Clearances? Don’t like the term,
a Highland chief protests
in chiselled English voice.
The English did not clear
Scots out. They went abroad
because they wished,
(but kept their love of Scotland).
Like him the BBC has qualms
about Culloden. Lowlands
massacres Highland Scot;
the man who owns two cows
obeys the Laird who owes his Prince
a band of men who wait
their turn for slaughter.
Grapeshot cuts them down.
A ragged charged. In less time
than a football match
the clans are torn apart.
English bayonets earn their pence
under claymores raised
against their fellow.
They cut the throats of wounded,
catch those who flee, kill women
who protect their own. Never again
will Scot invade. Sheep replace
the ancient way of life.
And what consoles the Scot for this?
A myth of Flora and her Prince.
Was it politic to let him flee
over the sea to Skye then France,
drunk with a failed dream,
taking cash in saddlebags,
from followers left behind
to compensate with legend for
his general incompetence?
History slides into a dream.
Love finds a hero who was none.
Embraces fantasies of kin
so we clan together
appropriate whatever
helps us to remain
behind our wall.
We sing of a Prince in girl's clothes,
of images which never were,
and one who thought that God
was on his side. Beauty sprang
from pride and deprivation.
And to this day an English voice
denies the English cleared the crofts
and burned the cots and catholics
as Scots are taken in and taken out.
©Terry Hodgson2024
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