Over the past two and a half weeks, I went on two more excursions, one right down the road and one which required me to travel for a total of 12 hours in one day. I also made a bunch of plans for more extensive travel over the next two months. Last week, I made upcoming plans with one of my best friends from high school, Stef, who is studying abroad in Florence right now. She is spending her entire fall break with me! Not only will I be taking her to all my favorite places in Edinburgh and close by (maybe Linlithgow and Stirling), but we are going to take two weekend trips while she is here. This weekend we will be traveling with a tour group to the magnificent Scottish Highlands and to the even more magical Isle of Skye. Just you WAIT til you see the pictures I post on here when we get back! The second weekend we will be flying to Ireland where we will spend a day in Dublin, and then another day on a tour that includes the Cliffs of Moher along with a number of Irish villages, castles, and prehistoric settlements. I am SO excited to see Stef, to get back to my beloved Highlands, and then to finally get to visit Ireland!! I have also made plans to visit my BADA friend, Cecily, in Paris in November! We don't have an itinerary yet for the trip. Our only plan so far is the plan we have had since we met at Oxford this summer: to walk to the top of the Eiffel Tower! So those are my future plans right now. I am also hoping to visit Danielle in Lancaster and to get down to London at some point. We will see!
Back to the past two and a half weeks! Last Wednesday, Chloe and I went on a voyage to another Historic Scotland Castle: Craigmillar Castle which was just a short bus ride outside of the Edinburgh city center. After arriving at the closest bus stop, the only way to get to the castle was to walk a mile up and over a grassy hill. When we reached the top of the hill, I gasped. The bus stop had been surrounded my a medical center, multilane traffic, and roads covered with Scottish suburban homes. But when we reached the top of this hill, all of that disappeared. I have never had such a strong feeling that I had just been transported back in time. We were barely outside the bustling city of Edinburgh, and yet, from that spot on the hill, all we could see was grass, trees, blue sky, and a stunning, medieval castle. Where I had felt some elements of the city should still be visible (maybe sidewalks, maybe benches, more modern houses, and definitely the view of the city in the distance) there was nothing but nature and the castle. It was bizarre and really, really cool.
Chloe leading the way up the hill
The view at the top of the hill (seriously, I think we went through a time portal or warp or something at the top of that hill)
Me with Craigmillar Castle
Craigmillar Castle was a wealthy family's castle, and its oldest portions date back to the late 14th century. Annnnd, you guessed it! Mary Queen of Scots was there! She often went to Craigmillar to get away from the city and to take part in outdoor activities like archery and hunting. She also stayed at the castle when under a bout of depression, probably brought on by relations with her evil, deranged second husband, Darnley. It was in Craigmillar Castle that the plot to murder Darnley was hatched by Mary's supporters. In February 1567, Darnley's house was blown up but when his body was found it was clear he had been strangled and that the fire was probably set to cover up the evidence.
Like Linlithgow Palace, Craigmillar Castle is a relatively well preserved ruin in which visitors can explore many nooks and crannies. Also, the views from the other side of the Castle of Arthur's Seat and the Firth of Forth were stunning!
View of Arthur's Seat from outside the Castle (the weather was bizarre that day; one minute the sky looked like this and the next it looked like it does in the next pic)
Entrance to Craigmillar Castle
The Great Hall
My in the Castle prison… these doors are even smaller than the ones at Doune!
What is a Medieval Scottish Castle without the ridiculously narrow spiral stairs?
On Saturday, I went on a day pilgrimage. I got up at 3:45AM in order to catch a 5:30AM train to Inverness, "the capital of the Scottish Highlands." Again, I went alone. This was a trip I definitely wanted to take solo. I knew I'd be emotional, and I'd only feel free to completely feel if I made the voyage alone. I arrived around 10:45 and then caught a 11:20 bus to the destination of my pilgrimage: Culloden Battlefield. I finally reached the battlefield at 12:10. As the bus pulled up to the field, I saw the welcome sign that read, "Arach Blar Chuil-Lodair, aite don h-uile duine," a Gaelic phrase translated underneath as "Culloden Battlefield, a place for everyone."
I had visited Culloden Battlefield as part of my 18th Birthday/Graduation trip to Scotland with my parents two years ago. But, I didn't get it then… I didn't really understand what I was looking at… what happened on the land I was standing on… I didn't grasp how important this place was in the scope of Scottish history and for the definition of Scottish identity, specifically Scottish Highlander identity.
On April 16, 1746, over 1500 Scottish Highlanders were slaughtered on that field in a battle lasting barely an hour, officially ending the Jacobite Rising and changing life in the Highlands forever.
In the mid-18th century, George I was King of Britain. George was a Hanover King from Germany who didn't speak a lick of English, but had the strongest claim to the throne through his marriage. Meanwhile, James III of England /James VIII of Scotland, a Stuart (descendant of Mary Queen of Scots) with a claim to the throne, was exiled in Rome. In 1745, James' son, Bonnie Prince Charlie, invaded Scotland and was joined by those who supported James' claim to the throne who were named Jacobites. Prince Charlie gained great support from the Highlanders and with their aid took Edinburgh and succeeded in beating British government forces multiple times. However, on April 15, 1746, everything was working against Prince Charlie and his Jacobite forces. They were exhausted from an unsuccessful, nighttime ambush when they met the government forces at Culloden on April 16th. The Highlanders ran at the government forces (one-on-one, close range combat being their battle technique). As they ran, they were met with cannon fire, bullets, and, worse all, if these long range weapons did not kill them, bayonets to the stomach, neck, face etc. did the job once they reached the enemy line. 50 government soldiers died in the battle. Over 1500 Highlanders lost their lives. Any Jacobite that laid wounded on the field following the battle were bayonetted by the enemy soldiers.
Over the next days, many of the Highlander soldier who had survived and feld Culloden, were hunted down and killed. Over the next months, anyone suspected of being a Jacobite sympathizer, so aka the entire Highland population, were subjected to imprisonment, torture, rape, starvation, and execution with little or no evidence against them. Additionally, in order to suppress the Highlanders and any resurgence of a Jacobite retaliation, laws were passed banning the wearing of kilts, the wearing of any tartan (plaid print associated with each individual clan for centuries), and the Gaelic language that the Highlanders spoke. Essentially, the British government did all in their power to erase centuries upon centuries of Highland culture. They were stripped of their customs, their traditional clothing, their language, their homes. Their entire identity.
It was this history and my own extreme sympathy for the Jacobite cause and for the suppressed Highlanders that brought me on my pilgrimage that rainy Saturday morning.
Next to the battlefield now sits a wonderful museum. The exhibit inside goes through three stages: the first depicts what is known as "The 45," the miraculous year of 1745 when the Jacobite forces seriously gave the government forces a run for their money. The second is an examination of 1746 leading up to April during which the Jacobites began to falter. And the last is a short look at the night before the battle, and everything that was working in favor of the government army and against the Jacobites. What was so poignant about the exhibit was that the left side of each area displayed what was going on with the government side of things while the right side displayed what the Jacobites were doing. I spent an hour and half reading every single info plague and every single quote made be soldiers, citizens, political leaders, etc. whose allegiances lied with one or the other side. I was shocked to find that through this exhibit, my allegiance, which had previously been so far on the Jacobite side, was slowly but surely being pulled more central. I could really see both sides. Even though I still side with the Jacobites and specifically with the Highlanders when it comes to the Battle of Culloden and it's aftermath, I can now see both the pros and cons of both sides of the larger scale situation. It takes a really special, really unbiased exhibit to make its visitors start to put down their own personal biases.
I then returned to Inverness where I got to walk around for about an hour. While I was there, I accidentally came upon the River Ness. So incredibly pretty with the highland mountains in the background!
Over the next days, many of the Highlander soldier who had survived and feld Culloden, were hunted down and killed. Over the next months, anyone suspected of being a Jacobite sympathizer, so aka the entire Highland population, were subjected to imprisonment, torture, rape, starvation, and execution with little or no evidence against them. Additionally, in order to suppress the Highlanders and any resurgence of a Jacobite retaliation, laws were passed banning the wearing of kilts, the wearing of any tartan (plaid print associated with each individual clan for centuries), and the Gaelic language that the Highlanders spoke. Essentially, the British government did all in their power to erase centuries upon centuries of Highland culture. They were stripped of their customs, their traditional clothing, their language, their homes. Their entire identity.
It was this history and my own extreme sympathy for the Jacobite cause and for the suppressed Highlanders that brought me on my pilgrimage that rainy Saturday morning.
Next to the battlefield now sits a wonderful museum. The exhibit inside goes through three stages: the first depicts what is known as "The 45," the miraculous year of 1745 when the Jacobite forces seriously gave the government forces a run for their money. The second is an examination of 1746 leading up to April during which the Jacobites began to falter. And the last is a short look at the night before the battle, and everything that was working in favor of the government army and against the Jacobites. What was so poignant about the exhibit was that the left side of each area displayed what was going on with the government side of things while the right side displayed what the Jacobites were doing. I spent an hour and half reading every single info plague and every single quote made be soldiers, citizens, political leaders, etc. whose allegiances lied with one or the other side. I was shocked to find that through this exhibit, my allegiance, which had previously been so far on the Jacobite side, was slowly but surely being pulled more central. I could really see both sides. Even though I still side with the Jacobites and specifically with the Highlanders when it comes to the Battle of Culloden and it's aftermath, I can now see both the pros and cons of both sides of the larger scale situation. It takes a really special, really unbiased exhibit to make its visitors start to put down their own personal biases.
"The course of British, European, and world history was changed here"
Stage 2 of the exhibit (1746)
Stage 3 of the exhibit (the night before, during which the Jacobite forces trudged through heavy rain, cold, and darkness to try and ambush the government forces… but daylight came too soon and they had to turn back, exhausted; this was the state they were in on the day of the battle)
At the end of the "night before" tunnel, I reached a door leading into a theatre space. I had read about this part of the exhibit perviously in online reviews and was both excited for it while simultaneously dreading it. You enter the space and stand in the middle of the room surrounded on all four sides by big screens on which the field of Culloden is projected. You stand there for a while staring at the eerily quiet field around you; just a slight woosh of wind can be heard as it ruffles the grass. Then, you hear distant bagpipes and battle cries of the Highland soldiers. Suddenly, they appear on the one side of the field. As you watch them coming towards you, you hear the steady marching of organized soldiers behind you. You turn around to see the pristine, voiceless British government line coming at you from the other side. You are in the middle of the action. Then, with the first cannon fire from the government forces, the Jacobites are off and running towards you. You watch as the men around you are shot through the eyes, slammed into the mud by cannon balls, and eventually, when the lines meet, impaled by banonets. I watched it twice. It was hard, but I felt I had too. Even though these men on the screens were obviously actors, I felt that I owed the Highlanders my attention, my observance… Just like any cruel part of history, we must study it to learn the harshness of our past in order to prevent such things from happening again. Turning a blind eye to these gruesome, hard to watch, hard to think about events will benefit no one. As, I stood in that 360 battle experience, I kept thinking 'don't look away; you must watch; you must see and try to understand.'
After this experience, I was time to go out onto the battlefield. I was given a GPS operated audio guide, a very neat device that didn't require me to push any bottoms as I walked around. As I reached certain points on the field, the audio simply came on to tell me what happened in the spot I was standing. After leaving that theatre with the digital field of Culloden strewn with dead men, it was bizarre to walk out onto the actual field. It was so beautiful. Lush, green… and, super ironically, when I walked outside, I was again met by the sound of bagpipes. A man in a kilt standing on the field was playing "Scotland the Brave." It was so beautiful.
Feeling overwhelmed, emotional, and so grateful that I had travelled so far to see this place, I retreated back inside for the final part of the exhibit. The rest of the information had to do with the years following the battle and the oppressive laws put in place and barbaric actions taken towards the Highlanders. I read a few quotes but ultimately I knew what the aftermath was, and I had taken in pretty much all I could handle for the day. Before I left to get the bus back to Inverness, I took a few minutes to look at the stone memorial attached to the outside of the museum. The memorial is a long stone wall with some stones that are flat and with some stones protruding outward. The protruding stones represent the total number of men who died in the battle. A little way down the wall, there is a section where there are no protruding stones. This section separates the protruding stones representing the number of government soldier deaths from those representing the deaths of the Jacobite's. I think the pictures speak for themselves.After this experience, I was time to go out onto the battlefield. I was given a GPS operated audio guide, a very neat device that didn't require me to push any bottoms as I walked around. As I reached certain points on the field, the audio simply came on to tell me what happened in the spot I was standing. After leaving that theatre with the digital field of Culloden strewn with dead men, it was bizarre to walk out onto the actual field. It was so beautiful. Lush, green… and, super ironically, when I walked outside, I was again met by the sound of bagpipes. A man in a kilt standing on the field was playing "Scotland the Brave." It was so beautiful.
"Scotland the Brave" and Culloden Battlefield
After blinking away some fresh tears, I began to walk along the path as the audio began. Suddenly, I felt a very light rain coming down. I was so confused. Looking all around me, all I saw was blue sky. Then, I looked directly above me and saw the most bizarre black cloud right over the battlefield. I found it poignant that it would only be raining on this massive burial site while the close surrounding areas remained untouched by the sudden shift in weather. As I turned around looking at the strange cloud, that's when I saw it. A faint rainbow accompanying that intrusive rain cloud. And that's when the my own waterworks hit. I suddenly became so emotional. There I was standing on the site of a gruesome battle, on the site of the mass graves of nearly 2000 men. Rain was splattering my face. And yet, there was this beautiful rainbow combatting all the sorrow and horror that stains the soil of that field. It was overwhelming.
The comforting rainbow
On the field, there is a row of red flags closer to the museum that marks the start line of the government sources. Far across the field, lies a row of blue flags marking the start line of the Jacobite forces. My audio guide took me over behind the line of Jacobite forces where I found makers denoting where each Highland clan stood in formation before charging towards the government army, towards their deaths.
My next emotional experience came as I was walking along this line. Hidden in the brush along the side of the path, someone had tied a bow of tartan fabric around a branch. Remember how I said tartan was outlawed following the battle. This was clearly a visitor paying homage to the Highland culture that had been erased, showing sympathize and solidarity with their cultures rebirth inspire of the years of oppression. To me, this tartan bow's presence on the Jacobite line was put there as a slap in the face to that brutal British government of 1746, since today tartan continues to live on, strong, in the Highlands and in Scottish culture in general.
Towards the end of my audio tour of the battlefield, I came across the part of the field that now stands as memorial and graveyard to the Highlanders. After the battle, citizens, mostly women, were put to the task by the government army of burying the dead Highlanders in mass graves dug on the field. Today, small stones with the names of the clans mark this part of the field. Next to the stones stands a memorial cairn built in 1881. A cairn is a man-made stone structure prominent in the Scottish Gaelic culture since prehistory. Like that little piece of tartan, a cairn is an appropriate memorial to the fallen Highlanders since it is a prominent symbol of the ancient Gaelic culture that was forbidden after the Culloden.
The Memorial Cairn
Inscription on the Cairn
The line of stones with clan names on them marking the grave site
The section where the protruding stones represent government deaths (50)
The rest of this wall represents Jacobite deaths (1500)
Lastly, I climbed to the roof of the exhibit to look over the field one more time.
Over the next week, I became incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of assignments I had coming up. It's been really hard for me to find that balance between committed, perfectionist student and wanting-to-travel, study abroad student. I decided to stay close to Edinburgh in order to get as much work done as possible since I have some big trips quickly approaching. But that doesn't mean I didn't have some fun times over the past week and a half! Last Wednesday, Catherine (my wonderful flatmate), Chloe (my history-buff bestie), and I went to see the 2013 Oliver Award winning show "Top Hat" at the Festival Theatre. It was so great! Very classical musical theatre with TONS of amazing tap dancing. Talk about triple-threat actors! Then, last Friday, the three of us united again for a baking and TV night. We made two cakes and then watched our favorite new show, Outlander, which takes place in 1740s Scotland (aka, will eventually depict Culloden)!
Great seats for "Top Hat"!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am baking!!! What?! (btw, I didn't do so well haha)
Us with our beautiful creation
Chloe and her new love
LOVE THESE GIRLS <3
On Sunday, even though I didn't leave Edinburgh and had a paper to write, I NEEDED to get out of my flat and do something fun. So, I decided to take a mini adventure to Dean Village, an area in Edinburgh that had been a milling hamlet for over 800 years. Afterwards, I walked up Calton Hill to watch the sunset over both Old and New Town of Edinburgh. Absolutely STUNNING!
Dean Village
Calton Hill
View of Arthur's Seat from Calton Hill
Sunsetting from Calton Hill (You can see Edinburgh Castle in the distance)
I hope you have enjoyed the history lesson and tales of my emotional rollercoaster :P Stay tuned at the beginning of next month for a look at my adventures in the Highlands, the Isle of Skye, and in Ireland!
