The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [193]
The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.
—William Butler Yeats, “The Hosting of the Sidhe”
[Footnote: An interesting modern variation on the Wild Hunt is the BBC television series Quatermass and the Pit, by Nigel Kneale, broadcast in December/January of 1958/59. In this science fiction serial, the concept of the Wild Hunt is used as a very literal metaphor for the murderous and bestial impulses of humanity (truly creepy in spots, hilarious in others; great acting!).]
Thomas Lally
Thomas Arthur, Comte de Lally, Baron Tollendal, is one of the real historical figures who appear in this book, along with George II, George III, and Horace Walpole. Born of an Irish father and a French mother (from whom he inherited his titles), he served with the famous Irish Brigade at Fontenoy and was a French general during the Seven Years War. He did in fact serve as Charles Edward Stuart’s aide de camp during the battle of Falkirk, in the ’45, and was mixed up in various Jacobite plots, including one hatched in Ireland in the 1760’s.
I have taken one small liberty with Thomas Lally, though. He was captured by the British following the Siege of Pondicherry, in India, and taken to England in 1761, not 1760. Given his real involvement with the Irish Jacobites—and his obvious spiritual kinship with Jamie Fraser as a prisoner of the English—I thought the minor temporal dislocation was worth it.
An interesting—if grim—footnote to Lally’s life is that he was indeed Just Furious about slurs cast on his reputation in France, following the French defeat at Pondicherry, and agitated to be sent back to France to defend himself at a court-martial. After five years of steady badgering, the British did send him back to France—where, in 1766, he was promptly convicted of treason and beheaded.
Twenty years later, a French court reviewed the evidence and reversed his conviction, which I trust he found satisfying.
Bog Bodies
I’ve always found bog bodies—the corpses of people found preserved in peat bogs—fascinating. The garb and accoutrements of the body found on Inchcleraun (which is a real place, and has a real monastery) are a composite of such items found on or with bog bodies from Europe. My thanks to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History for hosting a special exhibition on bog bodies that provided me with a great deal of useful information, and to the British Museum, whose Lindow Man has always spoken powerfully to me.
George II, George III, and Horace Walpole
I love Horace Walpole, as does anyone with an interest in eighteenth-century English society. The fourth son of Robert Walpole, who was England’s first prime minister (though he himself never used the title), Horace was not politically active, nor was he socially important, physically attractive, or otherwise very noticeable. He was, however, intelligent, observant, witty, sarcastic, and apparently never suffered from writer’s cramp. His letters provide one of the most detailed and intimate views of English society during the mid-eighteenth century, and I’m indebted to one of these missives for Lord John’s experience of King George II’s state funeral.
Below is the text of Walpole’s account of the funeral; you may find it interesting to compare this with the fictionalized view in Chapter 43. The temptation, when presented with such eloquent historical largesse, is