#jacobites

[the--highlanders]

found the pictures i took of books in the highland folk museum library in 2019. 5899843 dead 659860350945 injured

[bantarleton]

A recreated trooper of Cobham’s Dragoons as he would have looked during the 1745 Jacobite Rising.

[scotianostra]

On November 8th, 1745, the Jacobite army led by Charles Edward Stuart invaded England. It was the last time a "foreign" army did so.

I know it wasn't a foriegn army as such, but the army was made up of troops from a number of countries including France Ireland and Spain.

Many Hanoverian troops were on the Continent, involved in the War of the Austrian Succession, but the Duke of Cumberland, commanding British troops in Flanders, was hastily recalled with 12,000 men.

The lightly-armed Jacobite army, although small, was effective at charge attacks, but lacked heavy artillery or siege equipment for longer campaigns. They reached Manchester, the only town to add significant numbers of recruits to their cause, and Preston, thought to be a centre of Jacobite support, yielded only 3 extra recruits.

I shall pick up the story in December............

[vox-anglosphere]

Loch-Shiel

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Jacobites - Hearts Are Like Flowers

It's December — scarf season! And that means it's time to listen to the Scarf Kings Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth. Thanks to americanslimeweasel for digitizing a rare cassette to give all of us our necessary Jacobites fix. Side A captures a loose and lovely Italian radio broadcast in 1985, with Epic Soundtracks along for the ride; Epic sounds like he's hitting ... a phonebook with chopsticks? Side B lets us eavesdrop on an even looser/even lovelier rehearsal from that same year. Neil Young may have named an album Ragged Glory, but these guys are the ones who lived raggedly and gloriously.

Also included with the DL — a scan of a very detailed, very entertaining tour zine from '85. A sampling from the Cologne show: "This was probably the funniest gig. Beer and bottles of wine on stage. The wine got kicked over. The beer got drunk. Feedback from Nikki's acoustic guitar. Lots of animation. Nikki ran around the stage with his guitar unplugged. I was too shy to go on stage. Nikki broke guitar strings. With the help of my technical consultant Briggi we changed strings and tuned the guitar. Nikki plays the newly tuned guitar. It is totally out of tune. He uses another instrument which refuses to work for the next 3 songs. Sometimes the newly formed band even knew what songs they were playing. Sometimes it didn't matter."

[sgiandubh]

JAMMF, 303

James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser is today 303. Born to both strife and greatness, on Beltane Day.

Fictional characters never die for good, their energy keeps on lingering somewhere, in a corner of our heart. So, here's a heartfelt Happy Birthday to a formidable character that one day chose to possess Herself's imagination and brought us all together, in this strange digital limbo of sorts.

Despite his rock-solid appearance, JAMMF is a real chameleon. My favorite JAMMF is perhaps the least talked about one. The Diplomat. Of course.

This guy, playing chess at Versailles (in reality, it's Prague, and a sizably different kind of Baroque, but let's not nitpick, here). A wonderful metaphor for what diplomacy was, is and always will be: a sophisticated game of chess.

While in Paris, JAMMF is acting, in plain sight, as a diplomatic agent of sorts on behalf of Bonnie Prince Charlie's embryo of a government in exile. Desperately hoping and fruitlessly waiting for more. And making a very bad, emotional job of it all, when emotions are least needed, despite all those best laid plans. Still, he does exactly what a diplomat posted abroad would do. He meets all the important honchos, he brilliantly entertains all those people at his open table, he mingles with princes and beggars alike and of course, he dutifully reports in writing about all this, back to Scotland.

It is, therefore, a pity and a shame that Herself did not utter a single word, in Dragonfly in Amber, about the real Jacobite meeting place in Paris: Sorbonne's Collegium Scoticum/Scots College, or Collège des ��cossais, founded in 1333, by an edict of the Parliament of Paris (what we would call today the local council) and as a belated, yet important consequence of the Auld Alliance treaty between France, Scotland and Norway:

This is a place with a rich and minutely documented history, so much so that the adjoining street soon came to be known as the rue des Ecossais (Scots' Street), instead of rue des Amandiers (Almond Tree Street).

The building is still there, albeit with a different destination, a private Catholic elementary school. And a plaque inside the main building tells part of the story, in Latin:

Meaning:

In 1325, under the reigns of Charles the Fair, in France and Robert the Bruce, in Scotland, David de Moravia, bishop of Murray founded this college. In 1604, Jacques de Bethun, archbishop of Glasgow made a seminary out of it, given to the perpetual administration of the Carthusian Order's Superior of Paris [later edit, forgot to translate that properly and the French version I eventually took out is incomplete, sorry!]. In 1639, the whole was placed under the authority of the King of France and the Archbishop of Paris, their supreme authority being solemnly ratified by the Parliament of Paris. In memory of the founders, the priests and the alumni, may they rest in peace!

[Later edit]: the eight year difference in records reflects the time it took for the Parliament of Paris to acknowledge the College's existence and offer its due legal protection. So: founded by the bishop of Murray in 1325 and legally authorized by the Parliament of Paris in 1333. Both dates are legit founding landmarks and can be quoted accordingly.

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Zak Boerger & Karen Schoemer on Nikki Sudden

Zak Boerger and Karen Schoemer came to Dusted via their late 2024 duo collaboration Days for Nights, a layered fuzz-haze dream of poetry and blues licks that was not so different from Schoemer's work in Sky Furrows, but not the same either. In the review, Dusted noted that, "Together they accomplish a remarkable synergy, the eerie elusiveness of Schoemer’s words merging with the overtone-hazed atmospherics of Boerger’s playing."

But while we met them this way, the two artists met through a shared love of Nikki Sudden, the unruly poet of Swell Maps. Schoemer wrote the liner notes for Sudden's Texas reissue, and Boerger got in touch to talk about it. That blossomed into friendship and, eventually, collaboration. To celebrate their partnership, Boerger and Schoemer contributed a two-part Sudden-themed essay, not strictly speaking a Listed, but close enough.

Zak Boerger

There was no samurai or lover. No woodcutter or priest. It happened in Ted Stevens’ tubes. (He’s right, you know, for all the laughter, much of our digital business is in those tubes. Laugh all you want; old Ted doesn’t care.)

It happened in 2009. Maybe ’08. But not ’10. The desk I sat at and sit at was in storage then. It took a year to get it out, further south, along with 45 or so boxes of a life’s holdings.

As with many things since I saw the cover of Collision Time Revisited in 1989, or maybe 1990, at Sam’s Jams in Ferndale (where I saw so many flat but powerful things) it had something to do with Nikki Sudden (“which one is she?”). And a quote from Thurston Moore, already on the way out for me, a jerk who insists Sister was the last great SY LP.

The liner notes weren’t entirely about Nikki, and I liked that. The person writing them got what should be obvious: this was Epic’s record, musically. The Like Flies on Sherbert reverb, introduced to the Mary Chain by the same record collection. Mostly noise played slowly, or lazily, maybe, is a better description. Like it had nowhere to be particularly. No where. Nowhere. Here. In the grooves of Texas, Groove still a few years out (but the first one I bought by Nikki, without his Swell Maps or Jacobites).

Karen’s liners, for a reissue of Texas and Dead Men Don’t Tell No Tales. Two creatures of Creation. They were about change and aging, wearing down. Getting older. And about how Nikki stayed the same by changing. New scarves. New girlfriends. New tours. Staving off “older” year in and year out.

Karen’s liners were about Epic Soundtracks — what a name, that — his since what, 1972? 1973? Great names those Maps had. Great songs, too. So many of them. And compilations — too many. Two “real” records, compilations like kudzu. I stopped buying after a while. I had enough. No need for version 23 of… car, midget, big maz.

Epic, who I interviewed in 1993. Who teased me from Minneapolis’ Uptown stage in 1994 on my interviewing skills. “Even less together than me.” A sweetheart. A hero.

Those liners started a friendship, that saw one child grow to adulthood, one child born and now in their second decade. And it happened, happens, almost entirely in Ted’s tubes. Texts, messages, emails, maybe a video very rarely. Long stretches go by — has it been a year? Ten months. She’s my mentor, my friend, a great writer, a great collaborator. I sent her guitar music that flew all over the place. In my head it was Stormcock, Forever Changes, Zen Arcade, Physical Graffiti. Because I knew she could ground it. Every bit, mapped out, text to guitar, every tiny bit of time, organized. I shifted her voice — less than a half-second — and she heard it. She said, “move it back, it’s wrong.” I did. She was right.

So, ten songs from Nikki Sudden, who brought us together. Or nine, because it wasn’t just Nikki she wrote about, but his baby brother, too; that was what made me reach out to Karen in 2009. Or 2008. But not 2010. So here they are. I have nothing more to say than go listen, they’re great.

Swell Maps — “Midget Submarines”

Nikki Sudden — “Chelsea Embankment”

Nikki Sudden with Rowland S. Howard — “Rebel Grave”

Jacobites — “Elizabethan Balladeer” (with Dave Kusworth, for Epic)

Epic Soundtracks — “Fallen Down”

Karen Schoemer

Nikki Sudden and I had been friends since the late 1980s and he asked me to write liner notes for the 2001 Secretly Canadian reissue of his album Texas, which he knew was a favorite. My recollection is that a publicist told me someone wanted to get in touch with me because of the liner notes and I said okay. That was Zak. He emailed me and we developed a long-distance friendship around our mutual music passions, which continues today. Zak is utterly sincere and almost boyish in the throes of a fandom. His brain can’t stop collating riffs and progressions, both within songs and music history at large. Our album Day for Nights wasn’t specifically influenced by Nikki, but it’s infused with the idea of music as balm, as an escape from the crushingly ordinary. I always felt that in Nikki’s music and it became crucial in the context of Zak’s cancer diagnosis. I love that Nikki was the root of a collaboration that took decades to come to fruition.

Nikki Sudden & Dave Kusworth — “Pin Your Heart to Me”

Shaggy, loose-limbed, tossed off with expertise, romantic, urgent: for me this track crystallizes everything I love about Nikki and Dave together and apart. On one of his visits to my Hoboken apartment in the late 80s — with a guitar of course, because he was traveling around playing shows — Nikki sat on my couch and asked if I wanted him to play anything. I requested this one and he frowned slightly. “Well, Dave sings on that one,” he said, but played it anyway. Such a gent.

Swell Maps — “Let’s Build a Car”

I often think Nikki would be proud to know I’m a performer because there was no glimmer of it when I knew him. I was a writer, full stop. Sky Furrows covers this, and I know I don’t nail it. There’s a mystery to the pitch because the vocals are multi-tracked, and a snide drollness to the delivery which I can’t begin to evoke. I end up screaming and spitting out words behind the beat. My band kills it, though.

Nikki Sudden & Rowland S. Howard — “Feather Beds”

It’s all about the “Maggie May” lift at the end. So brazen. The honor of thieves.

Nikki Sudden and the Jacobites — “Such a Little Girl”

“You’re such a little girl / I’d love to sleep with you.” I mean, it’s sick. It’s fucked up. Then you throw on slabs of guitar and Epic’s crashing cymbals and it becomes weird and terrible and sweet and transcendent. It’s great having complex feelings when you listen to something, being attracted and repelled and finally owned by it. Nikki had an instinct for the primal.

Nikki Sudden & Dave Kusworth — “Ambulance Station”

Nikki used to sign his letters “Stay bruised” — he fetishized pain. Shimmering strings, a martial rhythm, a half-murmur right on the mic; she’s staggering, he’s kissing her neck, there’s a broken heart in the back of a car; then the chords shift into a major key. These elements console but only in a momentary way. Fade in, fade out. A tender echo is left in the air.

[acrossthewavesoftime]

I was looking for this one reddit post of a woman asking for relationship advice dealing with her boyfriend Henry and his odd political views to send to a friend, and, not knowing better, searched for "Reddit Jacobite". And of course, while not initially finding what I was looking for, the site did not disappoint.

[jt1674]

[tiny-librarian]

An engraving of Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, Countess of Albany. She was the wife of Charles Edward Stuart, popularly referred to as "Bonnie Prince Charlie".

[lavenderrosiefan]

A random headcanon:

Edward is a descendant of Bonnie Prince Charlie

[coquetteladyofthedeadmensworld]

This is way funnier than it should be.

James making an essay on his plans for returning as king and not admitting his wrongdoings and Mary just trashing it 😂.

[scotianostra]

21st September 1745 saw The Battle of Prestonpans.

The Battle of Prestonpans was the first significant conflict in the Jacobite Rising commonly known as the ‘45.

The subject of my earlier post, Walter Scott made the Battle of Prestonpans the centrepiece of his first novel Waverley, and another Edinburgh literary giant, Robert Louis Stevenson looks back on its importance in Kidnapped. The national bard Robert Burns also wrote about it and has connections with the area, his brother worked in Prestonpans and he is remembered around the town to this day.

The battle later reached the big screen with David Niven’s Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1948, and more recently Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels and TV series have brought the Battle of Prestonpans to audiences all around the world.

The victory became a symbol of Scottish resistance to British government rule, and of the negligence of Hanoverian military commanders.

Thanks to local knowledge and a thick haar that drifted in from the Firth of Forth, the Jacobite army filed along a narrow path during the wee small hours giving them the element of surprise over the redcoat army and General “Johnny Cope”

At 6am around 2,000 men drawn to the cause of Prince Charles Edward Stuart clashed with a larger force of some 3,000 government troops under the command of Sir John Cope close to the Firth of Forth in East Lothian.

Cope’s men, originally facing South, were forced to rapidly wheel around to face the Jacobites, who charged unexpectedly from the East.

British dragoon regiments, stationed on either flank of Cope’s infantry, abandoned their posts soon after fighting began, leaving the foot soldiers dangerously exposed.

Surrounded on three sides, the remaining Hanoverian force was swept aside in a little over ten minutes.

Hundreds of government troops were killed or wounded, and a further 1,500 taken prisoner by the Prince’s men, Jacobite casualties were light.

But while the rout took just a few minutes, Jacobite commanders had been far less confident about victory in the days leading up to it. There had been a few skirmishes, including at High Bridge in Lochaber in August, but this was the first large-scale confrontation with a sizeable Hanoverian force.

The Hanoverians were professional soldiers, infantry and dragoons, the forces at Cope's disposal were - or should have been - competent.

In contrast, contemporary accounts emphasise the role of poor Highlanders, who marched south with Prince Charles, in the Jacobite force. If the Jacobites had lost it would have been game over, especially since there was much dissension among the senior Jacobite commanders in the hours before the battle.

Several accounts of the battle emphasise how spooked Cope’s men were by the Highlanders, as well as their struggle to deploy heavy cannon and cavalry that should have given them an advantage. Cope is said to have been so frustrated by his artillery units that he dismissed them and sent word to Edinburgh for replacements. They did not arrive in time.

Despite being cleared of any negligence at a court martial in 1746, Sir John Cope’s reputation as a military commander was destroyed by Prestonpans, and never recovered.

Immortalised in Adam Skirving’s famous Scots song “Hey, Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?, Cope was characterised in contemporary accounts as a coward and a buffoon.

Fye now Johnnie, get up and run,

The Highland bagpipes mak a din,

It's better tae sleep in a hale skin.

For 'twill be a bloody morning.

When Johnnie Cope tae Dunbar came,

They spiered at him, 'where's a' your men?'

'The Deil confound me gin I ken,

For I left them a this morning.'

Skirving's song did much of the damage, but Burns also published a version and there wasn't much of a counter-narrative in his favour.

The site of Cope’s defeat - and the Jacobite’s surprise victory - has been listed in the Scottish Government’s national inventory of significant battle sites when that was established in 2009, and re-enactments of the fighting regularly take place.

A cairn in memory of the battle was erected in 1953 and others have been added throughout the years. A visitor centre is planned.

The illustration is from the hand of the late Andrew Hillhouse depicting the night march. https://www.andrewhillhouseprints.co.uk/gallery_660173.html

[vox-anglosphere]

MacGregor

1671-1734

[victusinveritas]

[duchessofyorksstuff]

10th June saw the birth of both:

• James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender

And also:

• One of the most stupid conspiracy theories ever.