I'm Bruce Fummey, and today I'm going to tell you a Jacobite story; innocents will be beaten, men, women
and children will die. There'll be heartless looting and burning folk out of their homes to face winter
sleety, dribble and cranreuch cauld (biting east wind). The thing is that before I even tell the tale, you probably already
know the victims and the perpetrators. Who were the goodies and who were the baddies, but stick around
because these are real people, whose tale deserves to be told. If you're interested
in the people, places and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe button at the
bottom right. In the meantime, let me tell you their story. It was the 17th of January, and the
soldiers were given their orders; essentially carte blanche to go on a spree of pillage and burning,
that would leave every village in this valley devastated. Sometime after 10 pm on the night of
Tuesday, the 24th of January, they came from that direction and they headed down the hill behind me.
When they got to their first village here, the residents were thrown out into the night, as
the soldiers went through their houses. Then the Captain called his troops back out into the street,
and he proclaimed burn all the houses in the town, spare none, except one. There was one woman called
Mrs Patterson who had provided support and hospitality in the past. Her house would be spared, oh and the
church. The church was one place of refuge for some as they ran heather and thither on this street. Of
course some didn't dare to stay in the town, and they ran for the hills and the fields. The local
School Master, William Davidson, was a known target, so he ran for the woods leaving his pregnant wife
in their home. When she complained to the men plundering her belongings, they knocked her to
the ground with the butt of their guns, and left her for dead. Some tried to move their belongings out
of their houses to preserve them from the fires, but that just left easier pickings for the soldiers.
At nine the next morning, two to three hundred troops moved west to the next village.
They took with them, William Maitland, whose dad owned the local inn. When they reached
it they fed their horses and then went about their business in this community.
Jean Eadie's was one of the larger houses. When she begged for them to spare it,
they broke down the door, took what they could and then used straw to set fire the building.
When they got to James Brice's house, only his wife was in. She fled to the hills,
and the torches burned, they say with children still inside. When Alexander Gibson's house and
business was looted and burned, he himself was beaten and robbed. James Maitland, the innkeeper,
whose son had guided the troops here, had been promised that his house would be spared, but no.
They tell me that on the 28th, 11 miles to the north, the Captain of those troops was being
put up by the Caw family. After an argument, he left the house and gave the order to start
burning. One of his associates was heard to say, that he hoped they would get a Glencoing, and let them
all burn together. To be fair, most of the folks who died over these few days, died of exposure
from the cold, rather than heat of the flames. So that's all right then eh? In this village
there was an old woman in a house, and she was in it, as it was lit around about her.
She was carried out by friends in a blanket, but died shortly after. Now this is almost exactly
the same scenario for which Patrick Seller was charged for murder, as he cleared Sutherland
tenants for sheep a hundred years later. It seems that hearts were no softer then. Are they today?
You see if I'd been alive 300 years ago, it would have been my house that they were
burning, because I live in this village, where only one house stands that survived that night.
In the days of pub pool teams and darts teams and the like, each of the neighbouring villages
that we played against, suffered the same fate. Now you've probably already got the image of
pitiless, red coated soldiers setting to their task with eager alacrity, but you'd be wrong,
because the soldiers carrying out this brutality, were tartan-clad, Claymore carrying Highlanders. It
was Macdonalds, Camerons, Stewarts and Macleans, led by Ranald Macdonald of Clanranald who did this.
You see in the 17th of January, 1716, on behalf of King James the Eighth, or the Old Pretender, depending on
your chosen side, the Earl of Mar had given orders, that the enemy should be as much incommoded as
possible, by destroying all the corn and forage which may serve to support them
on their march, and burning the houses and villages, which may be necessary for quartering the enemy.
So on the night of the 24th of January, Auchterarder was burned, and folks were cast out into January snow.
The next day, my own wee village here was burned. Now by the 27th of January, King James realised
that this was public relations nightmare, and he issued a declaration saying, "whereas it
was absolutely necessary for our services and the public safety, that the villages of Auchterarder
Blackford, should be burned and destroyed to prevent the far greater inconveniences and
hardships which must have ensued". What! What greater inconvenience in stealing your stuff,
taking your food, throwing you into the winter snow and setting your house on fire! I'm trying to imagine
something more inconvenient than that, and if you're thinking trying to get through to a Royal
Bank of Scotland call centre, I did think of that, but at least you can have a cup of tea, or
a caramel wafer while you're waiting for RBS customer service, in fact you could have a few
caramel wafers when you're waiting. I was 11 stones (154 pounds) when I phoned for a new pin number, look at me now!
Actually, on the subject of being overweight, I ordered this, 'Let me tell you a story' hoodie for
myself from my online shop. You'll find it under this video, or at www.scotlandhistory tours.co.uk/shop
Now, a word of warning, the system seems to default to small,
so make sure you select your size. By the time I got my new pin number from the bank,
the hoodie didn't fit, so I've now got a 'Let me tell you a story' hoodie in a size small
to give away. Here's what we're going to do; my wife likes reading the comment section,
so if you say in the comment section, I'd love a 'Let me tell you a story' hoodie because ...
and then finish the sentence, then my wife will choose her favourite. We'll respond to
that comment and get you to send your details, and we'll post it out to you. Now remember it's small
and it's my wife you've got to satisfy, so good luck with that. Closing date's the 4th of September.
Check for responses to your comments after that. Now back to the story
The point is that James realised the public relations disaster, and he promised to compensate
for when he eventually regained his throne. Spoiler alert, he never did. What's worse, the
day after James's face-saving PR declaration was issued, Jacobite troops arrived here,
in Dunning, to burn this village. Later that year, to commemorate the events of January 1716,
the people of Dunning, planted this thorn tree, in what's now called
Thorn Tree Square. Around the corner there's a pub called the Thorn Tree. I'll be honest,
this isn't the original thorn tree. There have been a few replacements over the years,
but the thorn tree is still a symbol of this wee village in Strathearn. Braco and Creiff on the
other side of the strath, got their own versions of what I've already described in Auchterarder, Muthill,
Dunning and Blackford, and then, without engaging British Government troops, the reason for all this
James set sail back to France. Now if you're looking for atrocities carried out by the
other side, then you can click the white tab up there to watch a different video, but please
stick with me for two more minutes, and I promise I'll leave a link to that video at the end. You
see to people in our area, the story of the burning of Strathearn's old hat, but I wonder at what point
folks watching further afield realised, that it was Lowlanders being burned out by Jacobites? I wonder
what your reaction was, when you realise that that was the case. What would Jamie Fraser have done?
Did it challenge or reinforce your prejudices of goodies and baddies? As I said, in my video
on Sutherland clearances, I told of an old lady, whose home was lit with her in it, and while she
was dragged out she later died. There were people in the comments who waved aside this atrocity and
argued against the sympathy that I showed, because change was needed and populations had to be moved.
In this tale, a very similar thing happened, but when the boot was on the other foot, I'm
sure there will be people who argue that scorched earth was necessary, and post-Culloden was worse,
the source isn't reliable, or whatever, and some of that might be true. I'll leave a link
in the description to the sources for both the stories. You can judge for yourselves, but my
cries are not against one cause or another, but in humanity there's no monopoly on good and bad,
there's just people. People like you and me, who generously condone, yet scarcely understand.
In my very popular video 'Should Black People Talk About Scottish History', lots of people said in the
comment section, anyone can talk about Scottish history, so long as the facts are correct. Now I
get the desire for truth, but it did make me laugh, because I'm not sure how strong that desire for
truth really is. I see folks making declarations of fact about thousand-year-old events,
whilst misrepresenting today's news events with the same self-assured confidence. We pick a side,
and then we paint the other as extremists, as we whitewash our own with tolerance and excuses. As a
result of these videos, I've been accused of being a Jacobite, an anti-Jacobite, a rabid nationalist,
a fifth column unionist, a black man pretending to be white, a white man pretending to be black.
Geez somebody once even accused me of being overweight, the cheeky bastard! It seems to
me that most of us are guilty of believing first, and observing second. Whatever your belief system,
opinion or version of the facts, let's not lose sight of the fact, that history is about humanity.
If you want a Jacobite tale, where the other side were the baddies, then there's a video coming
up on screen now. In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.