Fiona MacKenzie sings the lament "Mo Rùn Geal Òg," in the National Trust for Scotland's video, published today to mark the anniversary of the short, bloody Battle of Culloden. On April 16, 1746, in an hour's time, about 1,500 Jacobite soldiers lost their lives. This devastating ending to the 1745 Rising had a similarly devastating aftermath in the Highlands in the form of government retaliations.
Large swathes of society and tradition were upended by stringent laws, stringent enforcement, or by those fleeing from the same, but the sorrow of the song here is keenly personal. It was composed by Christiana Fergusson, the widow of one William Chisholm, who died at Culloden. One Victorian scholar verbosely but accurately referred to the composition as the "wail of a mateless dove."
There is an English translation of the song on Fiona MacKenzie's own Bandcamp page.
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