When Charles landed in the glen, he gazed around anxiously for Cameron
of Lochiel, the younger, whom he expected to have joined him. He looked
for some time in vain; that faithful adherent was not then in sight, nor
was the glen, as the Prince had expected, peopled by any of the clansmen
whose gathering he had expected. A few poor people from the little knot
of hovels, which was called the village, alone greeted the ill-starred
adventurer. Disconcerted, Prince Charles entered one of the hovels,
which are still standing, and waited there for about two hours. At the
end of that time, the notes of the pibroch were heard, and presently,
descending from the summit of a hill, appeared the Camerons, advancing
in two lines, each of them three men deep. Between the lines walked the
prisoners of war, who had been taken some days previously near Loch
Lochiel.
The Prince, exhilarated by the sight of six or seven hundred brave
Highlanders, immediately gave orders for the standard to be unfurled.
The office of honour was entrusted to the Marquis of Tullibardine, on
account of his high rank and importance to the cause. The spot chosen
for the ceremony was a knoll in the centre of the vale. Upon this little
eminence the Marquis stood, supported on either side by men, for his
health was infirm, and what we should now call a premature old age was
fast approaching. The banner which it was his lot to unfurl displayed no
motto, nor was there inscribed upon it the coffin and the crown which
the vulgar notion in England assigned to it. It was simply a large
banner of red silk, with a white space in the middle. The Marquis held
the staff until the Manifesto of the Chevalier and the Commission of
Regency had been read. In a few hours the glen in which this solemnity
had been performed, was filled not only with Highlanders, but with
ladies and gentlemen to admire the spectacle. Among them was the
celebrated Miss, or, more properly, Mrs. Jeanie Cameron, whose
passionate attachment for the Prince rendered her so conspicuous in the
troublous period of 1745. The description given of her in Bishop
Forbes's Jacobite Memoirs destroys much of the romance of the story
commonly related of her. "She is a widow," he declares, "nearer fifty
than forty years of age. She is a genteel, well-looking, handsome woman,
with a pair of pretty eyes, and hair black as jet. She is of a very
sprightly genius, and is very agreeable in conversation. She was so far
from accompanying the Prince's army, that she went off with the rest of
the spectators as soon as the army marched; neither did she ever follow
the camp, nor ever was with the Prince in private, except when he was in
Edinburgh."[54]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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