and how a rule of kinship ensured their success.

This podcast was first released in February 2023.

Clans: from kinship to capitalism (Part 1)

A pink and purple title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Clans: from kinship to capitalism | The first part of our look at the story of Scottish clans with Sir Tom Devine.
A pink and purple title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Clans: from kinship to capitalism | The first part of our look at the story of Scottish clans with Sir Tom Devine.

Season 5 Episode 1

Transcript

Three voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Tom Devine [TD]

[MV]
Love Scotland – brought to you by the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Scotland’s clans stretch back into ancient history, even though their power and prestige wanes down the centuries. They’re still regarded at home, and among the millions of people of Scots descent around the world, as a key part of our heritage. Yet, the romanticism of the simple kinship of the clans belied a complex system of patronage and payback, which often led to what’s been described as a ‘real-life, blood-soaked Game of Thrones’.
The ghosts of the clans walk National Trust for Scotland places like Glencoe, Killiecrankie, the Culloden battlefield and more. Today though, we have a much more cosy idea of clanship, symbolised by gatherings across the world. They’re an intrinsic part of the Scottish identity, but what do we actually know about their emergence, their fall from power and their relevance in a modern-day Scotland?
Well, in this, the first of a new series of Love Scotland, we thought we’d take an in-depth look at the history of the clans. To do that, we’ve enlisted one of our most eminent academics and writers, Professor Emeritus of Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh, Sir Tom Devine. Tom, welcome to the podcast.

[TD]
Thank you very much, Jackie.

[JB]
Before we get into the detail, can you give us an overview, in your view, of how significant are clans in Scottish history as a whole.

[TD]
Well, of course the first thing to note is the longevity, at least in the earlier period of development. In terms of those clan names that people know about today, we’re talking about the emergence of those particular septs and kindred groups round about the 12th and 13th centuries. They’re actually relatively young in terms of historical time. Of course, there were kinship groups before that as well, but the big names known today – MacKenzie, Campbell and all of the rest of them that people are very familiar with – probably date from about the 12th/13th centuries and becoming more important over time, before their demise which really starts to occur in about the 17th century. Even before, I would argue, the catastrophe of Culloden and the imposition of effective state control on Highland Scotland.
The other thing to note, of course: kinship groups existed in the Lowlands. They weren’t actually called clans and they certainly existed in the Scottish Borders. And in that part of Scotland, we know that the state regarded the recalcitrant clans of the Borders in the same way as they regarded the recalcitrant and violent clans of the Western Highlands and islands. In a statement in 1593, the Scottish government of the time – in fact specifically the Scottish parliament of the time – stated unequivocally that the Western Highlands and islands were clannate and violent, and so also were the Scottish Borders. And of course, there the names are less familiar, but Armstrong, Elliot, Douglas, Scott and the rest. So, the next key question is to ask what were they?
Essentially, I regard them as warrior societies. They emerged in the early medieval period at a time when the Scottish state could not control some very unstable parts of the country. And therefore, people over time – the lower classes, if you like – started to associate themselves with great men of influence, who with their own followers could guarantee a degree of protection, a degree of security in these troubled times. That factor was an identical force both in the Western Highlands and Central Highlands, and also in the Borders, because all these areas reflected a very profound weakness in state power.

[JB]
Was this because of the geography of the land? Was it that simple?

[TD]
It wasn’t so much the geography across the country, because remember the Scottish Borders are not all that far away from Edinburgh – but of course in the Western Highlands and islands, yes it was a big problem of geographical control. Hardly any of that whole region in the north, which we now love for its scenic beauty, had been mapped at the time. So, it was an area that was almost unknown, mysterious and therefore threatening because of that. But as I said, only a few miles from Edinburgh we have the Scottish Borders, and one of the reasons why it was unstable was because the whole relationship on the border between England and Scotland was profoundly unstable between the two nations. So, clan groups thrived in that environment. We’ll note later in our discussion that as the state became more powerful, both in the Border countryside and indeed also in the north and west of Scotland, you begin to see these kinship groups, these associations for protection if you like, beginning to weaken.

[JB]
So, let’s talk about the social framework of the clan itself internally. What did it mean to be part of a clan? You mentioned a sort of protection there. Was that the main driver?

[TD]
Yeah, protection both from enemies but also because in that particular period, living a secure life in the Highlands was rather difficult because of the climatic conditions and the poor agricultural output. So, it was also an economic security as well as a military security. Therefore, the great men, who we now can call clan chiefs and their kindred – the immediate gentlemen of the clan – and that middling group, the tacksmen – tacks is the Scots word for lease – these were individual families who were given a good deal of control below the level of the chiefs and their blood associates. Their role was to provide this necessary element, this vital element, of security, which the remote state could not do.

[JB]
Could you choose a clan to belong to? ‘I quite like the look of that clan …’ Or did you have to be born into it?

[TD]
No, because blood has been profoundly exaggerated as a factor in the make-up of the Highland clan in particular. Certainly, it seems very likely that that inner group – the clan elite – most of them were related directly or indirectly to the chief and his family. You could say there is a very strong blood bond at that level. But elsewhere in the clan, especially in terms of the big confederated clans like Clan Donald (both south and north), the extent of connection to the elite becomes weaker and weaker over time. So, the belief in a blood family was all-persuasive. It was essential to give cohesion to the clan that this belief was cemented, because it also gave authority to the chief and to those who were appointed by him at lower levels of the clanship structure. But, the mythic nature and the striking aspect of this whole thing, there was quite a lot of invention of tradition in the development of what we think were the beliefs of clansmen at the time.
Just to give you a couple of examples. The birth father of Clan Gregor and MacGregor, some people believed he was Pope Gregory the Great. The birth father, or patriarch, of the great Clan Campbell, he was suspected to be the equally legendary King Arthur.

[JB]
Ah.

[[TD]
I mean, these in a sense were made-up stories by the bards, the genealogists, the storywriters. But in a pre-literate society, it was vital that these beliefs were accepted and widely seen to be true. Because, by having that, the authority of the leading family – the gentry of the clan – was obviously massively increased. Influence was very important.

[JB]
So, the heritage and the importance and the blood ties and all of that, they were sort of spun? They were spinning the myths, the importance and the ancient nature of things?

[TD]
There was a lot of fiction about it, and that’s why I say the invention of tradition. But the thing to bear in mind, Jackie, is we shouldn’t necessarily denigrate this. Every society, in terms of human development, has indulged in the invention of tradition. Many of the things that we have taken from our ancestors are equally invented, so we should not feel in any way superior to the way these communities behaved.
What is absolutely clear, however, is the reality of the fact that these organisations existed. They were designed for security. They were designed also for aggression and for making war – that was their essential raison d’être. Once that raison d’être disappeared, clanship (in terms of the historical nature of clanship) simply evaporated relatively quickly.

[JB]
During my research on this, I kept coming across the word ‘dùthchas’. Am I pronouncing it properly firstly, and what is it?

[TD]
Well, dùthchas is the way I’d certainly pronounce it. Some people say that it’s actually untranslatable. But I think it merges two concepts – one is the sense of the heritage of the clan and the fact that one of the great codes of the clan is that the elites have a duty of protection to the followers, in return of course for their military support and for giving rental on a regular basis to these elites. The second thing, which is associated with the word, is the sense that the absolute owner of the territory of the clan was not the elite, despite the fact that we know in Scots law usually the head of the chieftain group (the heads of the clan) had feudal charters from the monarch, testifying to the fact that they were indeed the absolute legal owners. The belief of the ‘kindred’, the belief of the followers, seemed to be that they had at least a right to have land and a right to own land within the territorial imperium of the clan itself. That belief continued during the period of the so-called Clearances, right down into the 19th century. And that was one of the reasons why Clearance in the Highlands, unlike in other parts of Scotland, was so bitter. The elites knowing what is their power; and at the other extreme the vast majority of the followers thinking they have a completely different concept of this.

[JB]
Alright. Now, we’re running out of time for this first half because it’s a tall order. Can I give you some quick-fire questions?

[TD]
Yes. And I’ll try and give you quick-fire answers!

[JB]
Ok! Did the chief have absolute power within a legal framework of the clans?

[TD]
In terms of access to land, yes. In terms of the cohesion of the clan, obviously his role was a governance role. So, he had to be very careful to ensure that enmities within the clan did not produce rivalries and therefore split the clan asunder, especially in terms of its military capacity.

[JB]
And finally, how important was it if you had a clever, a canny clan chief? How much did that determine the power and success of the clan?

[TD]
Very important because it meant that if you had somebody who was cunning and brave and gifted with brain, this is one of the reasons why you see certain clans and clan formations accessing other clans, annexing them – taking them either by using debt as a way of making them semi-bankrupt and therefore giving them loans to encourage them to join the larger grouping, the larger clan; also the appropriate use, when necessary, of violence against smaller units in order to try and absorb them.
The way I would say it, Jackie, there was a kind of Darwinian situation. If the state wasn’t there to be the honest broker above all this, then what you find is almost a ‘sauve qui peut’ – a survival of the fittest.

[JB]
Which we will talk about more in the second half. So, we’ll leave it there. We’ve got a lot of self-contained communities around the country. We’ll take a break and when we come back, we’ll talk about the clans and how they interacted with each other … and it wasn’t always friendly. We’ll be back in a moment.

[MV]
A donation to the National Trust for Scotland, no matter how small, will help to protect the places that make Scotland so special. With your help, we can respond quickly to mountain wildfires, or fix damage from winter storms, and we can carry out vital work to ensure historical sites and fragile wildlife survive for future generations. Just search National Trust for Scotland and click Donate.

[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. Before the break, Sir Tom Devine had filled us in on the social order within clans, but let’s now look at external relations. Tom, we’ve all seen the multi-coloured maps of Scotland, of the clan territories back in the day. Did those clan function as small countries, for want of a better word? Or were they conscious of being part of a wider Scotland?

[TD]
Well, no, they were definitely conscious of being part of Scotland. There was a recognition also of the monarchy, which is one of the reasons why of course many of the clans – when we get into the late 17th/18th century – supported the exiled House of Stuart. A tremendous devotion also to that greater Scotland. So, they didn’t think of themselves in any sense as separate nations. They were separate, individualised, kindred groupings.

[JB]
We have an image of clansmen as warring. Were inter-clan disputes and feuds common?

[TD]
Very common. One of the most common periods was from the late 15th century, the great empire of Clan Donald in the Western Isles – the Lordship of that area – disintegrated. And the result – this explains that violence was not specific to the earlier period of clan formation – it became even more intense in the following century, the 16th century, because of the disintegration and end of that over-arching empire.

[JB]
So, there was a bit of a power vacuum then?

[TD]
A power vacuum which resulted in several decades of unprecedented violence, much much more intense and acute than in earlier times.

[JB]
And you’ve sort of answered my next question because I wanted to know whether there were enduring clan superpowers, if you like, or whether various clans’ influence rose and fell?

[TD]
Well, it’s a cycle. The classic example I’ve already given of the end of the great seaboard empire, from the Butt of Lewis down to Arran, of Clan Donald and particularly Clan Donald south – that had really ceased to exist apart from the individual estates owned by septs of Clan Donald when we move into the 17th and early 18th centuries. So, there’s a classic example of that occurring.
At the other extreme, the two resurgent and ambitious (and therefore for that reason probably hated) larger kindreds are Clan Campbell and the Lovats in the North East, and also Clan MacKenzie further south.

[JB]
How important was size, ability to fight, your force?

[TD]
It was one of the main reasons why a very ambitious, enterprising and imperialistic clan would try and secure alliances, even to the point of absorption of smaller units. And this is what makes the history of clanship so much more complex than perhaps is portrayed in the media.

[JB]
King James I and VI, crowned King of Scotland in 1567 – how does James on the throne change things?

[TD]
It’s a watershed time. It’s not only a watershed in the Highlands; it’s a watershed also in the Scottish Borders because it’s easier to keep control …

[JB]
So, this is the Union of the Crowns that we’re talking about, that comes later?

[TD]
The Union of the Crowns in 1603 means that he can call on English and Scottish force, and no longer is a recalcitrant area between two nations; it’s an area where he can force law and order, and does so. By the late 17th century, the problem of the Border clans has vanished. That leaves the western Highlands and islands. And there he and his advisors are trying again to ensure that the state manages to gain control. It happened through a number of reasons, for example the Plantation of Ulster with the movement of Scots across the Irish Sea. Because of that movement, he builds up a kind of cordon sanitaire, a kind of bastion, especially between the Catholic clans of the Outer Hebrides and the Protestant, so-called answerable subjects who are moved from Lowland Scotland to take up land ownership there.
Also, a series of punitive expeditions to recalcitrant areas in the North West and islands. Also linked to that, the demand that clan chiefs come to Edinburgh on a regular basis, make sure they’ve provided a financial security, and assurity indeed, for the behaviour of their clansmen. If not, they will be fined. And of course, sometimes that duration of time that these people have got to spend in Edinburgh, in the capital, can go on for sometimes half a year before their cases are actually settled. This is the very slow beginning of the erosion of clanship and the beginnings of landlord-ism, based on the customs, the material goods, furnishings, the dress of the elites of the south. It’s the beginning of the process of merging what used to be a distinctive, elite society in the Highlands. Steadily, that elite society is becoming adapted more to Lowland mores.

[JB]
Tell me about this role of the clans, this Act of 1587 – what was that aiming to do?

[TD]
It was really the first official statement of the determination of the Scottish state, to sort the problems of these lawless regions out, and to implement state control throughout Scotland. But it was still only an aspiration. It required the enormous new powers of the Jacobean monarchy of James VI and I because of the united capacities of England and Scotland to deal with this. For example, James was able to call upon a navy to sort out the Western Isles …

[JB]
Which he didn’t have before.

[TD]
Of course, not anything like to the same extent. And of course, having very rapidly managed to deal with the Border problem, because there’s the two pressures from north and south on the border instability, he was then able to concentrate – and his successors were able to concentrate – on the continued vexed problem of the Western Highlands and islands.

[JB]
What about his successors? Charles I, he also found the clans problematic. Is it true that he took things a little further? He pursued a more aggressive strategy?

[TD]
Well, he pursued a very aggressive religious strategy in terms of … because of course this then leads up to the so-called War of the Three Kingdoms and eventually of course the English Civil War as well. Because of the relative anarchy that the civil wars produce in the 1630s/40s, until the English occupation force of General Monk that brings law and order of an almost Stalinist variety again, because of that, clanship flourishes in the way that it usually flourishes in periods of disorder.

[JB]
So, the monarchy is looking the other way; they’ve got other fish to fry. So the clans think, yeah, this is great.

[TD]
You could argue that James VI produces very significant results, especially in terms of elite behaviour, but then there’s another hiatus as the civil wars begin and that lasts through to 1652. Scotland’s then conquered by the Cromwellian army and therefore they await the return of the old Stuart monarchy in the person of Charles II.

[JB]
So, Charles comes back … can we jump then to the seismic event: the end of the Stuart dynasty and the accession of William and Mary. Now, what impact did the Jacobite rebellion that that sparked have on the clans and on their allegiances? Did it split them?

[TD]
Yeah, there was a huge range of different reactions to what’s been termed the Glorious Revolution, which resulted in the expulsion of the Stuarts.

[JB]
So, let’s get an anchor date here. We’re talking 16 …

[TD]
1688/89 is the Glorious Revolution, where the Stuarts are evicted and the new monarchy of William and Mary is established. It’s essentially a Protestant revolution, so it’s not in any way liked by those clans of Catholic allegiance. And it’s not liked by the majority of clans, because remember the clans depend on a belief in a blood-based dynasty. In the same way that they would react to their own clan elites or clan chieftain being suborned by another, so they also have the same view about the monarch of the Kingdom of Scotland being treated in the same way. They have a strong belief in genealogical right and birthright. And that’s one of the bases on why many of them react so bitterly against the Revolution and the eviction of the Stuarts. It’s in no way because they necessarily support the religious policies, particularly the pro-Catholic policies of the Stuarts before 1688, it is to a large extent because of this.
And one other factor which is important: the dangerously ambitious Clan Campbell – its might, its influence behind the revolutions of 1688/1689. And since those clans that were already beginning to feel pressure from the Argylls, from the Campbell family, the Campbell dynasty, they also tend to look to the Stuarts as a form of protection.

[JB]
So, it was a huge period of political unrest. And to calm things down, the government decided to do what lots of governments do down the ages, they threw money at the problem. They wanted the clans to swear an oath of loyalty and they would pay them for it, but of course this led to one of the most infamous episodes in Scottish history in 1692. Can you talk us through that?

[TD]
This is the Massacre of Glencoe, of course. Murder under trust. At least 20 (maybe 25) members including children of the clan that occupied the Glencoe area, a branch of Clan Donald – a MacDonald sept, if you will – were murdered by an Argyll militia, supported by the state. And it caused a tremendous response in Scotland and indeed elsewhere. One of the things I’ve pondered is why is that? Clearly, it was because the codes of hospitality had been neglected. But it’s also, I think, a reflection of the fact that by the 1690s, Highland Scotland was becoming peaceful, much more peaceful than it had been before. And so, this horror, this mass act of murder, was exceptional. And that’s one of the explanations I would have as to why it’s remembered.
The other explanation is of course it was a golden gift to the Jacobites, because they were able to demonstrate the fact that the new dynasty coming in was in fact deeply guilty, deep in blood as a consort of treacherous murders which were against all Highland codes of hospitality in the preceding era. But for over a century, the Massacre of Glencoe was virtually forgotten.

[JB]
Really? But we remember it today and in terms of our subject matter, the history of the clans, for the heinous nature of clan against clan.

[TD]
There were much more dreadful massacres than the massacre at Glencoe. In the perspective of clanship violence, it was a relatively simple and limited episode. But, for the reasons I’ve given, it achieved fame in the period, and then of course until writers in the 19th century started to become interested in it, and not least of course the 20th century with the Scottish folk revival.

[JB]
Well, we’ll leave, Tom, with your permission, the history of the clans for this episode in the eerie wilderness of Glencoe, which of course is looked after by the National Trust for Scotland. And if you want to get a real insight and experience what it was like for the inhabitants of Glencoe in those dark days, there is a marvellous reconstruction of a turf house, right next to the visitor centre.
So, I hope you’ll join us for part 2 of this story. We’ll be following the clans to Culloden and beyond. 
And even today, the Trust’s Foundation in America helps stage an annual gathering of a hundred clans in North Carolina, which gives you an indication of the power of the legacy of the clans that remains around the globe.
You can find out more in the show notes to this episode. Until next time, with Tom and me, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

In the first episode of a two-parter, Jackie and her guest Sir Tom Devine take a look at the origins of the Scottish clans. Over the course of their discussion they reveal how the clans came to be, how they organised themselves, and what united them.

Has the reality of clan life been romanticised? What were the key moments in these crucial centuries of Scottish history? And how, ultimately, did the system of kinship give way to a modern world of capitalism?

This podcast was first released in February 2023.

Flora MacDonald: Young Rebel

A blue title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Flora MacDonald: Young Rebel | The remarkable tale of a woman caught up in two conflicts.
A blue title card. The National Trust for Scotland logo is at the bottom of the card. The text reads: The Love Scotland podcast. Flora MacDonald: Young Rebel | The remarkable tale of a woman caught up in two conflicts.

Season 4 Episode 1

Transcript

Three voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Flora Fraser [FF]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Hello and welcome to the first episode of a new series of Love Scotland. Between now and December, we will be releasing weekly episodes of the podcast and I’ll be discovering even more about Scotland’s rich history, heritage and wildlife.

[Music plays and water laps against a boat]

The music you can hear – ‘The Skye Boat Song’ – may have given you a clue about our subject matter. We’re journeying back to 1746, just weeks after Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s forces have been routed at the Battle of Culloden. The Prince’s hopes of claiming the British throne from the House of Hanover have been dashed, and the Jacobites have scattered to the winds.

Charles spends the next five months a wanted man, hopping from one Hebridean island to the next. My interest today lies with one journey: a perilous crossing from Benbecula to Skye. And particularly with one person: Flora McDonald. Aged just 24, she is an unlikely Jacobite heroine and is only remembered now for her part in that daring escape.

But little is known of what happened to her in the immediate aftermath. And as it turns out, her entire life is a compelling story of a woman with connections to two of the biggest conflicts of the 18th century. Here to tell us all about it is another Flora, Flora Fraser, the historical biographer and author of the recently published Pretty Young Rebel: The life of Flora MacDonald. Flora, welcome to the podcast.

[FF]
Thank you, Jackie; great to be here.

[JB]
You are a hugely successful historical biographer, and many of your subjects have been women across the centuries. But Flora MacDonald, I think I’m correct in saying, has been with you since birth.

[FF]
Yes, I was named after her. We were quite local to the ’45 story, and Culloden was 10 miles away, the other side of Inverness. Flora MacDonald was everywhere when I was growing up. She was on tartan boxes, and Bonnie Prince Charlie was still primarily a romantic story. And then, of course, John Prebble and others actually started unpicking the horror of the ’45 for those who fought in it. But although Bonnie Prince Charlie’s reputation is not what it was, Flora’s has remained unsullied – the courageous heroine, and that was how I knew her when I was growing up.

[JB]
As your career as a writer progressed, were you always going to write about her or did something pique your interest?

[FF]
It was looking at images for my last book, a book about the marriage of George and Martha Washington, and looking at images of American revolutionary characters, Alexander Hamilton – of course, Hamilton is now beyond famous. And I suddenly found among all these generals, the Allan Ramsay portrait of Flora MacDonald – and I thought, why is this portrait, which was made in either London or Scotland in the 1740s, featuring in the 1770s in America?

And then I remembered that when Dr Johnson and Boswell make their famous Highland tour in 1773, they visit Flora, now a matron wife and mother of seven, on Skye. And she says, effectively, you were lucky to catch me because I’m off to America.

[JB]
There’s a lot to unpick here. Let’s go back to the beginning. Give me a flavour of what Flora’s early life was like.

[FF]
She is what I would call a Highland gentlewoman. She had grown up in the Western Isles and had recently moved with her stepfather and mother to Skye. She is part of the MacDonald of Clanranald family, based if you like on Uist. She’s going about her business. She’s never left the Hebrides apart from one trip to cousins on the west coast.

She’s an unknown person and would be unknown to history, although I’m sure dearly loved by her immediate family, except at midnight, she’s looking after her brother’s herds on South Uist. And at midnight, she’s awoken by a cousin who’s outside and he says ‘the Prince is with me. He needs your help’. And Bonnie Prince Charlie, or Charles Edward, has been on the run since April, when the Jacobite army was pulverised by the Redcoats at Culloden. These Hanoverian officers and men are within a mile or so of Charles Edward, and he looks a total ruffian. He’s covered in midge bites, he’s unshaven. He’s a mess and he’s been sleeping in the heather; hasn’t slept in the bed since Culloden. And Flora says, ‘help him?’

[JB]
I think it was Flora’s stepfather, wasn’t it, who masterminded this plan?

[FF]
Yes, he’s a fascinating character.

[JB]
But it wasn’t just inherently dangerous perhaps in the crossing and making a crossing at night, but in Flora, potentially being captured, could she have refused her stepfather’s request?

[FF]
She absolutely could have, and she initially baulks at this midnight request, not least because the request was that she take the Prince dressed up as her Irish maid, Betty Burke, over the channel, the Minch, 30 nautical miles to Skye and announce to the militia who were guarding the coast, ‘Oh yeah, I’m just taking this Irish spinster or spinning woman to my mother on Skye’!

The whole thing was so dangerous. The Prince had an incredibly distinctive face, this very long pale face, even though he was sunburned and midge-bitten! And he was very tall – extremely tall for a woman. But above all, as she said, my character would never survive effectively being in the company of a man. And by that she meant that she’s a bachelor woman, and in the 18th century her whole future – if she has a future and isn’t arrested, transported – depends on, as it did for the majority of women, being virtuous, by which virginal was meant. Otherwise, marriage would not follow; and without marriage, your lookout was far less favourable.

[JB]
Which is a completely different way of looking at it. What I got from your book and your research was that so much of the narrative has been debunked. The romantic narrative of Flora as a rampant Jacobite sympathiser, willing to risk her life for her Prince: not the case. And also the fact that the Prince was 6ft tall dressed as a woman fooled no one. Everyone thought she was trying to smuggle someone, but they just didn’t know who.

[FF]
Exactly. Because there were so many people involved. These were small populous islands, both Benbecula and South Uist. In the 18th century, the whole of the Western Isles was known as the Long Island. When not under water, it’s so connected. People were just all around, going about their daily business; the same on Skye.

So, when she finally acceded to her cousin’s request, and to the Prince’s request, she was asked by somebody, ‘Why did you put your character on the line in this way?’ And she said, ‘I would have done the same for you, had you been in distress.’ So it was, and I do believe this, honestly it was an act of clemency to help the Prince. Many of these Chiefs or lairds simply wanted to pass him on because they didn’t want him to be taken on their land. Even if they were sympathisers to the Stuart cause or not, it would be a dishonour to the clan to have him taken while he was on their land.

[JB]
Another aspect that was unknown to me is that so many other women were involved in the plot – to help make an outfit big enough for a ‘6ft-tall Irish woman’, who help hide him. There was a network of intelligence, and that’s particularly interesting because when we read of women in history, they often come across as one-dimensional, as quiet and complacent, but of course, that wasn’t the case.

[FF]
No, no. The network of women – it was Lady Clanranald, the Chief’s lady who helped Flora sew this costume for the outsized maid, but they used this network. A MacDonald lady was going to Skye ahead of Flora and the Prince. She went to Lady Clan, as she was called, this wonderful Clanranald woman, and Flora asked her to warn Lady Margaret MacDonald, who was the wife of another clan chief, that the Prince was coming.

Both Lady Clan and Lady Margaret on Skye had kept the Prince when he was in hiding for nearly a month, before the officers came near and he had to scarper. But they sent him shirts, as they called it ‘supplies of linen’; they sent him the London newspapers. You just find these women all the time doing this marvellous thing of lying through their teeth. And Flora does this too, absolutely lies through her teeth about never seen the Prince, never, never; until they know that he’s been passed on to some other place and that he’s not in danger nearby, and then they say, ‘oh yeah, sure he was here, he was here’.

[JB]
So what actually happened on the night of the escape?

[FF]
Well, contrary to some people’s belief that Flora rowed the Prince 30 nautical miles in the middle of the night in storms over to Skye. There was a crew of five, who were told of course that this person – they could see it was a man – but they were told it was a Jacobite rebel who needed to escape, and that was happening all over the Highlands at this time. The King’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, was at headquarters at Fort Augustus on Loch Ness, and he was sending out these parties to root out the rebels. So, that was a perfectly good excuse.

Flora at all points – and we don’t know that she insisted on this – but the fact is throughout the week that she was with the Prince, and I think it probably felt to her like a year, she was at all points chaperoned by her cousin Neil – that was the cousin who came and told her the Prince was outside or by a local lady. So, she was actually never alone with the Prince.

[JB]
Do we know how the two got on, or what she thought of him, or indeed what he thought of her?

[FF]
Well, when he was with her for that week, he treated her as if she was a royal princess. He called her my lady. He got up, he treated her with the utmost care and respect on the voyage, and it was very stormy. He’s intensely grateful when they finally part. He says, ‘Madam, I hope to see you at St James’s, which is the royal palace in London where indeed the royal families still receive, but it was then where court was held. So, he was saying, I hope the Stuarts are restored to the throne. Actually, he never came back to Scotland again. We don’t know that he ever thought of her again.

[JB]
And what did she think of him?

[FF]
She remained – I believe absolutely, and maybe in some ways despite herself – devoted to him all her life. I think a large part of it was this was something that many Scots of that time felt. The Stuarts had been on the throne in Scotland since the 14th century, and the Hanoverians had come in 1714. There was a sense in which the Stuarts for them were the true kings and queens of Scotland.

[JB]
So, the escape goes to plan. Charles is offloaded to sympathisers and eventually heads to the Continent, but what I didn’t know is that Flora is betrayed and captured. And it’s at that cliffhanger, we’re going to take a short break.

[MV]
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[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. I’m joined by the renowned historical biographer Flora Fraser and we’re talking about her book, Pretty Young Rebel: The life of Flora MacDonald. Just before the break, Prince Charles Edward Stuart has made his escape from Scotland and Flora was heading back to her ordinary life in the Highlands. Or is that how it worked out? Flora, you can take up the story.

[FF]
Well, Flora, having said goodbye to the Prince at Portree, heads to her stepfather’s house at Armadale in Skye, and she’s there for only a few days, not telling anyone at home what’s happened over the course of the last week.

[JB]
What a secret to keep!

[FF]
I know, isn’t it extraordinary? Her mother knew nothing. And then the summons came for Flora to report to a local militia officer; a militia that is set up in the government interest.

[JB]
How did they find out that Flora MacDonald was involved?

[FF]
They were just tracing the Prince. They did trace his footsteps all the way, but it was the boatman. They were threatened with this hideous instrument of torture, the Barisdale, which involved a spike from above or from below, about to pierce your throat – at which point, I’m not surprised they gave up the information.

[JB]
Flora was brought in for questioning. They eventually discovered that Betty Burke was actually Prince Charles Edward Stuart; she was in deep deep trouble.

[FF]
Yeah, she was in serious trouble. Everybody who had facilitated the escape of the Prince were all brought down to London to stand trial.

[JB]
And that includes Flora.

[FF]
That includes Flora. Her first captor, General Campbell, was very much a government man and officer of distinction, and he’s on this ship. When she’s brought on board, he examines her, interrogates her if you like. But he treats her like his daughter, as she later says. She has some quality about her, Flora, and the captains of these ships treat her like a very great lady. She’s given a cabin of her own when they stop in Leith. She’s like a Jacobite rockstar – all the Jacobite ladies in Leith and Edinburgh rode out to dine with her. The captains put everything at her service, their servants, they send for clothes.

[JB]
I think this is where the title of your book comes from, doesn’t it? Pretty young rebel? That’s how she is described by one of her captors on that ship, who it seems was absolutely captivated by her, but in a very fatherly way. She was taken to London. Was she imprisoned?

[FF]
It’s always been said she was in the Tower of London, which she wasn’t.

[JB]
Was she facing a death sentence?

[FF]
It was very unclear. I don’t think they would have done it. She was already well-known, featuring in the papers and there were engravings. She was, if you like, under lock and key, but in the house of a King’s messenger. It was curious … it wasn’t parole but it meant she wasn’t in a jail.

[JB]
What I find surprising is, as you mentioned earlier, that her alibi, if you like, was that she would have helped anyone in similar need. And what is equally surprising is that they seem to buy this!

[FF]
Yes. And it was General Campbell who wrote from home in Argyll to a London friend. ‘When I asked her why she did it, she said I would have done the same for you had you been in distress’.

[JB]
And the newspapers and the periodicals of that time, they leapt on the story and, as you alluded to, she became something of a celebrity. But what astonishes me reading the book, and perhaps it shouldn’t, is the amount of fake news that surrounded the entire tale. What they didn’t know about Flora – and they were so hungry for information – they made up.

[FF]
Absolutely. They said she was a great heiress; she had literally no money. They said she and the Prince stayed alone in a cottage where she cured him of the itch.

[JB]
Lots of salacious stuff as well.

[FF]
Cartoons and engravings, which were the equivalent of photographs in the tabloids. These prints, these engravings were sold everywhere.

[JB]
Flora herself, she realised that she had captured the public’s imagination and she played along with it.

[FF]
Yes, she certainly did. Rather than complain, she makes friends with her captors. Eventually, when there’s a general amnesty later in 1747, she does become a great social catch for everyone who wants to see this phenomenon: the girl who it seems captured the Prince’s heart, brought the Prince to safety. Didn’t matter if they were strong Hanoverians, it was a very romantic story.

[JB]
Basically, luck is on her side, the authorities are a bit fed up and their finances are depleted – and that’s what leads to a general … Pardon may not be the correct word, but they back off and Flora is allowed to go back to Scotland. Is she a heroine or is she a villain for putting others in danger?

[FF]
She heads back notably with a purse of £1,500 collected for her by English Jacobite supporters. Now, they didn’t come out to finance or to help the Prince and the Jacobite Army. Some have argued that this was a sort of guilt money, but the great thing is that Flora got this vast sum of money and she goes back to Skye and she marries. He’s young, he’s handsome and he’s the son of the factor (or land agent) for the MacDonald of Sleat estates on Skye. He’s been educated by the chief in Edinburgh in the expectation that he will succeed as factor, which he indeed does.

[JB]
How old is she at this time, roughly?

[FF]
She’s 28.

[JB]
So, she’s in her late 20s, she goes on to have seven children, the last I think in her mid-40s?

[FF]
Yes, it’s 1766; she must be 44, I think.

[JB]
So, she lives a life – she’s known, she’s a bit famous. She has a bit of money. She has her children, she’s intent on providing for her children and giving them a leg up in life. So, she plays on her past fame and her connections, to get them positions as she grows older.

[FF]
Absolutely. Alan, I think it’s fair to say, is not the man his father was.

[JB]
He’s not the brightest bulb in the box, is he? He may be good-looking and all of that …

[FF]
Oh, he’s very good-looking. You can’t say he’s feckless, because he tries; the trouble is he gets it wrong, everything.

[JB]
He’s not great with the family finances, is he!

[FF]
He sure ain’t. I feel bad because it’s her money that she collected through her canniness in the South.

[JB]
Ultimately Flora, who’s now around 50, her husband and some of her family, they leave Scotland. They head to America to try to make another fortune, but their timing couldn’t have been worse. They emigrate straight into the early stages of the American Revolution.

[FF]
Flora’s son-in-law, who’s an experienced marine officer, doesn’t unpack interestingly nor does he buy a home. He rents one, because he sees that this is really serious and then it all erupts.

[JB]
It all kicks off. And sadly old Alan MacDonald doesn’t. He ends up leading Highland troops on behalf of the British government – there’s an irony for you – against the Revolutionaries. There are claims that Flora herself was involved in the various battles, and at one stage rallied the troops herself. Is this just invented?

[FF]
Flora, according to some accounts, rode up and down the line of the Highland army as it set off for the coast, on a white palfrey, urging them on. I don’t think so. I can’t say she didn’t, but there is a really, really detailed narrative of the Highland army every step of the way until misfortune greets them on a creek near the coast. And there is no mention of Flora.

[JB]
So, let’s jump forward. The revolution doesn’t go well for Alan and the government forces. Flora comes back to Scotland. She’s in her late 50s, she’s in ill health, but then there’s another twist – her fame is rekindled. How does this happen?

[FF]
Well, Boswell publishes this extraordinary and detailed account of him and Dr Johnson staying with Flora in the house – Kingsburgh – and publishes this lengthy description, so funny, of Flora and Johnson having good crack together. She comes off as what they call in America ‘having real street smarts’. She’s witty and enjoying it – never forgetting I think Presbyterianism is in her soul, in every bone – but she’s a lot of fun, I think. And you see that in Boswell’s description.

[JB]
Then bizarrely, she receives a pension from the Hanoverian Prince of Wales because of a connection of her son Johnny. How the heck does that come about?

[FF]
Well, it’s networking. One of Johnny’s superiors, who’s a McPherson of Skye acting as Governor-General in Bengal. Sir John comes back to see family in Skye. Scots, both Highland and Lowland, supplied the Empire with officers, with administrators and so that wasn’t surprising. Flora’s son-in-law had been 23 years old a marine officer all over the world – Manilla, Ponticelli – but he talks to Flora and is rather shocked at her reduced state, both health and financial. He asks her to write a memorial of her sufferings after helping the Prince, and her sufferings after losing their steading in North Carolina. And she writes this extraordinary account in 1789 of these events.

The ’45 is 40 years earlier and yet she tells it like it was yesterday. And a memorial was specifically to elicit financial aid. So this was to elicit financial aid. John is an intimate at that time of George, Prince of Wales; later George IV. He gives it to the prince and the prince says, give her a pension of £50 from me a year. So, Flora gets a pension, but apparently the Prince of Wales, munificent as he was, forgot to pay Sir John back!

[JB]
So, what were her final years like?

[FF]
This memorial that she wrote, two memorials, were almost the last that we know of her. She wrote them in 1789, which of course was the year of many things: the French Revolution, George Washington’s inaugurated as the first president of the United States. All these things connect in a way to her public life, but she dies quietly.

[JB]
How old was she?

[FF]
She was 68. Rheumatism was her terrible affliction.

[JB]
Why do you think her story endures? Is it just the romance of it all?

[FF]
I think it’s her character. Yes, of course it’s a romantic story, especially when it’s simplified. When it’s simplified, it’s an act of courage. I don’t think her story will ever go away because I think it’s her character that endures down the centuries. She had no control over the Prince appearing outside the sheiling. She had no control over Alan losing her money, sadly. She had no control over the rent hikes on the estate. She had no control over the American Revolution. But I think it’s her response to whatever is thrown at her – she responds in the same quick, canny and ultimately intelligent, more than intelligent. She actually, I think it’s not wrong to say, that she responds with a strong moral sense to what’s thrown at her.

[JB]
It’s an incredible tale about an incredible life. Thank you so much for telling us all about it. Flora Fraser, thank you.

[FF]
Thank you so much, Jackie; a pleasure to talk to you.

[JB]
And Flora Fraser’s book, Pretty Young Rebel: The life of Flora MacDonald, is out now. If you’d like to find out more about the Jacobite uprising of 1745, then be sure to visit the National Trust for Scotland website. You’ll find information about the Culloden Battlefield site, which is open to visitors year-round, in the show notes. You can also discover other Jacobite linked locations, including the Glenfinnan Monument which acts as a tribute to those who died fighting for the Jacobite cause. Or if you’d like to listen to more episodes about the Jacobite uprising, scroll back through your Love Scotland feed to find our 2020 episodes about Culloden and the Glenfinnan Monument.
But that’s all from this edition. I hope you’ll join me next time. Goodbye.

[MV]
This episode of Love Scotland is a Think production in association with the Big Light Studio. Presented by Jackie Bird.
Music and post-production by Brian McAlpine; producer for the Big Light is Cameron Angus MacKay. Executive producer is Fiona Whyte; research by Ciaran Sneddon.
For show notes and more information, head to nts.org.uk

Jackie Bird sits down with historical writer Flora Fraser to discuss the life and legacy of Flora MacDonald.

MacDonald is best known for her part in assisting Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s escape from Benbecula to the Isle of Skye in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden. Aged just 24, and from a pro-Government family, MacDonald was as unlikely a Jacobite heroine as you could imagine. And yet, her actions helped Charles evade detection and, eventually, flee to safety.

These events have been immortalised by the ‘Skye Boat Song’, but despite her crucial role in Charlie’s escape, Flora is all-too-often relegated to the background. So, who was she really? What led her to take on the risky mission of smuggling Charles to Skye? And what happened in the years that followed?

Flora Fraser is the author of Pretty Young Rebel: The Life of Flora MacDonald, which was published in September 2022.

This podcast was first released in September 2022.