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Lord Rosebery has called the
’45 “the last burst of chivalry.” In its militant phase it was not only the
last but the greatest burst of knightly chivalry. But with the Prince’s
failure to escape from Scotland, three weeks after Culloden, in the ship
which brought the Arkaig treasure and took off the dying Duke of Perth,
there begins a page without a parallel in secular annals. For five months
Charles’s life was to depend absolutely upon the readiness of poor tacksmen
and crofters and fishermen Jacobites and Hanoverians alike, not only to
resist the bribe of £30,000 offered for his capture, but to risk their own
lives by helping him to evade the sleuth-hounds of an exasperated
Government. Those five months revealed something undreamt of by political
philosophers; a people, a nation almost, of Bayards and Jeanne d’Arce. It
was the first great bui>t of popular chivalry.
Father and Son.
For the thrilling details of the Odyssey of the Rebellion we are indebted
mainly to the good Bishop Forbes, most romantically loyal of Scottish
Jacobites, who, immediately after the Act of Indemnity was passed, sought
out as many as possible of the participators in “the late Rebellion,” and
took down from their lips the narratives which are to be found in his
monumental work, “The Lyon in Mourning.” Decidedly the most valuable of his
informants was Donald Macleod, tenant of Gualtergill, on Loch-Dunvegan, in
the island of Skye, whose story has been admirably recounted in Mr Evan
Macleod Barron’s “Prince Charlie’s Pilot” (Inverness): Robert Carruthers and
Sons). Like Flora Macdonald, he was of a Hanoverian branch of a clan, and
his was the far from exceptional case of a cliansman who did not simply
follow the lead of his chief. He was a man near 70, with, apparently, “a
boat of his own,” when, in the spring of 1746, he came to Inverness to take
a cargo of meal to Skye, and to see his son Murdoch, a lad of 15, who was a
pupil in the Inverness Grammar School. Lord Loudoun’s “Independent
Companies,” including that of Donald’s chief, the Laird of Macleod, were
then in the town. When they were retreating on the approach of the Prince’s
army Donald met his chief on the bridge, and responded to his command to
follow him by passing back “over the water to Charlie.” And instead of
taking meal to Skye he took banker AEneas Macdonald to Barra to fetch some
gold that had been landed there in December. They got it safely to Kinloch-moidiart,
and were about, to go to Inverness when AEnoas received the news of Culloden
and orders to meet Charles at Borodale. A day or two later Donald was also
summoned thither, and with the episode of the Prince meeting him alone in a
wood and throwing himself on his protection, Donald’s story merges in the
main plot of the Jacobite drama. And not only his story, but that of his
son. Donald’s surprise at seeing Murdoch at Borodale is easier to imagine
than the paternal mingling of pride and deprecation with which he heard the
boy tell how he “got himself provided with a claymore, dirk, and pistol, ran
off from the school, and took his chance in the field of Culloden
Battle”—just as many another stripling was to do on the battlefields of
South Africa. The wide scope of Donald’s pilotage is shown in the Prince’s
acceptance of his advice not to send to Macleod or Sir Alexander Macdonald.
But all his skill in his narrower sphere was required to save from shipwreck
the boat in which on that dreadful Saturday nicht 167 years ago to-day, the
Prince and his misfortunes were borne across to Benbecula by the stout arms
of the brave oarsmen, Roderick Macdonald, Lachlan Macmurrich, Roderick
Maccaskill, John Macdonald Duncan Rev, Alexander Macdonald. Edward Burke the
Edinburgh chairman, and young Murdoch
Macleod.
The Wanderings
As for what befell the Prince and his companions during the 61 days he was
under Donald’s protection — their wanderings from island to island, their
feasts of fresh-killed beeves, derelict fish, “dramach,” and cold
brandy-punch, their perilous chances by land and sea—are these things not
written in the pages of Mr Sanford Terry, of Mr W. B. Blaikie, and of Andrew
Lang? But they are detailed rather more fully in those of Mr Barron, who is
also commendably explicit in regard to geographical detail, and never leaves
us in doubt as to whether his personages are in Barra or Benbecula or North
or South Uist. He throws considerable light, too, on Donald’s mission to the
mainland, in connection with which he takes occasion to apply a light and
perhaps deserved coat of whitewash to Murray of Broughton, leaving him,
indeed, rather a shining figure in comparison with the officious informer to
the Government of Charles’s arrival in the Outer Isles, “a Presbyterian
minister in whose soul the chivalry of his race found no abode--the Rev.
John Macaulay, minister of South List, and grandfather of Lord Macaulay.”
But the chief value of the book is that it brings Donald Macleod’s name out
of the relative obscurity into which it has been undeservedly thrown by the
romantic aura surrounding the name of Flora Macdonald. Only the comparative
narrowness of the stage on which he was acting prevents his appeal to the
Highland honour of the 500 Hanoverian Mackenzies at Stornoway from ranking
among the great heroic utterances of history. “He has only two companions
with him, and when I am there I make the third. And let me tell you,
gentlemen, if Seaforth himself were here, by God! he durst not put a hand to
the Prince’s breast.”
The Prison Ships
It was on the evening of June 21, that memorable evening on which he was to
meet Flora Macdonald, that Charles bade farewell to Donald Macleod and his
boatmen. Murdoch made his way safely to Gualtergill. After a fortnight’s
wanderings on the Long Island Donald was captured and taken on board the
Furnace for examination by General Campbell, to whose reminder of the sum
that was on the Prince’s head he replied indignantly— "Though I could have
gotten all England and Scotland for my pains I would not have allowed a hair
of his body to be touched if I could help it.” When the Furnace reached
Tilbury the ill-treatment which, the old man received from the merciless
Captain John Ferguson, was exchanged only for the lingering miseries of the
prison ships. The prisoners were confined in the dark and foul holds, and
slept without covering amid stones and cables or the litter of homes. Many
of them were almost naked, the food served out to them included the flesh of
cattle that had died of rinderpest, and they were occasionally hoisted out
of the hold with a rope, half-drowned in the sea, and then tied to the mast
and flogged. To Donald it seemed that the object of the Government was “to
pine away their lives, and by piecemeal to destroy every single man of them.
And indeed the design had great success, for many of them died,” among
others, 60 of the 80 or 90 Grants who had surrendered at Inverness on a
promise of indemnity. Donald, however, survived the ten months of his
imprisonment. During his parole in London he was entertained by John
Walkingshaw (of whom and of his probable connection with the Walkinshaws of
Barrowfield we should like to hear more), who bestowed upon him a silver
snuff-box and the name of “the Faithful Palinurus,” a rather strained
allusion, since though Donald had been the pilot of adneas as well as of
Charles, he had been very wakeful at the helm. On his arrival at Leith in
1747 he was sent at once to Bishop (then the Rev. Mr) Forbes, who in tho
course of several long interviews took down details of Donald’s story. He
was feted in Edinburgh, and with £10 in his pocket, raised for him by
Forbes, set out for Skye on October 23. Four yearn later the following
paragraph, by Forbes, appeared in the Edinburgh papers—“ ‘Aero Perennius,’—Some
time last month died at Givdtergill, in the Isle of Skye, aged 72, Donald
Macleod, of late so well known to the world by the name of the Faithful
Palinunus.
In the decline of his life he
gave a strong proof how much he despised the gilded dust, that idol of the
times.” “Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum! ”—“Glasgow Herald,” April 26.
Prince
Charlie's Pilot
A Record of Loyalty and Devotion by Evan MacLeod Barron (1913) (pdf) |
