Ye bonny banks and braes
9:27 p.m.
We also stopped for refreshments at a little town called Drumnadrochit, which is memorable only in that its name is well nigh unpronounceable. At Inverness, we followed the signs for Culloden, the battlefield where Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Highlanders suffered a decisive and crushing defeat at the hands (and bayonets) of the English in the culmination of the Jacobite rebellion. In a nutshell, Prince Charles roused the Highlanders to recapture the British throne for his father (who would have been King James, hence “Jacobite”), an endeavour which many of the clan chiefs thought was folly but which they went along with because of general dislike for the English. The Scottish forces were very successful, conquering all sorts of English cities as they headed south, so that the English feared they would march on London itself. However, they did not. Instead they regrouped and had a final showdown on April 16, 1746 on a boggy moor at Culloden. The men were starving, cold, dispirited and dead tired. The battle lasted for an hour and the Highlanders were totally destroyed. Prince Charles left the field before the fighting was done, was spirited away to Skye and thence to the continent, where he lived to be an old man cared for by an illegitimate daughter. It wasn’t a great end, but it was definitely too good for him.
As I wandered around the battlefield, looking at the markers, I was struck by the futility of it all, by the waste of life. After the rebellion was put down, the English decreed that the Scots could no longer wear the tartan or speak Gaelic upon pain of death. A way of life was over. It wasn’t long after that the Highland clearances took place, where people were put off their land in favour of sheep grazing. It was then that my husband’s ancestors emigrated to Canada, and a lot of others made it to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. I felt that I needed to write something, an epic poem perhaps, but I keep hearing it in my head as a ballad. We shall see.
Moving right along, after the battlefield we visited the Clava Cairns, neolithic stone structures consisting of burial cairns and standing stones. It was rather cool.
We stayed that night in Nairn at a lovely B&B, actually it was a fantastic place, easily the best accommodations we had all trip. Nairn is a beautiful town, right on the east coast of Scotland, and my husband and I agreed that it would be a perfect place to stop for a week and just chill. Truly lovely.
The next day we drove to Edinburgh in the rain. It was miserable. We stopped for a tour of The Glenlivet distillery, which was rather cool. Compared with Oban, this one was huge. Where Oban has three mash tanks, The Glenlivet has eight. It was interesting hearing the spiel again, virtually the same as before. I feel as though I know enough now to go into the business myself. I may even develop a taste for single malt.
The Fringe Festival had just opened in Edinburgh and that evening we managed to get tickets to a show, a crazy Australian comic named Jim Jeffries who is very funny, extremely irreverent, and says “cunt” and “fuck” excessively. It was completely different from what had gone before and was a welcome change. It poured that night, however. We were lucky enough to be invited by a young couple at a table under the umbrellas to join them to get out of the rain, John and Michelle, and the worst of the downpour let up when it was time for us to walk over to the auditorium for our show and thence back to our B&B afterwards.
Edinburgh is a big city and I took lots of pictures. Here are some of my favourites:
The next day we lunched with a distant cousin of my husband’s at The Dome, a very chichi restaurant in Edinburgh. I could not resist this photo:
Tomorrow we leave Edinburgh and head south into jolly old England.
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