Storytelling & Local Characters

In the gently lit drawing room of Aldourie Castle on the shores of Loch Ness the curtains are drawn, the log fire is crackling in the grate and Hamish MacDonald, a man immersed in centuries of Highland oral tradition is relating tales of fleeing Jacobites from the battle of Culloden in 1746 and of the ghost armies still doing battle at nearby Loch Ashie.

When he pauses, as if on cue, the wood shifts and spurts embers into the room and we all look in the fire as if a restless spirit has been roused. Despite the cosy confines of the drawing room surrounded by portraits of the Fraser clan, we are outside on the hillsides breathless and stumbling in the snow knowing that British Army redcoats are in hot pursuit. 

Hamish, a poet, a playwright and a nationally recognised advocate of the Scots language, as well as a gifted storyteller exploits the tempo of the verse of these old ballads to convey the headlong terror of battle and the panic of flight before slowing into the melancholy of capture and the deep sadness of irretrievable loss. 

Who among those faces on the wall, I wonder, remembers that time in April 1746 when Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Jacobite rebellion were finally defeated by the Hanoverian forces of the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden. Who among them lost a loved one? Whose way of life was changed forever? Led by Hamish I, for a moment, am back there with them. More than 250 years have passed but the memories are strong and the link is palpable – the goose-bumps are real.