"The Prisoner of St Kilda" by Margaret MacAulay.

[wullie m]

A book for the Xmas stocking. The story of the kidnap & imprisonment of Lady Grange. Married to Lord Grange, the Scottish Law Lord, brother of "Bobbing John" the exiled Earl of Mar, Lady Grange knew too much about her husband's Jacobite double dealing so he had her kidnapped. The Old Fox, Lord Lovat, had some of his Frasers violently assaulted her at her home in Edinburgh, they broke her teeth, for she wasn't the kind of woman to go quietly, and conveyed her, bound and gagged, out of the city never to see her family again. She was carried on horseback, travelling by night, from one Jacobite house to another, aided by Glengarry & Macdonald of Sleat, to safekeeping on remote North Uist. That wasn't considered remote enough so the Macleod, his palm suitably greased, had her shipped 100 miles into the Atlantic, to St Kilda. This, to a woman used to Edinburgh Society, being marooned on an island with no safe anchorage, therefore no visitors, and speaking not a word of Gaelic, must have come as something of a shock. The people were primitive in the extreme, only a few years before, Martin Martin, himself an islander, showed them their first book, they had difficulty grasping the notion that squiggles on paper could convey a message. Thirteen years of captivity, untill death brought release and two funerals, all the while Macleod & Macdonald of Sleat making up their minds which way to turn their coats and settling for Hanover in the end. At one point, crossing the Minch, a naval vessel appeared, her jailers tied a rope round her neck with a large stone on the other end to sink her, should they be challenged. The truth ,it is often said, is stranger than fiction, and so it is here. Luath Press £15.

[Lianachan]

Originally Posted by wullie m

The people were primitive in the extreme, only a few years before, Martin Martin, himself an islander, showed them their first book, they had difficulty grasping the notion that squiggles on paper could convey a message.

Yeah, there's never been anybody as stupid as us Teuchtars, eh?

[wullie m]

Two e's in Teuchters Lianachan!

[Lianachan]

Seen it spelled both ways. Disgusting racist term, however it's written.

[Crofter]

Wullie’s interpretation of the story of Lady Grange appears to be very selective and exaggerated. It is also factually untrue.

Her father was hanged for the murder of the Lord President of the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

She was a nutter and a drunk. She used to run naked into the streets hurling abuse at all and sundry. She made it a habit disrupting church services.

She disowned her own 9 children when the youngest of them were mere babes in arms. They were so terrified of her that they used to hide from her and seek refuge in other people’s homes.

She threatened to expose her husband and his associates as traitors, when in those days even a hint of Jacobite sympathy could result in death.

During her captivity she had servants to look after her and she learned to speak Gaelic sufficient to get by on.

She only spent only 6 of the 13 years of captivity on St Kilda.

When the naval vessel went to try and find her she was already in Skye and had been for a year nearly.

The population of St Kilda at the time would have had to go along with the orders of the powers that be. They could not have done much about it. There is no evidence that she was not well treated.

There were plenty of contacts with the mainland, Factors, Ministers etc and merchant and naval ships and fishing boats. Books were not a novelty to them.

Of course they did not have the benefit of all those second hand bookshops that they have in Glasgow, run by idiots. Just as well if this is the sort of rubbish they deal in.

However, why let the truth, as they say, get in the way of a good yarn. Why not take any opportunity to belittle the Highlands and Islands however dubious? It must be a very sad existence to hate a race of people so much that lies and distortions of history are so freely resorted to.

[wullie m]

It's you who mentioned the word, a trifle oversensitive I would say, my own grandfather was a teuchter and referred to himself as one. The savages, by the way, certainly weren't the St Kilda folk who looked after Lady Grange, but the clan chiefs who imprisoned her, they were no strangers to books, French wine or, in the case of Skye, selling a shipload of their people into slavery in the Plantations. wullie

This is a new book not second hand, Lady Grange was undoubtedly a bit of a targe, not unlike the Cybercrofter herself with her preposterous fantasies & obsessions, is there no limit to the womans ignorance one wonders. Check Martin Martin on St' Kilda.

[Crofter]

Martin Martin’s description of St Kilda was based on a visit there in 1697.

Lady Grange was taken to St Kilda in 1734, roughly 37 years later. Most of the generation Martin would have observed would have been long dead by then. He had been dead himself for 15 years before the events that you refer to surrounding Lady Grange.

Martin himself, as a Tacksman, was part of the class responsible for a lot of the conditions the general population found themselves in. His contemporaries, and many commentators since, have cast doubt on the credibility of his observations and his lack of foresight.

You are now changing your original tack, it wasn’t the ordinary people, it was those awful Highland Chiefs again, reading their books and drinking their wine, who were the baddies.

Time you went back to the swill bucket and see what more nonsense you can drag out.