Nothing left to fear fro.., p.10
Nothing Left to Fear from Hell, page 10
When we really meditate on these matters, we are meditating on the nature of human reality, of perception and memory – yet, at the same time, these are but pretentious matters in that world of action and violence which we also know was all too immediate and real.
Concocting this short chronicle would have been impossible for me without key texts which I have heavily leaned on and need to acknowledge, some of which I have known and loved since I was a young teenager: John Prebble’s Culloden and The Highland Clearances. Other sources were Fitzroy Maclean’s 1988 biography, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Eric Linklater’s The Prince in the Heather and Frank McLynn’s Charles Edward Stuart: A Tragedy in Many Acts. I looked into the Reverend Robert Forbes’ remarkable The Lyon in Mourning, edited by Henry Patton, which Miriam Gamble told me about, and I thank her. I was shamefully ignorant of it. Andrew Lang’s Pickle the Spy; Or, the Incognito of Prince Charles was read many years ago, though I didn’t have a copy around. Winifred Dukes’ The Rash Adventurer has always coloured and shaped my perception of the period. John Lorne Campbell’s Highland Songs of the Forty-Five always has its moments of beauty. Robert McGeachy’s Argyll, 1730–1850 is always to hand. Robert and I were pupils of Donald Clark, head of history at Oban High School in the late 1970s, a wonderful teacher who fired an interest in the period for both of us.
In Chapter 4, I have freely borrowed from Hugh MacDiarmid’s translation of The Birlinn of Clanranald, by Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair. My thanks for encouraging words to Alan Riach, who has recently published his own new and exciting translation of the same remarkable poem. In the rainy night sequence of Chapter 6, as Charles Edward Stuart crosses the bogs, I seem to have been propelled by Samuel Beckett’s How It Is.
I have to thank my good friend Kenny Lindsay for his Gaelic contributions to this text. I also have to sincerely thank Jamie Crawford and Alison Rae of Polygon for including me in the Darkland Tales series, and for their brilliant editing, as well as their huge patience with me as I tried to find time to write. I wish there were more bold ventures like this in Scottish publishing.
We both reveal and obscure as we proceed in these matters. What is the truth? I recall J. G. Ballard in London once suggesting to me, ‘We fictionalise to reach a truth.’ I believe he was right. By inventing, I hope to make the elusive, in fact the surreal, nature of 1746 appear truthful. Thus, this chronicle now seems ‘true’ – at least to me – in my constant and garish dreams of that incredible, often horrible time.
Alan Warner
Killundine
Sound of Mull
February 2023
In Darkland Tales, the best modern Scottish authors offer dramatic retellings of stories from the nation’s history, myth and legend. These are landmark moments from the past, viewed through a modern lens and alive to modern sensibilities. Each Darkland Tale is sharp, provocative and darkly comic, mining that seam of sedition and psychological drama that has always featured in the best of Scottish literature.
Rizzio Denise Mina
Hex Jenni Fagan
Nothing Left to Fear from Hell Alan Warner
Columba’s Bones David Greig autumn 2023
Alan Warner, Nothing Left to Fear from Hell
