Prince Across the Water (31 page)

Angus Ban looked at me somberly. “But if the prince calls ye again?”

“If he calls, he shall no find Duncan MacDonald of Glenroy wanting.” But I didn't really think he'd be back. There was too much to lose and too little to win for him now.

Angus Ban gave me a man's handclasp, and then a pocket filled with fresh oats to speed me on my way.

So I returned to Glenroy, dodging groups of redcoats till I came to my own home once again. I had a long night and a day to think about all that had happened.

It's a hard thing to separate what's real from what's fancy. Did I really hear Mairi's voice and feel her ghostly touch as I lay in the Gloaming Pool, or was it my heart telling me the things I wanted to hear? Did the redcoats chase her ghost up and over the hill, or was it some poor live lassie they found on the other side?

I do know that the fits have come upon me less and less often since then. And when they do come, they pass more easily. Mairi's touch? The prince's? Or have I just outgrown the sickness, like a childhood pox safely past? I suppose it hardly matters why.

I can't really look into the future. I don't know what will happen to the Scotland I love. But I believe my people will survive and I along with them. We'll have songs and tales of courage to sustain us through the hard years. And whether there are princes or kings come again to our shores, whether there will be more battles or more mad, heroic charges doesn't really matter. Our spirit will survive—not by the sharpness of our swords, but by the sharpness of our wits.

Truly, we'll be wolves no longer, but as the tinker said once long ago, we'll survive like the foxes, their children.

WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT THIS BOOK

These are the people who are real: Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Keppoch MacDonald, Angus Ban, the widow Keppoch and her children, gentle Lochiel, Cluny McPherson, the “butcher” Cumberland, King George, Duke William, Atholl, and all the named generals on either side.

These are the people who are fictitious: the villagers of Glenroy, individual soldiers fighting at Culloden, the tinkers, the individual redcoats chasing Duncan and his friends through the heather and the servants in the widow Keppoch's cave.

And while there is a Glen Roy, there is no village at the top of it named Glenroy. Since we invented that village, we peopled it with heroes, and farmers and a miller and a farrier, too. Like many villages across the Highlands of Scotland, it sent most of its men off to fight for the Stuart and to die in the bloody massacre known as Culloden.

The basic story of the raising of Prince Charlie's flag at Glenfinnan, the terrible defeat on Drummossie Moor, the awful and relentless bloodletting by the rampaging English troops, and the prince's desperate flight through the heathery Highlands of Scotland always just a step ahead of the redcoats—that is all true. True, too, is the picture of Highland life with its feudal clan system, where men owed their land and their fighting lives to their laird or chieftain, who, like the Keppoch MacDonald, could call them out by sending forth the burning cross, the infamous
Creau toigh
, “The Cross of Shame.”

As to the ending of the story: Four days after crossing Loch Lochy, and six months after the defeat at Culloden, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, age twenty-five, was on a ship bound for France. He never set eyes on Scotland again.

His attempt to recapture the united throne of Scotland and England for his father had been a madcap adventure from the start, made possible only by his own determination and charisma, and by the wild courage of the Highlanders who followed him. Most of Scotland did
not
support Bonnie Prince Charlie, and only a few of the clans actually joined him, including the Camerons and the MacDonalds. Yet he won two major victories over better-trained and better-armed troops, and he was poised at one point to march right on into London. In fact, King George and his court were already packed and ready to flee. Whether or not Prince Charlie's generals were right to force a retreat back to Scotland is a question that is hotly debated to this day.

If the defeat at Culloden had been the end of the story, Charles would not be the legendary figure he is today. In fact, he would probably be despised as the man who brought ruin to the Highlands, for the defeat at Culloden meant the end of a way of life. The power of the Highland lairds was broken. And the English worked hard at destroying the Scottish religion, language, and education, and they managed to put an end to the clan system as well.

Yet the courage and endurance Prince Charlie displayed in escaping his pursuers—living for five months in the Highlands, crossing the heathery hills not once but many times—that courage lives on in the imagination of the Scottish people. So do the stories of Flora MacDonald (in whose company he dressed as a maid) and others who risked all that they had to protect him. It is amazing to note that not one of the impoverished Highlanders sold the prince out, not even for the astonishing sum of thirty thousand pounds offered by the English, a fortune in those times.

In his last few days in Scotland, Bonnie Prince Charlie did indeed journey from “Cluny's Cage” to Loch Lochy by way of Glen Roy. The adventure Duncan shares with the prince is mostly fictitious—though we have borrowed a number of incidents from Prince Charlie's actual five months in hiding, such as the prince peering out of the bothy and surprising a visitor, and the “privy council” conversation, among others. Of course, the time in the Gloaming Pool is made up whole cloth. However, it is typical of the hairs-breadth escapes the prince experienced during his flight through the heathery hills. Angus Ban MacDonald did accompany Charles on some of these travels, but we have inserted him into this part of the adventure in the place of John Roy Stuart, and hope that the Stuart clan will forgive us that small change.

Alas, once back on the continent, Charles led an unremarkable and even dissolute life until his death in 1788, drifting from place to place with no prospect of ever recapturing the glory that was once briefly, his. It can honestly be said that he left the best part of himself in the Highlands.

A note about Highland dress: In the eighteenth century, poor Highland men like the Glenroy MacDonalds would have worn a sark, or long linen shirt, and a kilt made up of a single piece of woven woolen cloth that could be gathered together and held up with a leather belt, a length thrown over the shoulder. Though often barefoot during the spring, summer, and fall months, on a march they would have worn either shoes of untanned hide or—when expecting to go long distances—cuarans, which were like boots that reached almost to the knees, shaped to the leg and kept in position by leather thongs. Knee-high stockings often supported a
sken dhu
, a knife. The bonnet or woolen hat was where the clan badge would be pinned.

The tartans at this time for the poorer folk would have been simple checks of two or three colors, not the more defined clan tartans we know today, though they were often distinctive by districts. So the MacDonalds in a particular location might have similar recognizable patterns, but certainly never as elaborate as the ones we see today. The wools would have been colored by natural dyes from plants, roots, berries. But since they would have been worn every day, after a while the colors would be faded.

There really was a proscription against the wearing of kilts and tartans, the playing of bagpipes, and the speaking of Gaelic, all to break the spirit of the Scots and the clan system. The men really were forced to wear the hated trousers instead of their kilts. This all happened through the Disarming Act of 1746, half a year later than we have it in our story. The Act was rescinded in 1782 and to some extent, kilts came back into regular use in the Highlands after that. However, the fancy tartans with the clear clan affiliations we see today are really a nineteenth-century reconstruction. The beginning of the “tartan revival” was in 1822, when King George IV, visiting Edinburgh, brought it back into fashion.

A note about the speech: Highlanders generally spoke Gaelic. Their chiefs would have also spoken Scots (a form of English) as well as some French and Latin, because they were educated. The Lowland Scots would have spoken Scots-English. The English spoken by the English was close enough to Scots-English for them to understand one another. We have distinguished all the Scots—both chiefs and Highlanders—with a more archaic form of language:
dinna, couldna, wouldna, ye, yer
, etc. The English in our story speak without these archaisms. It is a literary shorthand only.

Some of the Scottish words used in this book:

bairn
—young child

bannock
—a round, flat cake or roll

blether
—to talk nonsense

bloody
—a word often used as a curse

bothy
—a rough hut

breeks
—trousers

byre
—barn

claymore
—the old Scottish two-handed sword

craw
—crow

cuaran
—a boot reaching almost to the knee

cushie doo
—pigeon, dove

daft/daftie
—crazy, a crazy person

dirk
—a knife used in battle

dyke
—stone wall, boundary marker in fields

fash
—to bother, worry, distress

greeting
—weeping

havers, haverings
—dreamy nonsense

laird
—the lord or leader of the clan

loch
—a Highland lake

neeps
—turnips

pibroch
—particular kind of bagpipe tune

porridge
—oatmeal

sark
—long shirt

shieling
—summer pasture for cows and sheep

skelp
—slap or smack with palm of hand

sken dhu
—knife carried in a man's stocking top

targe
—shield

wee
—small, little

Scotland has a very rich tradition of folktales and we are pleased to be able to include some of them in our story. The tale Granda tells to Duncan can be found in slightly different form in
Folk Tales of the Highlands
by Gregor Ian Smith. The tale Duncan tells the prince is adapted from the version in
A Kist O' Whistles
by Moira Miller.

Finally, the Keppoch branch of the MacDonalds generally spell their name “MacDonell.” We have used the more familiar spelling to emphasize their kinship with the other branches of Clan Donald, which was the most powerful of all the Highland clans.

Bonnie Charlie's now awa'
,

Safely owre the friendly main;

Mony a heart will break in twa
,

Should he no' come back again
.

Will ye no come back again?

Will ye no come back again?

Better lo'ed ye canna be
,

Will ye no come back again?

—Scots song by Lady Nairne

A Personal History by Jane Yolen

I was born in New York City on February 11, 1939. Because February 11 is also Thomas Edison's birthday, my parents used to say I brought light into their world. But my parents were both writers and prone to exaggeration. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double acrostics. My younger brother, Steve, eventually became a newspaperman. We were a family of an awful lot of words!

We lived in the city for most of my childhood, with two brief moves: to California for a year while my father worked as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. films, and then to Newport News, Virginia, during the World War II years, when my mother moved my baby brother and me in with her parents while my father was stationed in London running the Army's secret radio.

When I was thirteen, we moved to Connecticut. After college I worked in book publishing in New York for five years, married, and after a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East with my husband in a Volkswagen camper, returned to the States. We bought a house in Massachusetts, where we lived almost happily ever after, raising three wonderful children.

I say “almost,” because in 2006, my wonderful husband of forty-four years—Professor David Stemple, the original Pa in my Caldecott Award–winning picture book,
Owl Moon
—died. I still live in the same house in Massachusetts.

And I am still writing.

I have often been called the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” something first noted in
Newsweek
close to forty years ago because I was writing a lot of my own fairy tales at the time.

The sum of my books—including some eighty-five fairy tales in a variety of collections and anthologies—is now well over 335. Probably the most famous are
Owl Moon
,
The Devil's Arithmetic
, and
How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?
My work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books, through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. I've also written lyrics for folk and rock groups, scripted several animated shorts, and done voiceover work for animated short movies. And I do a monthly radio show called
Once Upon a Time
.

These days, my work includes writing books with each of my three children, now grown up and with families of their own. With Heidi, I have written mostly picture books, including
Not All Princesses Dress in Pink
and the nonfiction series Unsolved Mysteries from History. With my son Adam, I have written a series of Rock and Roll Fairy Tales for middle grades, among other fantasy novels. With my son Jason, who is an award-winning nature photographer, I have written poems to accompany his photographs for books like
Wild Wings
and
Color Me a Rhyme.

And I am still writing.

Oh—along the way, I have won a lot of awards: two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Awards, the Jewish Book Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award, among many accolades. I have also won (for my full body of work) the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library Association's Regina Medal, the University of Minnesota's Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi and de Grummond Children's Literature Collection's Southern Miss Medallion, and the Smith College Medal. Six colleges and universities have given me honorary doctorate degrees. One of my awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set my good coat on fire when the top part of it (a large magnifying glass) caught the sunlight. So I always give this warning: Be careful with awards and put them where the sun don't shine!