The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [285]
However, in the interest of accuracy—and because it later caused another and more significant error in the chronology of Dragonfly in Amber—the beginning date should really be 1946, instead of 1945.
Page 6: Claire refers to Frank’s “great-great-great-great-grandfather,” while Jack Randall is elsewhere mentioned as Frank’s “six-times great-grandfather.” I would assume that Claire, having little or no interest (at this point) in the finer details of genealogy, is not bothering about precision.
Page 28/29: Frank and the Reverend announce to Claire their finding of “news” regarding Jack Randall, which Claire calculates—from the appearance of the papers on the desk, as dating from “around 1750.” If Jack Randall died in 1746, he couldn’t have been “harassing the countryside” in 1750. And since he was newly arrived as commander at Ft. William when Jamie was flogged in October 1739, the date Claire gives should probably be 1740. On the other hand, Claire is no antiquarian and has no knowledge of Randall’s history—so I would myself think an eyeball estimate with a ten-year standard deviation is pretty good.
Page 62: “lobsterbacks”
This term was indeed used to describe English soldiers—but not in Scotland. It was in common use some years later, during the American Revolution, but probably was not current for the Scottish Highlands in 1743.
Page 105: The Selkirk Grace
The prayer young Hamish speaks is actually a well-known piece, called “The Selkirk Grace.” It is an authentic bit of Scottish culture; however, it was written by (or at least attributed to) Robert Burns—who unfortunately wasn’t born yet in 1743.
The inclusion of this prayer was something of an ironic accident; I originally came across it in a collection of multicultural children’s poetry, where it was titled simply “Scottish prayer” and attributed to our old friend Anonymous. I would likely have recognized it, nonetheless—save that I was assiduously avoiding reading the works of Robert Burns because I knew that he wasn’t extant in the time period I was dealing with—and I wanted to avoid accidentally using this material anachronistically. Ironic, as I say.
A year or so ago, I met with Dr. Sheila Brock, curator of the new Museum of Scotland. Hearing that she was about to embark on Cross Stitch, I warned her (in some alarm) that there were in fact a few errors here or there (for example, the substitution of the innocuous if silly “sock knife” for the Gaelic term sgian dhu, and the Selkirk Grace).
Dr. Brock laughed, and said, “Well, you know, the Selkirk Grace is only attributed to
Burns; there’s no actual proof he wrote it. I should think your best defense is to claim that Burns might have taken it from an existing bit of folk verse.” That seemed good advice to me, so I’m sticking with it.
Page 105: “MacTavish”
This was a bit of clumsy editing (on my part). I had originally had Jamie going under the alias “Jamie MacTavish” when he meets Claire—the Scots not knowing who she was, but strongly suspecting she was a spy of some kind, and unwilling to reveal Jamie’s identity. However, the bit in which he was so introduced was cut out when I did the final trimming and splicing of the manuscript—and neither I, the editor, nor the copy editor noticed this reference, which was left hanging in the breeze.
Page 160: “cherries and apricots”
I am reliably informed by horticulturists of my acquaintance that neither cherries nor apricots would have been fruiting at this time of year. Am I a botanist? No.
Page 184: “Je suis prest.”
This is one of those things that isn’t an error, but people often think is. Yes, I know (as several