SCOTS AND THE FORTY-FIVE
By JANET ADAM SMITH
THE most significant date in Scottish history in the eighteenth century is 1723, the year in which the Society of Improvers of Knowledge of Agriculture was founded ; on the revival of the land was based nearly all the activity that transformed Scotland from a country that was a byword for poverty to a centre of economic, social and literary activity that drew the eyes of Europe. The real heroes of the century were the agriculturalists, inventors and intellectuals who effected this change. Yet for every Scot who has heard of Cockburn of Ormiston (introducer of turnips and potatoes), for every ten who have heard of David Hume, there are a thousand who feel they know all about Prince Charlie ; 1723 strikes no note in their heads or hearts, the Forty-five sounds like a trumpet.
So, on the historical picture of eighteenth-century Scotland has been superimposed the popular picture. There is little connection between the two. The men who were prominent in the Rising stood outside the new developments in agriculture, industry and letters ; the men who most extended Scotland's skill and prestige stood aside from the Rising. Indeed, about the only one of Scotland's intellectuals who took arms in the Forty-five was John Home the playwright, author of Douglas, a Tragedy ; he was on the Govern- ment side at Prestonpans, managed to get taken prisoner by the Jacobites, and was well twitted for his escapade by his cronies of the Edinburgh taverns.
Why, then, has the Forty-five come to play such a part in Scottish memories and feelings? Why did a Lowlander and Whig like Boswell regard it with sentiments with which "sober rationality" had little to do? Why do we still sing " Wac's me for Prince Charlie "—and never give a thought to Cockburn? Why do we go on pilgrimage to Culloden, or do honour, at Glenfinnan to the men who raised the standard two hundred years ago? The answer is complex, and goes deep into Scottish history and character. Nobody could unarvel all the reasons ; and to those indicated here every Scot will be able to add some of his own.
First, perhaps, comes the fact that the story of the Forty-five is a good story, and one that wears well. It is not a legend that cold truth can belittle ; the more we learn about it, the more its main es are confirmed. Years after we have first heard of Flora
zdonald sheltering the Prince, we meet her—older, to be sure—
the pages of Boswell, and the shrewd, pleasant hostess to Dr. Johnson in 1773 makes the heroine of 1745 appear more real, and no less charming. As children, our allegiance to Prince Charlie may have been won by the coloured picture in Scotland's Story of the hero throwing away his scabbard. Modern research (by Mr. and Miss Tayler in the Windsor archives) confirms this picture with an authentic eye-witness report. " Upon which he drew his sword " (recorded the Prince's companion John O'Sullivan), " ' Now Gents,' says he, `the sword is drawn, it won't be my fault if I set it in the Scabert, before yu be a free and happy people." But there are other good stories in Scotland's history—Montrose's campaigns, for instance—that have not become such powerful legends ; so we must look further.
History supplies the next set of reasons. Scotland in 1707 had concluded a treaty with England for the Union of Parliaments, a treaty which was at the time so unpopular that the Scots who signed it had to be protected from the crowds in Edinburgh. A century earlier the Scots had seen their king go south ; now it was the turn of their Parliament ; and all through the eighteenth century they felt a gap at the heart of their national life. At the time of Preston- pans and the taking of Edinburgh many Lowlanders may have been conscious mainly of the disturbance and inconvenience caused by the army from the Highlands ; but looking back a few years later Scots of all opinions could feel a deep satisfaction that their countrymen had beaten an English army_ in five minutes, had marched into the heart of England, and had sent King George and the people of London to their prayers. Here—if only in thought—was some compensation for a lost crown and a lost Parlia- ment. The association with France (however disappointing it had been in the matter of practical assistance) was a further source of satisfaction, as reminder that Scotland's fortunes need not at every point be bound to England's, and that she could still act as an independent country, making her own links with Europe.
Possibly the strongest of all the sources of sentiment about the Forty-five is the association of the Rising with the Highlands. Long before the seven men landed in Moidart the old life of the High- lands had begun to change. In the 'twenties, Highlanders had gone to find, in Georgia, or in their own Lowlands, a life hard indeed, but with more hope than life in the glens. In the 'thirties, Wade had pushed- his military roads up the Garry and down the Spey, into Badenoch and Lochaber, to end the isolation in which the Highland life had grown and flourished ; merchants could now begin to bring the North into the economic system of the rest of the country, and soldiers could put down the cattle-lifting which had been essential to the economy of the Highland clan with a long tail of non-productive fighting-men. The Government and the Kirk had long since begun their attack on the Gaelic. Had there been no Forty-five, the old life might still have died, but it would have died slowly, or it might have grown little by little into some- thing new. But after the clans had gone down before the English guns at Culloden, there was no gentle decay, and there could be no renaissance ; the repressive measures then taken turned such loyal supporters of the Government as Lord President Forbes into bitter critics, for they struck at the very roots of the Highland system.
The mainspring of the Highlander's life was gone ; his chief might be in exile, stripped of land and power ; his claymore and target were proscribed ; the tartan banned. The desolate tale of evictions that continued for over a hundred years, and of emigration that has never stopped, was the work not primarily of Governments, but of individuals, many of than Scots. But our feelings about these happenings are deeply embedded in our feelings about the Forty-five, for we see the repressions that followed the Rising as the great disaster that laid the Highlands open to the other evils. Lamenting the Forty-five, the Highlander is lamenting the days when the lowest clansman sat at table with his chief, when there was " in every cottage a musician, in every hamlet a poet," when there were enough mcn in the glen to have shinty games of a hundred
a side, when the girls sang as they milked the cows up in the summer sheilings. The Lowlander, too, is lamenting a life that had graces and virtues which he feels his own may lack.
Further, the story of the Forty-five is not only of the Highlands ; it expresses the Highlands. Every landscape needs its legends, and no legend could better suit the heavenly blue of the Minch on a fine day in June, or the dazzling white sands of Arisaig, than that of the handsome young Prince from over the sea ; while none could be more attuned to the waste and wildness of Rannoch, the desolate grandeur of Glencoe in rain and storm, than that of Culloden and the flight in the heather.
Finally, for the Scot, there are the reasons of the heart. Four hundred years ago he embraced a religion which demanded his reason and gave little scope to his feelings. His loyalty has often been asked for persons and institutions far removed from his every- day apprehensions and experience. Queen Anne and the Hanoverians could mean little to a Scot ; their ways were entirely alien, their faces unknown. But the heroes of the Forty-five were his own ; they belonged to his country, like Lochiel and Flora Macdonald ; they embraced its ways, like the Prince himself ; their triumphs and disasters were on familiar ground, Holyrood, Pres- tonpans, Falkirk, Inverness. Along with Burns, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Covenanters, they provided—and still provide—a focus for feelings that may have little other exercise in the Scot's daily life.
Assertion of independence, regard for old alliances, regret for time past, riches for the imagination, opportunity for loyalty, outlet for sentiment—all these things may be in the Scot's breast as, this year, he remembers Glenfinnan, and as—whether Tory or Socialist, Presbyterian or Catholic, Highland or Lowland—with a full heart he sings " Will 'ye no come back again? "
Previous page
