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Highlands'golf with Harry Potter's train

Scotland is home of golf and Saint Andrews is its Mecca but, Scot’s Highlands and Islands are also land of history and legends.

by R. Bourne

Inverness, August 2005 -
The extraordinary basalt columns of Kilt Rock on the Isle of Skye are part of the stone aged legend of the Giants while Nessie, till its first photography in 1934, is the famous Monster of the Loch Ness. Nowadays, following the paths of Harry Potter on his way to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, thousands of “Muggles” (non-wizard population) take the old steam train which appears in Potter’s movies as the Hogwards Express driving the young wizards to Poudlard. In our “muggles” common reality, King’s Cross Station is Fort William’s station and the train runs, not to Hogwards but to Mallaig where to take the ferryboat to the Isle of Skye. Last but not least, the muggle name of the train is “Jacobite” which goes back to the core of Scottish but also English, French and European catholic and protestant history from 1688 to… nowadays.

-The 300-years-old sad story of the Jacobites

Derived from Jacobus, the Latin for James, Jacobite was the name given to that party which, after the Revolution of 1688, continued to support the Stuart dynasty, as representing the principle of divine right, after the deposition of James VII to the benefit of William III of Orange. William was king of England but next to Princess Ann of Denmark and the Elector George I of Hanover and the French king Louis XIV supported the Jacobites as catholic while the Whigs were of the Puritans under the authority of the English monarch. Roman church was regarded as a servant of Satan by Protestants zealots.

So it hasn’t been a fairy tale but a sad story of religious war for accession to the new born United Kingdom’s throne. It ended on the Culloden’s battlefield (near Inverness) where thousands brave heroes from the various Scottish clans have been disembowelled by the British army and buried were they died to defend the Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie. It is said that their blood have dyed the grasses for ever.

On a plateau between Inverness and Nairn, the flat windy open battlefield is still as it has been in 1745, and it is very moving to see lines of families groups, from the white haired to the last baby, wearing all the same clan tartan kilts walking through the high grasses to find the funeral stone to pay respect to their ancestors while some bagpipe plays the Scottish anthem.

In a modest wooden museum, pictures and video can be seen retracing that famous battle which is not yet closed. Regularly, the question of the change of the 1701 Act of Settlement comes back on the table. Recently Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholics accused the Blair Government of promoting “sponsored sectarian discrimination” by failing to repeal the 300-yer-old law 1701 Act of Settlement which bans the Catholics from the throne. Pressed by SNP leader Alex Salmond to amend the Act, Tony Blair refused. Any change in the law would have to be ratified by 15 Commonwealth parliaments and would impact other acts including the 300-year-old Act of Union!!!.

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Click the map to enlarge

Frontpage of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone

and the Jacobite steam locomotive at Fort William station

Jacobites' column at Glenfinnan

Culloden battlefield