"We come to a castle" or two

 Today's entry will be without the first hand words of our Outlandish Squirrels as there hasna been time to blog. 

Tonight they are in a castle. Yup, a real castle, with armour and guns and a piper and towers. Kathy: "Ooh! I wanna see a ghost". Scot: "No you don't." Kathy is quite good for copy. She's been doing well with her gaidhlig for "good morning". Her version: "Madainn mhath y'all".

Kathy

After showing the troupe around another castle this morning, the castle most like Leoch, we went on to Culloden. That's never a jolly experience. Sallie and Jack's words "Futility, incompetence, waste." Seems a common sentiment.

It's the human stories that get me, like 16 year old Donald Mollach who was the 9th Livingstone that hour to carry the banner of the Appin regiment in the one hour of carnage. All the others had fallen holding it. By the time he grasped it from the mud, the battle was lost. He tore it from its pole so that it would not be captured and burned by the British government. Donald wrapped it round his body and pulled his plaid over it and fled the field, heading for Appin. He made it back several days later to Appin and his home island of Lios Mor, having covered the distance by night, using hill passes, sleeping in forests and caves during the day. The Appin Banner is the only Jacobite banner to survive the public burnings in Edinburgh and London. 

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