Surely the strangest fact associated with the battle of Culloden, fought on April 16th 1746, was that there may well have been a Native American warrior present on the side of the British forces.
One of the British brigadiers present at Culloden was also the Governor of Georgia. In 1745 he was in England recruiting for his colonial Rangers. When the Jacobite rebellion broke out these troops were quickly added to the hastily assembled Government forces. With them was what the newspapers described as an “Indian King” - one of the Governor’s Creek allies who had seemingly traveled across the Atlantic to help with recruitment.
I really want the story about the Creek warrior being present at the battle to be true–but it sounds an awful lot to me like one of those “memory creep” stories where details get added to a story bit by bit until the end result bears no relationship to the truth.
Got to start with the most basic - it wasn’t a battle between Scotland and England, it was a continuation of a (broadly) Catholics ~ Protestant British civil war. As many Scots fought against the Jacobites as alongside them.
The Duke of Cumberland never actually ordered the execution of Jacobites during or immediately after the battle - he merely told his men to “keep in mind” the false belief that the Jacobites themselves had been ordered to take no prisoners.
The Government casualties from the battle officially stand at 309 compared to the 2000+ Jacobite losses, but historians believe redcoat casualties were probably much higher. The Government may have covered up figures, and due to the battlefield graves being a protected heritige site they cannot be exhumed. Certainly the fact that Barrell’s regiment was nigh-on annihilated makes the relatively low casualty figures suspect.
The French Jacobite regiment, the Royal Ecosse are suspected of having executed Government soldiers during the battle. At one point they overran a detachment of highland Loyalists from the Argyll Militia who were defending a stone wall - bodies were found buried beside the wall side-by-side, with musket balls through their skulls. Whilst officially this is claimed to have been due to the greater accuracy of the French muskets, such a claim seems unlikely.
In bloom of Life She’s snatchd from hence, She had not room To make defence; For Tyger fierce Took Life away. And here she lies In a bed of Clay,
Until the Resurrection Day.
- Poem from the grave of Hannah Twynnoy at Malmesbury Abbey.
In the graveyard of an unassuming village in Wiltshire, England, is the grave of Hannah Twynnoy, the first person in Britain to be killed by a tiger. Tigers are not indigenous to Britain, just in case you were wondering, so this is quite curious.
The story goes that Hannah Twynnoy was a barmaid at The White Lion, a pub in the village of Malmesbury. In 1703 a travelling menagerie, ‘an exhibition of wild beasts,’ set up their display in the garden of the pub where Ms. Twynnoy took to harassing the ‘very fierce tiger’ they’d brought along with them ‘not withstanding the repeated remonstrance of its keeper.’
One day the tiger had quite simply had enough of this and it escaped from its enclosure, ‘sprang towards the unhappy girl, caught hold of her gown and tore her to pieces’ (quotes via a local historian).
I visited Hannah Twynnoy’s grave in January 2019 during a little road trip of that part of England (which I would recommend to anyone). All Oddments that I have seen personally are included in the Oddment Odysseys section of the blog, which I obviously also recommend).
(No, I don’t know how to play the violin.) I made a new shirt! It’s a style I’ve wanted to try for quite a while, where there are no buttons and the collar closes with a ribbon through 2 buttonholes. This kind of shirt appears in quite a few early 18th century portraits, and some mid century ones, though those later ones are more often children’s shirts. I have a section for all the ones I’ve found on my shirts pinterest board.
I got distracted by some other projects, and then annoyed by having to re-do some stuff, but have finally finished my coat! It’s not perfect, but I’m happy with it. It’s made of 2 slightly different navy blue wools, because I didn’t have enough of either. This is almost the same pattern as a black corduroy coat I made a few years ago, but shorter and a bit tighter. For some reason the shoulders weren’t sitting right, and after removing and reattaching the collar and re-sewing the shoulders they were better but still wrinkly. So I just added a shoulder cape to cover it up. My corduroy coat has 2 of them and it works with the style, but I wasn’t planning on adding one to this. Glad I did though, even if the shoulders sat nicely it definitely looks better with the cape.
I might have overdone it a bit with the tight sleeves, but I really wanted functional buttons at the wrists, and there’s no point in doing that if I can get my hands through with them closed. It was perfect weather to wear it today, but the rest of the week’s forecast looks much warmer, so I think I’ve finished it just in time to put it away until autumn.
Prometheus chained (Prométhée enchaîné), reception piece for the French Royal Academy, marble sculpture by Nicolas Sébastien Adam (1705-1778) made in 1762. The work is now visible in the Louvre Museum.
(The original photograph is in public domain and has been modified)
Julie Heffernan — Self Portrait as Big World (oil on canvas, 2008)
This post is about Julie Heffernan’s method of representing herself as giant globes of carefully displayed vegetals and small artifacts, almost like she is a sort of giant bombonnière.
But then I discovered her own gallery site, and I realized she is much more than this, she is a whole explorer of her own world, which looks like the background of a Rococo painting under hallucinations, or a very rare 18th century fantasy landscape (below).
