Gaelic, like all the other celtic languages on these shores, is a language rooted in the spoken word. The written word always played second fiddle when it came to passing on stories or storing the laws of the land. The Celts were famous the world over….well the known world at least…for their oratory skills and their eloquence even when speaking in a second language. When you read of the druids remembering their history, laws and secrets off by heart its because of how the Celtic nations worked…not just because your local druid didn’t want his neighbourhood roman stealing his secrets

This story I’m about to copy down doesn’t appear in any history book but has been passed down the generations orally. It was told by Donnie Campbell, who worked at the Sabhal Mor Ostaig further education college on Skye, to Alistair Moffat during their many years of working together. It does appear in Alistairs book “The Sea Kingdoms” but I want to get the story on the internet as well as it deserves to be told

What follows is an outline of the story Donnie told about what happened before the battle at Culloden…told not by or about the fanciful Bonnie Prince Charlie or his leading cohorts but about the men in his army.

“When the Highland Army reached Inverness in April 1746, it was pursued by government forces commanded by the Duke of Cumberlnad and supported by the Rear-Admiral Byng’s fleet in the Moray Firth, well-equipped, properly provisioned modern army which, throughout the Jacobite Rebellion, had never managed to stand its ground and resist the furious charges of the regiments of clansmen raised by Prince Charles Edward Stuart. It seemed that elemental savagery had won at Prestonpans and Falkirk and would continue to win. Even though his generals advised a guerrilla campaign in the mountains, the Prince chose to turn his undefeated army and fight on Drumossie Moor, near Culloden House. It was to be the last pitched battle fought on British soil.

At about eleven o’clock in the morning of the 16 April, lookouts from Clan Cameron and Clan Chatton peered thought the sleeting rain and saw the columns of the government army advancing to the moor. The waiting ranks of Highlanders stood to and watched the march of the scarlet and white silk standards, listening to the fife and drum and the tramp of soldiers forming up in lines abreast to face them. The government commanders rode up and down the lines to encourage their men, some of whom had run for their lives as the highlanders charged at the battle of Falkirk only three months before. They reminded them of their tactics and implored them to stand fast. Some government soldiers began to shout abuse at the enemy who stood across the moor, 500 yards away.

The clansmen shouted their taunts and clashed their broadswords against their targes, but mostly they watched and waited. Standing in family groups, fathers with their sons behind them, uncles with their nephews at their shoulder, cousins side by side, many were silent, knowing what was to come. Leaders of a Gaelic army which relied entirely on the terrifying power of a furious charge always set the most experienced and older men in front, culminating in the chief of the name. The Gaels believed that courage flowed down the generations. As they stood in the heather and watched the redcoats prepare for battle, some men sang the Twentieth Psalm but, as Donnie emphasized, others did something entirely unique for a Highland army. They recited their genealogy: ‘Is mise mac Ruari, mac Iain, mac Domhnaill.’ Some men could go back through the generations for hundreds of years. While government soldiers were shouting abuse and challenges, listening to their officers and checking their equipment, clansmen were remembering why they had come to fight. For families, for their history and the land from which neither were divisible, they stood quietly on the moor with only their shields and broadswords and all their courage.
Once the government army had set up their artillery, they began a murderous cannonade. Round shot ploughed through the Highland lines, but Prince Charles would not give the signal to attack. For more than an hour the clansmen shouted over the shoulders begging for ‘Claidheamh Mor!’, the order to charge. Unable to stand still any longer under the incessant cannon fire, Clan Chattan finally broke away. Mackintoshes, MacBeans and McGillivrays roared their war cries ‘Loch Moy!’ and ‘Dunmaglass!’ as they raced towards the redcoats. And when they saw that Clan Chattan was away, Clan Cameron, the Atholl brigade and the Appin Stewarts broke into the charge. Donald Cameron of Locheil raised his broadsword and shouted, ‘Is sinne clann Thearlaich!’, ‘We are the children of Charles!’

As Prince Charles peered through the smoke he saw his clan regiments blown to bits by disciplined musket fire and grapeshot. Few Highlanders reached the government lines. Of the handful who broke through, John McGillivray killed twelve me and ran on to the battalions in the rear where he died. Gillies MacBean, an officer of Clan Chattan, was repeatedly stabbed by bayonet thrusts and his leg broken by grapeshot, but he still broke through the front line before the second cut him down. But they were to few and quickly isolated. When the charge failed the Stewarts and Camerons retreated, balking backwards and glaring at the redcoats in defiance.

Gaelic Scotland began to die at Culloden. The repressive aftermath of the battle was the beginning of a long end for the clans, their culture and language. But what struck me forcibly about the Donnie Campbell story was that the significant difference between the two armies was not their equipment - modern against medieval - or their tactics - discipline against a furious charge - but their reasons for fighting. One took the field for the maintenance of a Protestant and increasingly constitutional monarchy, for a version of progress and for regular pay and rations. The other fought for its sense of itself. Behind the clansmen who recited their genealogy stood the ghosts of the past, and in their war cries were the names of their places. Within a generation of Culloden the great emigrations to the New World had begun to convert the Highlanders’ stories into riddles or pistache, as the drowsy nostalgia was substituted for badly understood past.”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2005 at 9:02 am and is filed under Every Day Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.