In days gone by, on the Isle of Skye, the lands were mostly shared between MacLeods and MacDonalds; Gaelic was the language of all work and social life; and the people had a shared Highland culture of song and poetry. Two well-researched publications, brought out this month, bring this past to life: a biography of Flora MacDonald and The Eliza Ross Collection, an unpublished compilation of Highland vocal and instrumental music, gathered on Raasay in 1812.
Flora entered the world in South Uist 300 years ago. Her biographer tells us that a cairn erected by clansfolk informs the visitor that: ‘she was born in 1722 near this place [Milton] and spent many years in the house that stood on this foundation’. While young, she spent the long winter months at Balivanich on Benbecula, near to Nunton, the seat of her Clanranald chief. At Flodigarry, on Skye, the house stands in which Flora began married life. A Celtic cross at Kilmuir, on the island’s north-west coast, marks her burial place. The gravestone, which records her death in 1790, carries these words of Dr Samuel Johnson who, in 1773, visited her and her husband Allan at their home in Kingsburgh: ‘Her name will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour’.
From these places and dates of birth and death, one can hardly imagine the extraordinary ups and downs that Flora experienced after helping Bonnie Prince Charlie escape from Benbecula to Skye disguised as Betty Burke, an Irish maid. The book, Pretty Young Rebel, gives a well-told account of Flora’s journeys. Here in Scotland, it’s impossible to be unaware of this justly admired woman. Her biographer tells us, however, that memorials were raised in more distant places. A historical marker at Fayetteville, North Carolina, records that: ‘near this spot the Scottish heroine bade farewell to her husband Allan MacDonald of Kingsburgh and his troops during the march-out of the islanders to the battle of Moore’s Creek February 1776’.
This appealing book covers the entire span of Flora’s eventful 68 years and the fates of her family and kin, as well as the influences of a diaspora of Highlanders on their fortunes. The heroine who kept the Young Chevalier (and the ambitions of the House of Stuart) alive, and who gave Stuart names to her children, chose to side with the Hanoverians in the American Revolutionary War.
Allan, a loyalist prisoner of the Americans after Moore’s Creek, had to forfeit all his possessions in the Scots country of the Carolinas. His subsequent farming enterprise in Canada failed, as had his agricultural innovations in Skye. First Flora, then Allan, made their ways back to their island homes in Scotland, where Flora’s life was ‘plagued by poor health as well as by financial hardship’.
The author, Flora Fraser, is well-qualified to write this biography. She’s descended from a Highland chief who lost his head for supporting the Prince who, on the death of the Old Pretender, styled himself Charles III, a title that wasn’t recognised by France, Spain or the Vatican. Fraser tells us, however, that when the United States Congress was pondering what form the future government should take, two gentlemen from Maryland took it upon themselves to visit Italy and to offer to make Charles Edward Stuart king of the new country. The tired exile replied: ‘I am too old. I have failed most of my life and have no wish to fail more’.
The author also poses the question: ‘Has anyone ever remained so famous so long thanks to a single boat ride undertaken?’ More precisely, Flora MacDonald’s fame stems from one verse of one song that tells of the perilous voyage to Skye of the Bonnie Prince. A generation after the thunderclaps had rent the Minch air, Skye folk were still singing songs that praised this Stuart Prince. One stirring Gaelic song in The Eliza Ross Collection says, if he were to come again, ‘thy friends would be joyful if the crown were placed on thee’. This from a household and island savagely persecuted for their loyalties to the Stuarts.
The hospitable MacLeods on Raasay would have refrained from singing this Jacobite song (Early in the morning as I awake) in the presence of the famous Tory who visited them in 1773. They entertained Dr Samuel Johnson, rather, with a repertoire of Gaelic love songs. These form the overwhelming bulk of The Eliza Ross Collection. Eliza was the grand-daughter of this Raasay laird and his wife Jane (‘Lady Raarsa’). It was a musical household and the learned doctor provides this vivid account:
… at night unexpectedly to us who were strangers, the carpet was taken up, the fiddler of the family came up, and a very vigorous and general dance was begun… After supper, a young Lady who was visiting, sung [Gaelic] songs, in which Lady Raarsa joined prettily enough, but not gracefully, the young ladies sustained the chorus better… I asked [Flora, Jane’s eldest daughter] that sat next me What is it about? I question if she conceived that I did not understand it. For the entertainment of the company, she said. But, Madam, what is the meaning of it? It is a love song. This was all the intelligence that I could obtain, nor have I ever been able to procure a translation.
His companion, James Boswell, fills out the description of the household, saying that the young MacLeods danced every night all year round and, quoting Johnson, that never had he seen a family where there was such airiness and gaiety. Eliza, the preserver of the tunes performed in this cheerful house, was the daughter of Isabella, one of the ‘young ladies’ who sang to the visitors.
Some 150 airs are included in the published volume of The Eliza Ross Collection, the great majority with Gaelic titles, for many of which the editors have sourced Gaelic texts. Many are instrumental dance tunes, for fiddle and pipes. While the airs form the core of the publication, it also includes short texts, which tell the story of the serendipitous discovery of this earliest manuscript collection of Highland music and how it was acquired for the School of Scottish Studies by Francis Collinson in 1954.
The manuscript has caught the attention of musicians, particularly pipers, for it contains six pibrochs, which are included in a separate section on bagpipe music. It also provides biographical detail of the collector, Eliza. Orphaned in 1795, after Isabella died on the sea journey home from India, she was taken to Raasay and cared for by her uncle James, twelfth laird. He later sent her to Edinburgh for schooling at Mary Erskine. Thanks to her training there in music, she was able to make this musical snapshot of the songs, dance and classical bagpipe music that characterised the culture of Skye in the 18th and 19th century.
One leaf of the volume displays a characterful portrait of Eliza, painted by her husband Sir Charles D’Oyly, while the couple lived in India. The editors tell us that, despite living abroad, Eliza maintained connection with Raasay. There is a folk memory of her being told of changes on Raasay while making the crossing from the mainland, whereupon she ‘dishevelled her elegant hair… wept at the news, beating her hands at the side of the boat’. In Gaelic poetry, she despaired for the sad transformations the island experienced.
In Skye today, people make great efforts to keep alive the culture of the eras of Eliza and Flora. A concert of music launched The Eliza Ross Collection on 6 September in An Talla Mhòr, a restored building on the campus of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, now the National Centre for Gaelic Language and Culture. The event was repeated the following night on Raasay.
What is notable about these two publications is the painstaking efforts made by the respective author and editors to source contemporary records, thus giving the reader a vision of the past, as it was.
David Macfadyen, a retired physician, was convenor of Aos Dà na, a book festival that was held for a number of years as part of Fèis an Eilein, Skye’s summer arts festival