THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE HEART

After the massacre at Culloden

the Crown and its lackeys impoverished

the Highlands – forbade the language and the kilt,

began the Clearances, the diasporas.

By Victorian times all that had become

the background of fiction – as in ‘Kidnapped’,

Robert Louis Stevenson’s adult novel

about bigotry, pride, loyalty and friendships,

masquerading as a boy’s adventure yarn

set among the lochs, the glens, the heather.


Young David Balfour – a Protestant

lowlander – is traduced, kidnapped, shipwrecked,

outlawed, redeemed. He becomes a killer

with a flintlock by force of circumstance.

Before he must take to the heather –

with his alter ego, Alan Breck

of the king’s coat with silver buttons –

he takes the ferry from Mull to the mainland.


The ferry is ramshackle. Nevertheless

the Sound is still, the day is bright, all

– passengers and boatmen – take turns at the oars

to a song in Gaelic, ‘Heel yo ho, boys!

Bring her head into the weather!’,

and David Balfour, although he understands

not a word, shares in the fellowship.


As they approach the mouth of Loch Aline

they see a ship at anchor, a coffin ship

destined for the American colonies,

and skiffs, plying between the ship and the shore,

full of people, and the shore crowded

with men, women, children – and, closer,

they hear from land and water a keening,

and one of the singers on the ferry

begins a lament, in which the others join.

Our hero, though he has none of the Gaelic,

is struck to the heart.

 

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3 Comments
  • Gerald Kelly
    March 26, 2022

    And ‘Kidnapped’ still remains one of my favourite novels!

  • Kate Harrison
    March 27, 2022

    In 1972 I worked for a few months in Appin, at a hotel which once been the home of the Stewarts of Ardsheal. It was still spoken about that there were those who knew the true identity of the murderer of Colin Campbell and this secret was handed down.

    James of the Glen, who was hanged for the murder, was the brother of Charles Stewart of Ardsheal. The estate was forfeit after Culloden and Campbell was appointed factor – so not very popular!

  • Mary Clark
    March 31, 2022

    Serendipitously, I’m reading The Outlander series now. Bathed in the blood of the Highlands, am I.