WHOSE SIDE WERE AUCHINACHIES ON IN THE FIRST JACOBITE REBELLION?

Did Auchinachies Cowardly Quit The Field Of Battle At Sheriffmuir?

If These Questions Have Ever Troubled (Occurred To?) You, Read On.

By Professor Gerald Auchinachie

I have run across another old ballad that makes reference to the Auchinachies, this time in connection with their supposed cowardice in action on the side of the Jacobite forces at the battle of Sheriffmuir (1715) near Dunblane in Scotland.

This battle was one of three important military engagements in the First Jacobite Rebellion in support of the Old Pretender, James, son of the deposed James II (a Stuart and so potentially heir to both the English and Scottish thrones). Bonnie Prince Charlie (the grandson of James II) was the Young Pretender and came a generation later in the Second Jacobite Rebellion which ended at Culloden (l745).

These rebellions are called "Jacobite" because "Jacobus" in Latin means "James". While these rebellions are associated with Scotland, it was expected in the First Jacobite Rebellion that there would be acts of insurrection in England as well as Scotland. This did not prove to be the case, though there was a struggle in Lancashire in the North of England. Scotland had recently lost more of its independence when the Act of Union, l707, united England and Scotland politically, establishing a single parliament which usually met in Westminster.

With the death of Queen Anne in l714, a German princeling George I of Hanover was imported as King of England and Scotland. While George could not speak a word of English, he was (unlike the descendants of James II) a Protestant. George I's supporters were mainly Whig (Liberal) politicians; the Tories were shut out of the circles of power.

The ballad which mentions the Auchinachies is called "The Marquis of Huntly's Retreat from the Battle of Sheriffmuir" and in its present form was first published in l844 in A New Book of Old Ballads edited by James Maidment, though the latter notes that an earlier imperfect version exists in James Hogg's first volume of his Jacobite Relics, l82l.

Maidment's collection of ballads along with three other collections was reprinted in Choice Old Scottish Ballads edited by Thomas George Stevenson, EP Publishing, l976 and this is my source for the text of the ballad as given below [see end]. By amazing good luck the Concordia Vanier Library possesses the original copies of the two- volume Jacobite Relics which I have also consulted.

The Marquis of Huntly was Alexander Gordon (l678-1728) and the ballad mocks his and others' behavior at Sheriffmuir. "The Marquis of Huntly's Retreat" is a broadside ballad rather than a folk ballad such as Francis Child included in his famous l9th-century collection of English and Scottish Ballads.

Broadsides were by definition, as this ballad is, topical, satirical and partisan and bawdy-scatological, often deriding enemies or, in this case, allies who were thought to have given craven service in the battle or otherwise betrayed the Jacobite cause.

In stanza 12 of the "Huntly" ballad the ballad satirist says this:

When they march'd on the Sheriff Moor,
With courage stout and keen, man;
Who would have thought the Gordons gay
That day should quite [sic] the green, man.
Auchleacher and Auchanachie,
And all the Gordon tribe, man;
Like their great Marquis, they could not
The smell of powder bide, man.

[REFRAIN] Vow as the Marquis ran,
Coming from Dumblane man;
Strathbogie did beshit iself,
And Enzie was not clean, man.

Hogg's imperfect text of the "Huntly" ballad is entitled "From Bogie Side; or The Marquis's Raide" and is #4 in Jacobite Relics, vol. 1. In this version it is the fifth stanza which names the Auchinachies. This stanza is in all respects the same as the twelfth stanza of "Huntly" given above except the names are given thus: "Auchluncart and Auchanochie".

It is a pity that Hogg's text of the ballad is imperfect because his editorial apparatus unlike Maidment's is detailed and informative. Unlike Maidment, Hogg supplies the music of many of the Jacobite ballads. For "Huntly" he says: "The air to which it is set, approaches nearly to a reel called 'The Lasses of Stewarton', but it sings better to 'There's nae Luck about the House,' which indeed differs but slightly from the other."

In his editorial apparatus Hogg also gives an analysis of the British and European history leading to the events at Sheriffmuir including personal accounts from letters of the period. The general historical context is then followed by notes on specific ballads in the collection.

As one of the most important engagements of the First Jacobite Rebellion, the Battle of Sheriffmuir is the subject of several ballads besides "Huntly". Hogg's Jacobite Relics leads off with the ballad "The Battle of Sheriffmuir", the main idea of which is that everyone, Jacobites and pro-George troops alike, ran at Sheriffmuir. As to the question of the winning side, the ballad wryly states:

Whether we ran, or they ran, or we wan, or they wan,
Or if there was winning at a', man,
There no man can tell, save our brave Genarell,
Who first began running of a', man.
{Refrain] And we ran, and they ran, and they ran and we ran,
But Florence* ran fastest of a',man.
[*Florence was Huntly's horse]

As a Jacobite relic, "The Battle of Sheriffmuir" is amazingly good-humoured even to the point of self satire including satire of the Jacobite general Mar.

Certainly, as battles go Sheriffmuir was a bit of snarl and an inconclusive snarl to boot. The lines of opposing troops instead of meeting their opposite numbers symmetrically in classic stand-up-and-shoot-and-be-shot-at fashion veered and it was then hard to say what was center and what was flank.

On one side the Jacobites overcame their opposition and pursued their enemies in full flight almost to Stirling. On the other, the pro-George forces had the upper hand and pushed the retreating Jacobite forces to the very banks of Allan Water. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say as the ballad does that all ran, but certainly there was much retreating in full flight on both sides.

In what was left on the main battlefield near its close there was on the part of Jacobites some menacing and sabre rattling and a strange failure to charge and engage the enemy. Then, troops on both sides seem to melt away and as the ballad correctly states at the end of the day it was hard to say who had won it.

Mar, the Jacobite leader, did not show distinguished courage nor did Huntly but his distinctiveness was not so much in flight but, as the ballad says, in being the "fastest" at it. Part of the Jacobite animus against the Marquis of Huntly may be owing to the fact that when he was captured by pro-George forces at his Gordon Castle and imprisoned in Edinburgh, he was soon released on account of his having "quit the cause early".

That his wife was from a powerful Whig family probably figured in his pardon. Hogg's notes on this ballad provide a useful list of other Scots notables who participated on one side or the other in this battle.

Not everyone was able to find the purely comic side of the battle and the fact that it was inconclusive (the Jacobites needed a decisive victory) explains a certain bitterness in other ballads. As we shall see, some factions used the retreat at Sheriffmuir to score heavily against their rivals.

For the fourth ballad in Jacobite Relics - the "corrupt" version of "Huntly" - Hogg also provides notes which emphasize the ballad's being "exclusively a party [partisan] song made by some of the Grants or their adherents, in obloquy of their more potent neighbours the Gordons" (p. 255). Hogg later terms the maker of the "Huntly" ballad "the malicious bard of the Grants."

It is worth noting that the Grants enter the ballad as characters in stanza l4 where on the Thursday before Sheriffmuir they supposedly hugely frighten the Gordons in a horseback encounter. Most importantly for one concerned with the reputation of the Auchinachies, Hogg states that the "Huntly" ballad is "in great measure untrue". It may be true that the Marquis of Huntly, a Gordon, was "among the gentlemen that fled" but it is emphatically untrue of the Gordons in general:

"two battalions of Gordons, or at least of Gordon's vassals, perhaps mostly of the Clan-Chattan, behaved themselves as well as any on the field; and were probably instrumental in breaking the Whig cavalry, on the left wing of their army and driving them back among their foot[soldiers]."(James Hogg, Jacobite Relics, vol. 1, p. 256)

Hogg published his version of the "Huntly" ballad with some reluctance knowing its author's "ill-scraped pen" designedly slandered the Gordons and their supporters but did so because it was "such a genuine old party song" and the ballad is genuinely amusing. However, he takes care to note that it is untrue in many respects and animated by the ballad-satirist's desire to seize an opportunity to smear all the Gordons and their supporters and not just the Marquis of Huntly. Modern accounts of the Battle of Sheriffmuir corroborate Hogg's account of the battle.

I recommend Hilary and Alan Kemp's The Jacobite Rebellion, 1975 which contains a coloured map of the battlefield and details of the battle positions of both forces plus an historical analysis of the context of these events. A word or two more about the supporters of the first Jacobite rebellion: some were Gaelic speaking Highlanders (above Moray Firth) and some were Scots speaking Lowlanders like the Auchinachies, probably from Aberdeenshire or Banffshire.

The Marquis of Huntly's forces were described by contemporaries as they arrived at Sheriffmuir as a combination of these two. Their arrival was greeted with laughter and howls of derision.

Together with a body of perfectly acceptable mounted gentlemen volunteers, his troops also contained about fifty great "lubberly fellows", wearing bonnets but no boots. They wore tunics so short as to barely conceal their non-military gear and rode little long-tailed ponies bridled with rope. The animals so sagged under the weight that their riders' heels dragged on the ground. These were Highlanders.

However, in this case, he laughs best who laughs last, since the Highlanders proved a doughty force against Argyle who found their fighting tactics both formidable and unfamiliar.

Besides being an often mutually incomprehending mixture of Highlander and Lowlander, the adherents to the Jacobite cause had no single, unanimous purpose. They were a mixed bag.

Some believed in the right of inheritance of Prince James (a Catholic) and considered this more binding than the Protestant Succession to the British throne. Some were simply anti-unionist seeking only Scotland's independence. Some acted out of personal adoration for the Stuart Prince. Some were simply reactionaries looking for a return to the "old ways". Some noblemen and clan chiefs stumbled into the enterprise against their better judgment. Some, once in, may have been appalled at the lack of military abilities in their leader (well named) Mar.

The latter category might include the Marquis of Huntly himself. As usual in war, many common folk had no choice but to follow the dictates of their leader's allegiance. Mar threatened to burn his tenants' houses if they failed to show at Sheriffmuir.

Many Jacobite ballads are propoganda and employ satiric means to make their points which can, as we have noted above, include the counter-factual and the a-historical and even the illogical. For example, in "Huntley" future betrayal of the Jacobite cause is given as "evidence" of betrayal at Sheriffmuir.

From our later vantage of time one might ask whether the Jacobite enterprises were well-advised or whether the two Stuart Pretenders were really worthy of the sacrifice in lives their causes entailed. What is certain is that the Jacobite Rebellions generated much poetry and song, some of it still alive:" Will he no come back again", etc. As would be supposed, the ballads do not generally entertain doubts as to the worthiness of the cause, though Hogg includes some Anti-Jacobite ballads which do just that. Both sides had their songs though the Jacobites had more.

It is the satiric strategy of the "Huntly" ballad to present the Jacobite cause ("to set their King upon the throne/ And to protect the church") as self-evident and even (counterfactually) as the status quo from which defectors "mutiny" (stanza 4) as "rebels" (stanza 3) and "traitors" stanza 5). The Jacobite cause is first presented as the agreed-upon cause of the Gordons from which the Marquis defects making him a traitor not merely to his country, Church, and King but to his family word and honour (see stanza 1).

That the enemies at Sheriffmuir are fellow Scots is minimized or elided and becomes epitomized in the person of the Duke of Argyle. The motives given for defection are always failure of personal courage sometimes linked with the lure of future material gain. Sober second thoughts about the cost in lives, the likehood of further short term or long term success and scruples about killing one's immediate countrymen are sealed off from scrutiny.

Within the ballad, defectors from Sheriffmuir fall into three categories: first, there are those who exhibit in battle a weakness already known and revealed. The Master of Sinclair, for example, has a coward's heart and is so uxorious as to desert the cause "By council of his wife"(!). Ogilvy is a "member of the tricking trade" and so, unsurprisingly, exhibits his cowardice.

In a second category are those given no prior credentials save their names (which probably had a resonance for their contemporaries no longer available to us). These persons simply go into a funk and are often described with comic indignity-e.g. soiled trousers, hen-pecked, eating a cow's tail, bawling in fear, etc. Examples of this second category include Brunstane, Sir James of Park, Maien, Craigieheads, all the Seatons save Clashterim, and Cluny [of Gordon not Macpherson].

The third and most important category comprises those with a former status or reputation from which failure at Sheriffmuir is a sad falling-off. Principal among these is Huntly himself, a "man of fame" and "doughty deeds" who ignobly retreats from the battle. Meffan Smith, a "man of good renown" proves a forger and "an arrant lown". Likewise Francis Stewart formerly a "valiant hero" quits the ground at Sherifffmuir.

As families or groups rather than individuals the Gordons and the Auchleachers and the Auchanachies are families the balladeer "would have thought" unlikely to quit the green but who are said to do so out of a comically inadequate reason -dislike of the smell of gunpowder (cf. Henry IV, I, Act I, iii). But as I hope Hogg's notes make plain, this charge against the Gordons and their supporters is simply untrue. It is as Hogg says, "a party [partisan] song" in some measure informed by a factional animosity against the Gordons and their supporters.

Do we Auchinachies wake up and smell the gunpowder?

© 2003 Bruce L. Pollock, all rights reserved.
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