#Highland uprising

[vox-anglosphere]

The Battle of Culloden lives down in infamy to this day. It was the last pitched battle on British soil as the weary Highlanders were crushed.

Stone cairns mark the mass graves where the various clans fell. Miraculously, Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped to the Outer Hebrides.

[scotianostra]

On 20th January 1746 Aeneas MacDonnell died of his wounds in his lodgings in Burns Court, Falkirk, and was buried in the Falkirk Trinity Kirk.

Known as Young Glengarry, MacDonnell had led the 800-strong Glengarry regiment to victory against the Hanoverian army, in the largest battle of the '45 Uprising - also the Jacobites’ last victory, he came through the battle unscathed, it was in tragic circumstances the day after the battle Aeneas the event happened that took his life.

A soldier of the Clanranald regiment had obtained a musket on the field of battle, a spoil of war. Jacobite soldiers had taken to lodgings in Burns Court opposite where the Trinity Kirk is now, which is part of the High Street, while cleaning the weapon he removed the ball , discharging a shot to clear the gun properly, unfortunately the musket had been double loaded and a shot discharged through the window of the house towards a group of soldiers in the street opposite, piercing the body of the young Glengarry.

Aeneas, second son of the Clan chief of MacDonnell of Glengarry, died in the arms of his colleagues begging that they forgive the unfortunate soldier, who he believed was innocent of any malice.

Unfortunately this fell on deaf ears and the men from Glengarry demanded his execution in reprisal, this was tragically carried out by his own clan. The man was taken out to wall and died “in a volley of shots” his own father emptied his gun into his son to make his death as instantaneous as possible.

Prince Charles, when learning of the accident appeased the Glengarry men, mindful that losing the attachment of his army would be a massive blow, consoled the Clan, ordering the grave of John de Graeme, who fell at the first battle of Falkirk be opened and the Young Glengarry be interred within. The Prince told the men it was the only place in the ancient kirkyard worthy to be honoured with his corpse.

The Prince attended the funeral as chief mourner and held the string which consigned his head to the grave. His “judicial kindness” was not unappreciated by the grateful Highlanders, but didn’t stop a large number of the clan to yield in their grief and desert his army.

The incident and its aftermath cast a pall of gloom over the Jacobite army, and some argue it began the disintegration of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s now faltering cause. I don’t know if this would have affected the outcome of the Battle of Culloden, and there is no record how many men left.

Ranald MacDonnell, accompanied by Lady MacDonnell, unveiled a plaque outside Falkirk Trinity Church to commemorate this incident in 2018 in commemoration of Aeneas MacDonnell.

Aeneas MacDonnel was the younger brother of Alastair Ruadh MacDonnell, also known as Pickle the Spy

[medievalandfantasymelee]

The Near Misses Tourney (1 of 2)

In 400+ submissions many worthy and noble (also some dastardly and evil) men (and orcs and elves and hobbits and the like) were admitted to our fair Tourney.

These are... not them.

No indeed, 20 men (and one... unit?) of those submitted failed to qualify for the tournament, for diverse reasons. They were therefore turned away and tossed on the Near Misses Pile. But the spirit of competition still burns within them and they have erected a makeshift tilt on the outskirts of the Tourney Grounds.

We wish them the Best of luck in their fruitless endeavour!

The four competitors with the most votes will advance to the next round, all others will be sent home in final disgrace

Row 1:

Artos [Aaron Burns], Pendragon: Sword of His Father (2008)

Bill S Preston, Esquire & Ted "Theodore" Logan [Alex Winter & Keanu Reeves], Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Row 2:

The Darkling [Ben Barnes], Shadow & Bone (2021-2023)

Duncan MacLeod [Adrian Paul], Highlander (1992-1998)

Row 3:

Hob Gadling [Ferdinand Kingsley], The Sandman (2022-)

Panto Trost [Christopher Russell], Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016-2017)

Row 4:

Michael Kohlhaas [Mads Mikkelsen], Age of Uprising (2013)

Lancelot [Ioan Guffudd], King Arthur (2004)

Row 5:

Prince Septimus [Mark Strong], Stardust (2007)

Steerpike [Jonathan Rhys Meyers], Gormenghast (2000)

Kuwabatake Sanjuro [Mifune Toshiro], Yojimbo (1961)

[rotzaprachim]

one of the most interesting aspects of andor to me is how i think it didn’t decision to alter character timelines so much as make the decision to alter- or rather, cut open and interrogate- the entire timeline of the rebellion, in ways that have fascinating implications for the entire worldbuilding of the starry wars. one of the lingering uncertainties of “andor” comes from the refusal to play any of the cards of the Rebel Alliance as the plucky good-guy army, for whom Joining the Rebellion is as straightforward as enlisting and getting a uniform, who can show up and do army things at any moment. as the episodes build and build and build and the tension and power of the imperial army grows higher, the Rebel Alliance just.... doesn’t appear. there is no Secret Base for Luthen to take Cassian too, only a tiny group of guerillas in the highlands. there is none of the famous iconography of the Rebellion- no orange flight suits (though boy does andor give a new cast to that color choice), no rebel armed rebel bases, no x-wings go swoop in at the last moment. as I watched Andor I felt the lingering stone-drop realisation: the Rebellion, as we know it, simply does not exist. what we get is a hyper-isolated, fragmented rebellion in its infancy, tiny groups and intellligence operations so low on cash that the theft of a single sector’s payroll or access to a single wealthy woman’s family funds. Cassian can’t join the rebel alliance, because it doesn’t exist yet. 

And that’s one story. that’s a far, far more complicated story, and a more difficult story to exist within, than the plucky rebel army versus big empire narrative star wars has been living in. how do you join something like that? it really isn’t that easy. BUT! here’s the thing. BUT BUT BUT. andor complicates that further by showing, over and over again, that even if that rebel alliance can’t swoop in and save the day, that even if the number of *official* Rebellion members is a tiny fraction down to their last resources, organised rebellion is, in fact, possible. and it already exists. it exists everywhere, in numerous forms. it is both non violent and violent, and it is often the work of *civillians,* because the fundamental conditions of war, occupation, and totalitarianism make, politicise, designate everyone as a soldier. looking back on andor, there isn’t a single arc that isn’t made possible by some form of organised, collective rebellion. cassian couldn’t have escaped from ferrix if ferrix didn’t already have a system of pounding metal in order to spread the word, if salman and wilmon paak didn’t get set to banging metal, and brasso didn’t weld weights to the police squad car. the rebels couldn’t have pulled off the aldhani heist if hundreds of local aldhani hadn’t continued their cultural rites and kept coming on that pilgrimage even as local imperial agents actively worked to prevent it- because existence can be rebellion, because the continuation of cultural and religious traditions under oppression can be rebellion. the crowning point of the season, for me, is the prison break at narkina five, the five thousand prisoners knowing that there’s only one way out, and that’s by running, shooting, killing, by climbing out together. the series ends on an entire local uprising as a town’s funeral march turns into a riot against armed, shielded cops. 

And it all leads into these much more nuanced things that Andor is saying about the natures of both oppression and resistance. Because it isn’t giving the (individualist, and somewhat defeatest, but sure damn repeated) narrative that rebellion against authoritarianism is about a few Englightened individuals - the luthen’s, the aldhani rebels- versus the mass of Sheeple who just take it. Are thankful for it. That there’s just the Special ones who see the light, and those that.. Haven’t. Nor are there the essentialistly Good Pure Rebels who have all the Right Ideas in a nice Color Coded Format, who have fought Purely and Totally for the Rebellion From the Start, versus the bad guys The structures of empire don’t work like that- they make huge numbers of people complicit because of the way they stack and tier and turn subjugated people against each other when so few individuals, actually are in charge, and they make the alternative to complicity be nothing but death, in horrific ways. The people in Andor have dirt on their hands. It’s about what they do now. The X-wings can’t come to save Cassian from Narkina. The prisoners have to climb their way out. No one can give the Aldhani rebels backup. Only Luthen and Cinta and Vel can come to Maarva’s wake, and when the fighting comes, it isn’t even about them, anyway. Andor asks what happens when there isn’t the golden saviour, the Good Guy army coming in for us, and makes the case for rebellion as something intensely collectivist and intensely local, that rebellion and rebels exist before our very eyes, in more complicated ways. It’s what makes the show both brutal and brutally hopeful - for one of the first times, watching star wars, i get the sense viscerally that better worlds and forms of existence are possible within the star wars world.

As for cassian, the arc I hope they’re going for, and i really do think are going for, is not that he joined the rebellion as we see it in rogue one. It’s that that rebellion as we know didn’t exist yet, and that his arc will be about helping to stitch together the various forms of rebellion that already exist, everywhere. I think we’ll walk into Rogue One now not seeing Cassian as Mon and Draven’s hand- already fascinating - but as one of the rebellion’s quiet powerbrokers and kingmakers whose a big part of why they’re there to begin with.

[bantarleton]

It's both funny and sad seeing online (and in this case anonymous) "journalists" scrambling to get a hold on who "redcoats" are in the wake of a recent inflated faux outrage about a café in Edinburgh. This article in particular is a wild one.

"The uniform was used by British soldiers from the 16th to 19th century in several conquests on behalf of the the British military around the world."

No, unless we're counting some niche Scottish and English retinues in the 16th c. it was used from the 1640s by the English and the 1660s by the Scottish (almost half a century before the Act of Union). Nor did the uniform stop being worn in the 19th century, it only ceased being battlefield dress - it's still ceremonially worn today (by Scottish regiments as well).

"For those unaware (take note, Edinburgh Castle), from 1725 onwards, garrisons manned by government soldiers or "redcoats" sprung up all over the Scottish Highlands, most notably at Fort William and Inverness."

I love the condescending tone of this part, with the anon author totally schooling Historical Environment Scotland for their lack of history knowledge. But no, garrisons didn't suddenly start appearing from 1725 onwards. Prior to 1745 Scotland was not an "occupied" country. The redcoats being talked about were mostly Scottish regiments holding the Scottish garrisons they'd occupied for decades (the basic problem with the premise of this article is people think "redcoat" = "English." Ironically for at least half of the historical timeframe the English were a minority of "redcoats").

"Redcoats took an aggressive hand to Scots across the country who did not support the king and attempted to cling to their national identity."

Which king? The exiled Stuart king? The "Hanoverian" king? This "national identity" stuff is also fabricated hokum, again, there was no effort at repression in Scotland by "redcoats" prior to the 1745 uprising, just the usual service performed by the 18th c. military. Scotland had one of the lowest ratios of soldiers-to-population in Europe during the period! These soldiers were almost all Scottish themselves. The author is just writing what they vaguely think is the case as fact.

"The government army, clad in red, massacred Scots at the Battle of Culloden Moor, marking not only the defeat of the Jacobite movement, but the destruction of clan and Gaelic Highland life. From 1745, Highlanders were forbidden to carry weapons – including the famous broadsword. The playing of the bagpipes was banned. Tartan and highland dress was outlawed."

The clan structure was dying a death before Culloden and the battle didn't mark its final "destruction" (people seem to also think the redcoats were responsible for the Clearances, so at this stage anything's fair game). The bans on the things mentioned as outlawed were barely enforced and largely repealed within a few decades.

"And clansmen who dared to defy? Fines, imprisonment, exile, and death at the hands of... you guessed it, the redcoats. However, as one user wrote, "history is complex", highlighting that Scots wearing redcoats were on the side of the British army on the moor."

They finally managed to mention that "redcoats" aren't just the English. In fact most of the "fines, imprisonment, exile and death" being meted out was by fellow Scots against the Jacobites, who didn't have the support of the majority of the country. And this wasn't just a lowlanders vs highlanders thing, highlanders were behind repressing *other* highlanders, as has been the case throughout history.

The best part of all this is the café has been operating under that name for 32 years without comment, but they've only just noticed so now it's become a thing.

tl;dr

[shadowtriovibes]

9 with Sebastian?

"i cannot bear to be apart from you anymore." 

—

Logically, you understand that it is indeed Sebastian Sallow standing on your front step looking utterly miserable and covered in a light dusting of snow. What you don’t understand, however, is why he’s standing here in the dead of winter in London when he should be hundreds of miles away at home in Feldcroft.

“Sebastian?” you ask, stunned. “Wh-what in Merlin’s name–”

“Happy Christmas,” he interrupts with a rueful smile. “I just… I want to have said it before you start shouting at me.”

You fold your arms as you lean against the doorframe, glaring at him.

“And just why might I be shouting at you?” you ask skeptically.

Sebastian sighs. “I know I’m not supposed to be here,” he starts.

“That’s right,” you murmur. “We were supposed to take time apart during the break.”

Shortly before the winter holidays, you and Sebastian had gotten into a huge fight about… well, now you aren’t even really sure what it was about. It had started out with you arguing about how you’d been sneaking out of the castle nearly every night to quash Poacher uprisings all throughout the Highlands, which you thought was perfectly fine as long as you still earned good marks.

But Sebastian had expressed concern that you weren’t sleeping enough, then that you weren’t spending enough time preparing for your N.E.W.T.s, and what it had ultimately boiled down to was that you weren’t spending enough time with him.

He missed you, he’d said, and you were too prideful and headstrong to admit that you were in the wrong, so you’d fought. It had nearly turned into a duel before Ominis had had to talk you both into backing down, and you’d decided to take the holiday break to think about things.

“We did take time apart,” he counters.

You frown at him. “It’s barely been forty-eight hours.”

Sebastian averts his gaze, nervously hiking his travel bag higher up on his shoulder. “I just… I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”

Your stomach flips nervously as you wordlessly step aside so he can enter, shutting out the cold winter winds and gusts of snow whipping up and down your quiet street. You’re alone in your family’s small flat while the rest of your family is at church, which you’d awkwardly declined. (They don’t really… understand the magic thing, but they’re trying.)

Sebastian’s barely inside the door before he drops his bag on the floor and wraps you up in his arms, nose buried in your hair. He’s freezing cold from the walk from the nearest Floo network stop, and you can only imagine how far away it must have been.

“Sebastian,” your whine against his chest. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“I cannot bear to be apart from you anymore,” he murmurs in your ear. “This whole fight started because I told you that I missed you, and it’s only gotten worse. I love you, and I don’t want to spend Christmas fighting with you.”

“...I know,” you say hollowly. “Seb, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” he says softly. “I know that what you’re doing is important, and… and maybe I need you too much, but–”

“No,” you insist, nuzzling closer to him. “Need me as much as you want, Sebastian. I swore to you I’d always be there for you and I will.”

You sway with him in the empty foyer for a while, the two of you clinging to each other for warmth and reassurance and touch that you haven’t felt in nearly a week since you’d fallen out. Outside, the church bells softly ring out twelve chimes – it’s officially Christmas morning.

“Come back to Feldcroft with me,” Sebastian whispers. “It’s Christmas, we should spend it together.”

“My family…” you whine weakly.

“Anne said she’d come visit,” Sebastian tells you, and when you glance up at him in shock, he’s got a hopeful smile on his lips. “She wrote me a few days ago and said she’d be willing to come by since it’s the holidays.”

“Oh, Sebastian,” you breathe. “W-well, of course I’ll come then, Merlin, that’s amazing!”

He grins brilliantly and leans down to kiss you breathless, his cold nose against your cheek making you squeal and giggle delightedly. Gods, you missed this so much.

By the time your family comes home from church, they find a note explaining you’d been called away on some vague yet urgent magical business , which is propped next to the pile of gifts you’d been tucking away for them. You hope they aren’t too disappointed, you think, but by now Anne – and Sebastian, of course – are family too.

[kulturalnakawa]

I was recently on a trip to Wrocław and I saw panorama of Racławice (recommend👌) but in the picture I saw an unusual thing:

a highlander in the middle of cracovian peasants. so, I asked my history teacher if that situation would happened. she said no, only the local peasants took part in the Kościuszko Uprising.

so it was just the artists vision. but what could the vision of Wojech Kossak and Jan Styka, a highlander among Cracovians, represent?

in my opinion i think that authors of this picture wanted to show connectivity beetween different poles.

At that time, such an image was very useful for the quarreling nation after the partitions.

[oleworm]

Hello, sorry to be ignorant but why do you say "everybody hated the incas/they were rebellions" ? What was the context ?

In its period of expansion, which hadn't ended at the time that the Spaniards arrived, the Inca Empire subjugated numerous states, communities and ethnic groups. Some were incorporated through violence, others through alliance (and the threat of violence, seeing what had happened to others), but the chronicles talk about how many groups accepted overlordship at first and then planned an uprising to regain their independence when they thought they had a weak Inca, or more typically at the time of a royal succession. You can read about it in the chronicles, many of which were written through interviews with the panacas (Inca royal houses) that the conquistadores had married into. There are oral traditions that survive too, especially among descendants of peoples who were considered rebellious.

The Inca Empire committed massacres against such groups when they found it expedient, but more often planned the partial or total deportation of communities and ethnic groups to prevent them from calling on their local networks of social relations, as well as local knowledge of the land, to stage a rebellion. The land was then resettled with groups that were loyal to the Inca or too fragmented to organise a resistance. This is a attested both ethnohistorically and archaeologically (highland domestic architectural styles and ceramics in coastal settlements, for example). This is what was called the mitimaes system.

Specialists of all kinds, especially weavers, metalworkers and other producers of elite objects, were funnelled to the capital from all the regions so only the state could make use of their services. I remember reading the records of silverworking families with surnames that come from what is now the Peruvian north coast that were still living in Cusco several decades or a century after the conquest.

Many of these specialists came from the Kingdom of Chimor (ethnically and culturally distinct from the Inca), from which it is theorised the Inca adapted some of its bureaucracy and symbols of power. The Inca took over the Chimor state's trade network with northern polities and gave it to their allies, the Chincha, specialist land and maritime merchants who were located in what is now the Peruvian south-central coast.

Local religious figures or objects of significance (called "idols" in the chronicles, but sometimes mummies of significant persons) were often stolen to the capital or destroyed so that they wouldn't inspire rebellions. Other times they were incorporated into the Inca state cult and given over to persons loyal to the Inca, often one of their siblings or another close relative if it was an important pilgrimage site such as Pachacamac or the Islands of the Sun and Moon in lake Titicaca.

This is just off the top of my head about strategies of control typical of empires that were used by the Inca and gained them the fear and enmity of different groups within their territory. It's entirely expected that many of them would join the Spaniards (an unknown entity) to shake them off when they were already attempting their own rebellions since the Inca state came to exist.

[grandmaster-anne]

More than ever, we must remember our historic bond with Poland and Ukraine

By Sir Tim Laurence | Published 1 May 2022

Written in pencil on the wall of the candle store at Audley End House in Essex is a list. In the shadows for decades, this unassuming scrawl has now been deciphered as the names of six Polish men. Research by English Heritage – who now take care of the House – has revealed who they were and why they were there.

They include a 43-year-old father of two, fluent in five languages; a highly strung army officer who loved horse riding; a teacher; a film star and two young men in their early twenties.

These men were members of a select group, trained to drop behind enemy lines into occupied Poland to fight for their homeland during WW2. For it was eighty years ago today, on 1 May 1942, that Audley End became the principal training school for the Cichociemni, the Polish section of the Special Operations Executive.

Their fascinating story of heroism and sacrifice resonates with the current terrible events in Ukraine. Changing political boundaries and the movement of peoples within Eastern Europe over the centuries mean there are deep connections between Poles and Ukrainians. Of the six men whose names are scratched in pencil onto the wall in the candle store, one, Karol Dorwski, came from Lviv and another, Franciszek Socha, studied at university there. The warm welcome Ukrainian refugees have received in Poland today speaks to these historic connections and also reflects the Poles’ collective memory of destruction and displacement during WW2.

Yet their ties also extend to Britain. Audley End was known as Special Training School (STS) 43. Those who trained there were elite special operations paratroopers. They arrived having already completed paramilitary and fitness courses in the Scottish Highlands and parachute training in Cheshire. Most had also done specialist courses in sabotage, weapons handling and signalling.

At Audley End they took two courses: Underground Warfare and Briefing. The former tested their physical fitness, mastery of weapons, use of explosives and demolitions, and skills in communications and irregular warfare. The house’s extensive grounds and relative privacy made it the ideal site for such exploits. The Briefing course occupied the last six weeks of training. Operatives concocted individual cover stories or ‘legends’, chose an alias and were given false documents and authentic Polish clothes. Those who successfully completed it took an oath of allegiance to the Polish Home Army (AK). They then waited in a holding station until selected for a mission in Poland.

2,613 Poles volunteered for special operations during the war, with 606 of them getting through the rigorous training course. 316 were later dropped into occupied Poland; the majority of them trained at Audley End.

These incredibly brave personnel were at the forefront of Polish resistance. Many became important staff officers in the AK, taking part in widespread partisan operations culminating in uprisings in Wilno, Lviv and Warsaw. 103 were killed in action or murdered by the Gestapo, and a further nine were executed by the Communists after the war.

Today, the Cichociemni are revered in Poland, with many commemorated with statues or plaques in their home towns. Their brave and heroic service inspired GROM, Poland’s modern special forces unit, to adopt their name and continue their traditions.

Britain, Poland, Ukraine. Then, as now, an incommunicable bond was sparked by conflict. After the war, five of the six men settled here as refugees. Franciszek Socha married a Scottish woman and returned to teaching. The film star Karol Dorwski died in London in 1980. Another settled in Bath.

Now, more than ever, it is vital we remember their sacrifice, and the shared connection, renewed once again, between our three peoples.

[apieters]

Wha Wadna Fecht for Kopa?

Wha wadna Fecht for Kopa? Wha wadna draw the sword? Wha would up an’ rally For the Bonnie Prince’s cause?

Now the prince has raised his banner! Now triumphant is our cause! Now the Scottish lion rallies! Let us strike for Prince and Laws!

In This Scene

Not necessarily canon in the context of Swashbucklers of the Magic Kingdom, but my story is about Chris and André drawing their swords for Kopa, Prince of the Pridelands, who does actually go by Charlie in certain contexts…And at least part of the story has some superficial similarities to the ‘45 Uprising…

But if they ever decide to go to the Magic Kingdom’s Annual Highland Games, this is definitely how they do it. And they would call their charge Bonnie Prince Kopa.

Canonically, Chris can fence with a variety of swords, including a British backsword, but his short arms lead him to favor thrusting swords like rapiers and smallswords. But if he does decide to use a basket-hilted broadsword, he’d just favor a more limited set of techniques, relying on the basics of footwork and timing to carry the day.

Most of the Lion King characters in the Magic Kingdom can transition between walking around like regular lions and becoming fully anthropomorphized with relative ease, because it’s the Magic Kingdom and I, the author, said they can.

Behind the Scenes

This took so long. But I’m proud of how Chris’s tartan turned out.

I decided to give Chris and Kopa the Royal Stewart Tartan, since Kopa is not just a lion, King of Beasts, but is the Prince of the Pridelands, while Chris is a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the “King of the Tyrant Lizards.”

I based Kopa’s outfit on a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, but I made the colors a lot more vibrant.

André wears the Black Watch tartan, since he canonically wears a lot of black. He is also canonically half French on his paternal side and half Scottish on the maternal side, and canonically plays the bagpipes.

[ilhoonftw]

Sry if this is weird since we arent mutuals but i thought your post re: rare polish surnames outside poland was cool!! (Bc it applies to me almost exactly 😭)

Im i think 4th gen immigrant (my paternal grandpa was born in US but idk any further back) and our last name is very uncommon, afaik the only people in the states who have it are related to me! I have distant relatives who have tried to do family trees and research but idk much about it so im not sure if the spelling or name itself got changed when my ancestors immigrated. Anyways i just wanted to mention that and i hope you have a good day!

omg this is so nice 💜

if you're 4th gen then your ancestors migrated during the 1800s at eeeaaarliest and back then mamy people had their surname changed. either by choice or by immigration officials. like helena modrzejewska (famous actress) changed hers by choice to modjeska, she migrated around 1870. i noticed changing rz to just r is rather common, i guess americans can't handle the z's 😭 it even happened in my family, they only removed that pesky z, they migrated around 1960s. migration happened in waves, like after november uprising or world wars. or when people from certain region migrated en masse. there's a very fascinating liguistic phenomenon of gwara (regional dialect) being preserved in migrant communities outside poland. gwara that's almost extinct in poland but the families of people who moved 100 years ago kept using it. like the poles who live in south america who speak in gwara pienińska because their ancestors was part of the highlander(for lack of better word) migration wave in 1800s.

part of my family went to usa around 1890s and they just had the ę ą ń letters removed. lots of foreign surnames would get polonized. when some kings would comission some foreigners to do arts and they stayed here. i know bunch of people in my family were foreigners that either had polonized surname or men took their father in law's surname (not rare especially in rural areas back in the dat). it's kinda fascinating to notice the changes, history and trying to reverse engineer. there's also the whole thing with dating the surnames that don't have the cki ski ending. or whole subgroup of "profession" surnames, including subsubgroups of surnames given to people who had the same job (like executioner or baker)

there are sites like https://nazwiska.ijp.pan.pl/ that serve as dictionary and also have extra stats like how many people use it and what's the earliest mention. some surnames date back to 1200s which is craaazy. mine isn't "that" old, only 1500s lmao. you can look up yours maybe it didn't change that much 🤔

[its-sixxers]

How did idunn's parents meet?

Ruaidrí was scouting around with a couple other members of his clan looking for a better location for them to move to as they were dealing with encroaching larger clans and by that point the Twin Sight were fairly small. They ended up running into the Imperials' own scouting party trying to size up the state of the Reach (this was a few years before the Uprising and tensions were mounting) and were attacked. The Imperials were defeated but all three of the men were very badly wounded and Ruaidrí was the last survivor.

He was lying in a highland clearing pretty sure he was going to die of infection when Signe came across him (that year was particularly good for growth of reagents in the Reach and so she'd settled in the area to provide her services as a Priestess of Kyne and general healer). She nursed him back to health and in the process the two of them fell in love. :')

Signe followed him back to his clan - while the religious elements took her a bit of time to pick up on she was very fascinated by the Reachfolk's skill in the healing arts. Idunn was born shortly after, the Uprising came pretty quickly after that, and all three of them had about four years of happiness before Ulfric and the Imperials ruined everything.

Due to not having that much time to understand the culture of the Reach, Signe wasn't able to pass much on to Idunn when they were forced to flee after Ruaidrí's death, but she tried her best. :(

[scotianostra]

Clan Chief, Donald Cameron of Lochiel died on or around October 28th 1748 in France.

Aye, another one with differing dates, Donald Cameron was born circa 1700 and became hereditary chief of Clan Cameron when he was about 19.

The Cameron clan has roots in the Lochaber area that stretch back to the 1400s, when Donald Dubh was the first clan chief.  The Camerons were staunchly loyal to the crown, supporting Charles II in the Civil War, and later Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite uprising in 1745.

There are a few theories on the origins of the clan, and how they became a powerful family, the one I like best is that the Camerons fought for Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn and were rewarded by the king’s follower Angus Og, Lord of Islay, with the grant of lands in Lochaber. There is strong evidence for that theory because one of the signatories of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 translates from the original Latin as John Cameron.

Lochiel was the grandson of Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, known as The 'Gentle' Lochiel, he was the first clan chief to meet Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, at Borodale in 1745. He initially advised the prince to return to France but when the prince refused Lochiel raised 700 men, making the '45 Jacobite Rising possible. 

After the astonishing victory at Prestonpans, in which the Camerons played a full part, the Jacobites took no reprisals against the redcoat troops or the people in Edinburgh who had supported the Hanoverian government. This was largely due to Lochiel’s insistence.

He was also very strong in insisting to the prince that the Jacobite army should not march south, but that he should stay in Edinburgh and reign over an independent Scotland. Charles had promised that his father’s restoration to the throne would see him end the Union.

After going all the way to Derby, the Jacobites retreated north of the Border and occupied Glasgow. Once again, Lochiel intervened and the Jacobite soldiers were warned not to pillage or loot the city. It is for that and his demand for no reprisals in Edinburgh that he became known as the Gentle Lochiel.

Lochiel was wounded at the battle at Culloden and later escaped to France with the prince where he was knighted, appointed Colonel of the Régiment d'Albanie and Commander of Garde Écossaise by Louis XV. Lochiel was also made a member of Order of Saint Michael.

Achnacarry Castle was burned to the ground by Cumberland’s rampaging redcoats but was subsequently re-built and is still the clan seat today. The Cameron lands were forfeited to the Government, but were restored to Donald Cameron, 22nd chief and grandson of the Gentle Lochiel, in 1787.

Donald Angus Cameron, is the 27th and current chief, “Lochiel”  which all Cameron chiefs are known.

[petervintonjr]

"Did I say in an unorganized condition? Yea, had our opponents their way, the very notion of such an institution might have been obliterated in our minds. How strange it is, to see men of sound sense, and of tolerably good judgment, act so diametrically in opposition to their interest; but I forbear making any further comments on this subject, and return to that for which we are convened."

Another biography certain to be hastily deleted from Florida's public school curricula: the life and achievements of abolitionist David Walker. Born in 1785 North Carolina, Walker's father was enslaved (who died before David was born), but his mother was a free woman of colour who later moved to Boston, where sentiments towards slavery were markedly different in the earliest years of this experimental new Constitutional Republic. Walker established a clothing store on Brattle Street and eventually married and had two children, and became very active in local civic affairs, aiding runaway slaves and contributing essays and articles to Freedom's Journal. Of course Walker loathed and despised slavery, but to him that wasn't nearly enough --such an issue demanded many loud voices, raised in active opposition. While the concept of abolitionism certainly existed at the time, it was piecemeal and not formally united nor organized.

Walker's September 1829 publication of An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World but in Particular and Very expressly to those of the United States of America changed all that.

Widely distributed throughout the Northern states and with copies smuggled into the Southern states (sometimes sewn into the very linings of the garments that Walker's store shipped), this controversial 26-page Appeal of course immediately came to be regarded as dangerous, seditious and subversive. Besides its call for a more united and organized opposition to the institution of slavery itself, many of Walker's passionately-expressed viewpoints were relatively new and untested topics; including the notion of making land reparations, the concept of Black racial pride, and forcefully debunking the then-popular assertion that slavery was perversely somehow beneficial to Black people. (Good thing no-one makes that silly claim anymore...) The Appeal also took white Christians to task for their role in condoning slavery --even passively-- arguing that such behaviour was not only inhumane, but also deeply hypocritical. Walker also argued against recolonization of Free Blacks back to Africa (a popular idea at the time), and frankly warned of armed slave uprisings and insurrections, frequently invoking Biblical terminology and similar epic-scale descriptions to drive the point home. He conspicuously made mention of the Haitian Revolution (still a touchy subject amongst Southern plantation owners), and even called out the inherent hypocrisy of some parts of the Declaration of Independence itself.

Some southern landowners were sufficiently incensed to offer as much as $3000 bounties for Walker's death; and in the case of Georgia, a reward as high as $10,000 to anyone who returned him alive back to the South. Circulation of copies of the Appeal itself became a criminal offense in some Southern cities, and while Walker managed to evade such threats and vowed to continue to publish further essays and address public gatherings, he was ultimately found dead in the doorway of his Boston home (and its adjacent printing office) in 1830. While the official cause of death is listed as tuberculosis (widespread at the time), there remains to this day speculation that David Walker may in fact have been poisoned. Fortunately the Appeal and its arguments persisted for years, influencing many future abolitionists (including William Lloyd Garrison, fellow Bostonian Maria Stewart, Henry Highland Garnet, and eventually even John Brown, who played a role in its widespread reprinting in the years leading up to the Civil War).

Anyway, enough prelude. Dive in and read the full text of the Appeal here, as indexed at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html

[shaonicwhite]

songs only come in three kinds

1. love song

2. let’s party

3. folk tune from the jacobite uprisings of 1745 mocking the english general john cope for his defeat at the hands of the highlanders in the battle of prestonpans, also known as the battle of gladsmuir, a much more fitting title when you consider the prophetic words of thomas the rhymer, in gladsmuir shall the battle be—

[blairstales]

A Brief History of Tartans + Unique Official Tartans

Tartan (often mistakenly called “plaid”) refers to woven pattern with interlocking stripes, and there have been archeological finds of it that dates back to the 3-4th century BCE.

Seeing as certain color dyes were only found in certain areas, historically, you might have been able to tell where someone was from in Scotland by the color of their tartan, but it was a bit later in history that they became associated with clans.

“Many stem from the weaving industry formed by the Wilsons of Bannockburn, who scoured the Highlands for ‘old patterns’, as well as the pseudo clan histories put together by the Sobieski Stuart brothers during the 1830s and 1840s. These English brothers had taken on new identities in Scotland and falsified their claim to descent from a royal line, but wrote two fantastical – and inaccurate – histories that were later widely used as source material for the Scottish tartan industry.” historyextra.com

For example, the Jacobite pattern was designed in 1713, and became a silent  — and legally safe  — way to show support to the uprising. This caused the use of tartan to be banned in 1746 and would stay that way for 26 years.

As the years went on, the tartan became a symbol of Scottish pride, and there was pressure for every clan to have their own version.

Now, every clan has their own tartan, but it does not just stop at clans. There are several organizations and groups that have submitted their own patterns to the registry to make them official tartans.

Here are some unique tartans that you might not know:

Irn Bru

Hello Kitty:

Sherlock Holmes

Shrek

Black Raven

Out & Proud (LGBTQIA+)

Grim of Helsingland

Nessie

The Joker

Royal Pumpkin Spice

The Witches Blood

All the images are from tartanregister.gov.uk, and there are far more options on there.

Still can't find a tartan that speaks to you? You can design your own on this site.