The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 19

A further picture reveals a sombre moment... John’s effervescence is replaced by exhaustion

The memory of the unprepossessing Charlie, who was largely unconcerned about the terrible fate that met his followers after his defeat, has cast a shadow over Flora’s reputation. She’s not taken seriously. People snigger at her feat in making Bonnie Prince Charlie cross-dress as her Irish maid. It’s pure pantomime, they joke. But she was brave. Alan Ramsay’s portrait of the Jacobite heroine testifies to her strength.

When she was arrested, the authorities could have paraded her through the streets of London and even imposed on her a public execution, a fate suffered by hundreds of other Jacobites. Instead, they locked Flora in the Tower of London.

When she and her husband emigrated to America, her life was not easy; she lost everything. Finally, on her voyage over the Atlantic, she was gutsy when confronted by pirates. Was Flora another example of the Macdonalds’ fatal flaw or, in a broader context, of Scotland’s tendency to see itself as a failure? Struggled In having struggled for centuries to hold its own against England, its larger neighbour, Scotland has achieved a strong identity. As for Flora she, along with her Highland compatriots, was pitted in a desperate but doomed, fight for freedom against an invading force.

Was she outstanding? Yes! Courageous? Yes! But, in the end her judgement was as poor as that of Mary Queen of Scots. She backed two losing sides.

First, the Jacobites, then the British in the American War of Independence. She championed the rebels first, then the Crown.

Are the Macdonalds beleaguered by their ambivalence between the establishment and the nonconformist? This dilemma runs like a thread through each generation. From the days of the Scottish freedom-fighters of the 13th and 14th Centuries, to the Jacobite period when Flora played her part in the Highlanders’ bid for their own Government, to the present day, Scotland has struggled to assert itself as a nation.

I’m sure John, my grandfather, was filled with ambivalence too. All Highland lairds were. After the failure of 1745, when many were dispossessed for their Jacobite sympathies, much that distinguished the Highland way of life was banned.

Speaking Gaelic was forbidden and the kilt and bagpipes were outlawed. Many chieftains, themselves targeted by the Hanoverian Government, raised rents or cleared their tenants off the land and introduced sheep instead.

Little by little these lairds became less concerned with their followers. Actually, the rot began as far back as the early 17th Century, when James VI (I of England) insisted the clan chief’s eldest son (or daughter) be educated away from the Highlands. In this way the Crown started to anglicise the area, thus taming and eventually subjugating it.

Although Scottish lairds often attended English schools, in John’s case Eton, they still felt a visceral loyalty towards Scotland but in my grandfather’s day, making the nation a region and calling it North Britain, became a trend. When war was declared in August 1914, England, Wales, Scotland and most of Ireland pulled together against the common enemy and John was the first to want to participate. At ease The Great War took its toll on our grandfather. Late Victorian studio portraits of the young laird show him at ease, striking a pose in kilt, sporran and tammy.

These photographs suggest a relaxed, somewhat vain youth. As he reached early middle age, John is captured cuddling his first-born, ambling by the Largie pond, or scything grass in his policies.

A few years later, however, everything has changed and a further picture reveals a sombre moment in northern France. In officer’s uniform, he stands on a step outside a chateau, behind a French private leaning on crutches and an elderly, decorated Gallic soldier. Here John’s effervescence is replaced by exhaustion.

What happened? At the outset of hostilities John was 41 years of age, too old for joining up. Although 18 months later in 1916 under the Military Act, the army accepted men as old as he.

However, it was not his age that disqualified him from active military service but his health. His deafness counted against him, although earlier in his life he had joined the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders’ 3rd battalion of volunteers.

Greatly disappointed, John watched his contemporaries dust their epaulettes and prepare to defend their country.

Thomas Nelson of Achnacloich, near Connel, was one, while James Howard Lindsay of Lunga, of 14th Battalion of the London Scottish, County of London Regiment, was another. Younger men also were in a fever to join up, like the sons of May Tarrat. The two brothers, born 12 months apart, lived on the Knapdale peninsula at Ellary.

To add insult to injury, John had a fleet of brothersin-law eligible to serve. His wife Daisy, one of eight children, came from a long line of professional soldiers, her father a hero of the Boer War.

She had four brothers too: among them, Colville a professional soldier, Lewis a naval man and the baby of the family, Campbell Tempest at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. To make matters harder, Daisy’s twin sister Violet had just married a 60th Rifles officer, Hugh Willan, shortly to go to the Western Front.

From his West Highland lair, John followed the news of the struggle besetting a country he admired. As a man who loved France. Counter-strike News arrived of the battle of Mons, where the British held out against the enemy but had to retreat when the Germans attacked from the south. Belgium was quickly over-run and its allies retreated.

When the Kaiser’s troops advanced towards Paris, reaching 20 miles from its outskirts, the French general, Joffre, launched a counter-strike transporting troops by any means possible.

This was the first battle of the Marne, which saved the French from defeat but exhausted them, as they failed to gain any strategic advantages.

Following the news of these events, John read in the Times the notices of the wounded and dead. He also learned about the damaged cities and towns he had visited before the war: the unconscionable destruction of Reims Cathedral, France’s Westminster Abbey, where French kings had been crowned.

Germany bombed the cathedral on September 20. The scaffolding around the north tower caught fire and the lead on the roof melted and poured from the rivuleted mouths of the stone gargoyles. Fierce battles raged in Ypres a fortnight later and on October 3 the cathedral and the Cloth Hall burned down. (More tomorrow.)