John Roy Stuart and Duncan Forbes of Culloden were real people. Although I have imagined and assigned to them specific fictional roles in my Storm over Scotland series, including giving John Roy a fictional family, their relative political positions, loyalties and commitment are accurate. Both men played crucial roles in the history of the ’45, John Roy passionately in favour of the restoration of the House of Stuart, Duncan Forbes of Culloden passionately opposed. If you would like to read more about the parts they played in those turbulent times, I researched and wrote up their real stories in Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the ’45.
In the Scottish style, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session, was often known simply as Culloden, the name of his estate near Inverness, his ancestral acres. This custom continues in farming communities in Scotland to this day.
It’s not entirely an accident of history that the Battle of Culloden in April 1746 was fought where it was. It’s certainly an irony of history that the name of Duncan Forbes should be forever associated with this mythic and bloody last battle, the last pitched battle fought on British soil, and its brutal aftermath. Forbes could be ruthless in pursuit of his ambitions for Scotland but he was believed in showing mercy too. When he protested to the Duke of Cumberland about the cruelties which followed Culloden, Cumberland dismissed him as ‘that old woman who spoke to me of humanity.’
Provost John Coutts was also a real person, as was James Nicholson, the coffee-house keeper in Leith and Professor Alexander Monro. A banyan was a comfortable and elegant dressing gown, apparently much favoured by intellectual men. If you were relaxing at home wearing one, you might also have called it your dishabilly, pronounced dis-habilly. This comes from the French word déshabille, meaning undressed.
There is more information about the perpetual servitude endured by Scotland’s coal miners and the position of enslaved African people in Scotland on the websites of the National Records of Scotland and the National Mining Museum.
The library of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh still has the accounts and receipts relevant to the construction of the bagnio built in the early 18th century. This includes ‘a place for the eagle to stand.’
Readers not familiar with the Scots tongue might like to know that gey meaning very is pronounced with a hard g. I think the Scots words I’ve used are understandable in context. A very useful resource is the Scots Dictionary Online.
Menzies should be pronounced in the Scottish way – Ming-is. Liddell is pronounced Lidl, like the modern supermarket chain, ie NOT with the stress on the second syllable.
My Bible for grammar, punctuation, accepted usage and more is New Hart’s Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors. (Oxford University Press)
I’ve used –ize rather than –ise endings, as I was taught at Garscadden Primary School in Glasgow back in the day, because 18th century people favoured those endings – as does the modern Concise Oxford Dictionary – and because I have a penchant for the elegant strokes of the letter z.