7 January 2022 Issue 2459 © ULLAPOOL NEWS
A Very Happy New Year to all our Readers
Pantomime memories
Aladdin, Cinderella, Jock and the Beanstalk… all 3-night sellouts in the Village Hall, in the days of its dressing rooms with showers and the permanent stage.
Whilst sorting the contents of lofts, with somewhat unnerving memories of the past, I came across ‘80s Ullapool pantomime cast lists, press releases and loads of photographs. I remember the scripts were smart, lampooning local politics. The press releases, bar one, were effusive.
The many photos rekindle memories. There’s Paul Whitefoot (of SEPA, or was it SSE? – I get them muddled up) showing off his lace knickers; Care Bear Jean Urquhart singing “Saltcoaaats, I love you, with your dirty rotten … seaweeeed”; Andy Mitchell with pert boobs; a certain Maree Todd with “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me …”; Ken McNaughton dressed in a tutu. Some members of the production long since gone – Drew Tannock as a Baddie, Sonya Macrae’s Mum, and Penny Browne, without whose creativity the pantomimes would not have been such hits. And a picture of one of her famous end of show cakes.
Then there’s Joan Michael in full opera regalia as a ‘cailleach’; Beatrice Brinkler of course, a glamorous principal boy, who also choreographed all the dances for the many local (now middle-aged) boys and girls; techies Phil Ellis and Davey Buick peeping through the curtains; the Boydies, one playing a ‘Weirdo’ (the [Govan] shipyard one whose ad libbing was nearly a match for Billy Connolly’s, that other [Partick] welder).
And many others: probably a good proportion of the village.
Much of what has come down from the lofts is being recycled elsewhere. Not sure what to do with the panto stuff.
Chrissy Boyd.
December 2021.
(Can we suggest an exhibition in the Village Hall of panto memorabilia together with photos – a winter project for you perhaps Chrissy, with help of course…!??). Eds
*****
AN UPDATE ON THE LARGE PRINT EASIER TO READ ULLAPOOL NEWS!
The Ullapool News would like to thank Ullapool Community Trust for accepting its application for funding from the Ullapool Community Benefit Fund.
The purpose of this is to be able to produce, in conjunction with Ullapool High School, an easier to read Ullapool News for those people who have difficulty reading the regular version.
The grant will cover the additional costs for an initial period of three months.
We are working towards getting the scheme up and running in the near future and those who have expressed an interest will be contacted.
*****
Lochbroom’s Saddest Day?
One of the saddest days in the year for Lochbroom hasn’t been much noticed until now.
On 15th April 2022, the anniversary of the Battle of Littleferry fought in 1746 near Golspie, East Sutherland, will be marked by the unveiling of a massive commemorative stone.
The ‘battle’, which was actually more of a cold-blooded ambush and a rout, saw the Jacobite Earl of Cromartie’s Regiment defeated, just one day before the Battle of Culloden took place.
Cromartie’s Regiment numbered several hundred men, mostly from Ross-shire, many of them from Lochbroom. Most of the regiment never came home after that day.
The victors at Littleferry were three companies of Sutherland militia fighting for the Earl of Sutherland, who was on the side of the British/Hanoverian Government.
Some Jacobites were killed, and over 170 taken prisoner including around fifty men from Lochbroom who were put on board two Government prison ships lying in wait offshore, then held in the Moray Firth until June before being shipped off to England. They were kept in confinement at Tilbury Fort or aboard prison ships on the Thames in stinking, disease-ridden holds, for nearly two years. Some died in captivity.
Of the surviving prisoners, most were transported (deported) aboard the ship Frere to Barbados in March 1747, as indentured labourers on plantations – or in effect, as slaves.
It is unlikely that their loved ones back home in Lochbroom were ever informed about what had happened to them. They had effectively disappeared.
A few dozen Lochbroom men did escape from the rout at Littleferry and got home, but they were now wanted men.
The non-appearance of Cromartie’s Regiment at Culloden was a heavy blow to the hopes of the Jacobites under Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
The night before the Battle of Littleferry, the Sutherland militia companies had received an order from the Duke of Cumberland that they should attack Cromartie’s men in the rear as they headed south from Golspie, looking to cross Loch Fleet at the ferry and rejoin the main Jacobite forces, who were planning to confront Cumberland’s army, currently on the march from Aberdeen towards Inverness.
During the spring and summer following Culloden, ‘Butcher’ Cumberland instigated vicious reprisals against all areas which had provided troops for the Jacobite cause. Lochbroom was targeted in May by Captain John Fergusson and his redcoats, who killed cattle, seized arms, burned houses and inflicted other unrecorded brutalities on an already traumatised population.
Then, in late July, two Highland militia companies made their hostile presence felt in Lochbroom. The First Company of Mackays, from Sutherland, was captained by George Mackay of Skibo, son of the chief of the Reay Mackays. He was joined by George Munro of Culcairn, leading his company of Munros from Easter Ross. These men were looking to confiscate weapons and find any ‘lurking’ Jacobite troops. They would have created further terror among the general population, especially the Mackay militia. This company had not participated in the Battle of Littleferry, but had been involved in another battle three weeks earlier, at Tongue, when over a hundred Jacobite men bringing arms and gold aboard a French ship were seized. The Mackays divided up prize-money after that.
Having spent a week or so in Lochbroom, the two militia companies received orders to go to Lochaber, where Captain George Munro was shot dead by a Cameron. After mopping-up operations ended that autumn, the twenty or so independent militias were paid off.
There must have been great suffering and bitterness among the people here during these cruel months, and for years to come, with so many men lost and livelihoods destroyed. No parish in Scotland paid a higher price for its involvement in the ’45 Rising than Lochbroom.
Lochbroom’s Minister at the time of the Rising, James Robertson, travelled to London in 1746 to plead for clemency for local men, and succeeded in having a handful freed. He continued as minister here until 1776, living to see the Hector sail away in 1773 with would-be emigrants including some of his own parishioners as well as some poor Sutherland people among the rest. Robertson was succeeded as minister by Alexander Stronach, who was in turn followed in 1808 by a youngish Sutherland man called Thomas Ross. Ross was born in Creich in 1768 and he would have personally known some of the men who had attacked Cromartie’s Regiment in April 1746. Another Ross from Creich, William Ross, was among the Mackay militia in Lochbroom in July 1746.
Thomas Ross was to remain at Clachan Church until his death in 1843. During his last years, surely memories of the ‘45 had faded, and there were other pressing problems. Perhaps Littleferry was never held against Sutherland people, or at least not in the way Glencoe was held against the Campbells. More Sutherland folk had moved here and been accepted, such as the Mackay couple whose son Donald was born in 1808. He married Johanna MacLean and their son John, born in 1853, married Georgina Mackenzie and had a long marriage; their gravestone is in Clachan Church burial ground.
Thomas Ross and his wife Jane, a daughter of Mackenzie of Dundonnell, also knew Mary Macrae, who was born in 1821 in Kildonan, Dundonnell. She married John MacLean of Letters and their daughter Janet, born 1848, was their third child. My mother-in-law Hazel Mackenzie (nee Mackay), who is still with us and has a memory as sharp as ever, still remembers talking to both this Janet MacLean, who was her granny, as well as to John Mackay, her grandfather.
In other words, when all is said and done, we are only a few generations on from a time when the battles of Littleferry and Culloden were in sharp focus. The connections going back feel personal for many people.
The viciousness with which the Sutherland militia attacked fellow-Highlanders at Littleferry has to be understood in context. The Earl of Cromartie had stupidly ordered the burning down of a local factor’s house some days before, which was something the Jacobites did not generally do. One man on his own side later wrote that the men had hated doing this. And Cromartie was an appalling leader on that 15th April, abandoning his men to their route-march south while he insisted his officers take refreshments with Lady Sutherland at Dunrobin Castle, as she was a Jacobite sympathiser, unlike her husband who was by now away with yet another militia company supporting Cumberland.
The Sutherland militia were motivated that fateful day, and they had an easy opportunity to attack. Their ferocity, and the fact that they accepted a direct order from Cumberland, may leave an uneasy feeling today. The turns and twists of the ’45 still have the power to anger us, even after 276 years.
Donnie Mackenzie, who sadly died last year at a grand age, fought with distinction as a Chindit in Burma in the Second World War. He also knew his ancestry and was proud that his forebears were Jacobites. He was also a descendant of the Lochbroom minister, Alexander Stronach, and of the
Mackenzies of Ballone. Donnie’s granddaughter Donna is also Hazel’s granddaughter and so she is descended from Lochbroom Jacobites as well as Sutherland Hanoverians. As the decades passed after Littleferry and Culloden, Highlanders came together in peace and fellow-suffering: people from Wester Ross and Sutherland emigrated together on the Hector, Thomas Ross came from Creich to be minister here, Mackays and Mackenzies intermarried.
But memories run deep, including the folk-memory, and they can still be inflamed after a long interval of time.
For long, the Jacobite narrative has captured the public imagination. Culloden is felt to be a tragic, haunting place, and it is. It is understood now that Culloden and Littleferry marked not just the end of a dramatic Rising that could so easily have succeeded, but also the beginning of an evil period when Butcher Cumberland and his men crossed the line of decency to commit countless war crimes.
The way we remember those lost in wars is important. Commemorations held on 11th November are solemn.
So ‘remembering Littleferry’ in a formalised way needs to be respectful to both sides. The conflict was a victory in a narrow military sense but not one to be proud of, in the long-term. The militia happily divvied up further prize-money afterwards, yet within the year, the Sutherland people, like all Highlanders, were paying the price of Butcher Cumberland’s victory as new legislation came into force, forbidding them to carry arms or wear their plaids. The Earl of Sutherland was humiliated by Cumberland and both he and his wife died within a few years. His granddaughter instigated brutal clearances between 1807 and 1821 with her husband the Marquess of Stafford, turning on her own people. Her grandson in his turn married the heir to the Cromartie estate and together they attempted to carry out evictions at Coigach and Elphin in the 1850s. They failed.
The Battle of Littleferry commemoration is to include the playing of a new piobaireachd echoing a traditional call to battle. Here in Lochbroom, the playing of The Highland Widow’s Lament would be more appropriate. Listen to Shona Donaldson singing that Robert Burns poem, on YouTube, over a film-clip where grieving wives search for their dead husbands on Culloden battlefield, and try not to have a lump in your throat. Picture the actresses as actual Coigach or Lochside women, and think how they could not even get to Littleferry battlefield to pay respects, or see their menfolk before they were transported.
Remembrance triggers powerful emotions. When Maymie Mackenzie’s wonderful old photos were kindly put on the Ullapool Community page recently by Michael Lavelle, and people and scenes from long ago were brought back, on-screen, there were many touching comments. Those images evoked a community as it was. They remind us that things are always changing and fine people sadly but inevitably pass away. We can then, at least, remember them fondly.
But things rarely changed in this parish as shockingly or cruelly or quickly as they did in 1746, when dozens of families were suddenly bereft of their husband/father/son.
I hope that the inscription on the Battle of Littleferry memorial stone may reflect that tragedy. Other commemorations include a battlefield trail, and a history of the battle. Updates are on the Battle of Littleferry Facebook page. DS
Janet Mackenzie (nee MacLean) is still remembered today. As a girl, she knew elderly people who had watched the ship Hector sail in 1773, and whose fathers had fought at Littleferry in 1746. Here she is outside the family home on Mill Street in the 1930s, with her grandson.
A Very Happy New Year to all our Readers
Pantomime memories
Aladdin, Cinderella, Jock and the Beanstalk… all 3-night sellouts in the Village Hall, in the days of its dressing rooms with showers and the permanent stage.
Whilst sorting the contents of lofts, with somewhat unnerving memories of the past, I came across ‘80s Ullapool pantomime cast lists, press releases and loads of photographs. I remember the scripts were smart, lampooning local politics. The press releases, bar one, were effusive.
The many photos rekindle memories. There’s Paul Whitefoot (of SEPA, or was it SSE? – I get them muddled up) showing off his lace knickers; Care Bear Jean Urquhart singing “Saltcoaaats, I love you, with your dirty rotten … seaweeeed”; Andy Mitchell with pert boobs; a certain Maree Todd with “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me …”; Ken McNaughton dressed in a tutu. Some members of the production long since gone – Drew Tannock as a Baddie, Sonya Macrae’s Mum, and Penny Browne, without whose creativity the pantomimes would not have been such hits. And a picture of one of her famous end of show cakes.
Then there’s Joan Michael in full opera regalia as a ‘cailleach’; Beatrice Brinkler of course, a glamorous principal boy, who also choreographed all the dances for the many local (now middle-aged) boys and girls; techies Phil Ellis and Davey Buick peeping through the curtains; the Boydies, one playing a ‘Weirdo’ (the [Govan] shipyard one whose ad libbing was nearly a match for Billy Connolly’s, that other [Partick] welder).
And many others: probably a good proportion of the village.
Much of what has come down from the lofts is being recycled elsewhere. Not sure what to do with the panto stuff.
Chrissy Boyd.
December 2021.
(Can we suggest an exhibition in the Village Hall of panto memorabilia together with photos – a winter project for you perhaps Chrissy, with help of course…!??). Eds
*****
AN UPDATE ON THE LARGE PRINT EASIER TO READ ULLAPOOL NEWS!
The Ullapool News would like to thank Ullapool Community Trust for accepting its application for funding from the Ullapool Community Benefit Fund.
The purpose of this is to be able to produce, in conjunction with Ullapool High School, an easier to read Ullapool News for those people who have difficulty reading the regular version.
The grant will cover the additional costs for an initial period of three months.
We are working towards getting the scheme up and running in the near future and those who have expressed an interest will be contacted.
*****
Lochbroom’s Saddest Day?
One of the saddest days in the year for Lochbroom hasn’t been much noticed until now.
On 15th April 2022, the anniversary of the Battle of Littleferry fought in 1746 near Golspie, East Sutherland, will be marked by the unveiling of a massive commemorative stone.
The ‘battle’, which was actually more of a cold-blooded ambush and a rout, saw the Jacobite Earl of Cromartie’s Regiment defeated, just one day before the Battle of Culloden took place.
Cromartie’s Regiment numbered several hundred men, mostly from Ross-shire, many of them from Lochbroom. Most of the regiment never came home after that day.
The victors at Littleferry were three companies of Sutherland militia fighting for the Earl of Sutherland, who was on the side of the British/Hanoverian Government.
Some Jacobites were killed, and over 170 taken prisoner including around fifty men from Lochbroom who were put on board two Government prison ships lying in wait offshore, then held in the Moray Firth until June before being shipped off to England. They were kept in confinement at Tilbury Fort or aboard prison ships on the Thames in stinking, disease-ridden holds, for nearly two years. Some died in captivity.
Of the surviving prisoners, most were transported (deported) aboard the ship Frere to Barbados in March 1747, as indentured labourers on plantations – or in effect, as slaves.
It is unlikely that their loved ones back home in Lochbroom were ever informed about what had happened to them. They had effectively disappeared.
A few dozen Lochbroom men did escape from the rout at Littleferry and got home, but they were now wanted men.
The non-appearance of Cromartie’s Regiment at Culloden was a heavy blow to the hopes of the Jacobites under Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
The night before the Battle of Littleferry, the Sutherland militia companies had received an order from the Duke of Cumberland that they should attack Cromartie’s men in the rear as they headed south from Golspie, looking to cross Loch Fleet at the ferry and rejoin the main Jacobite forces, who were planning to confront Cumberland’s army, currently on the march from Aberdeen towards Inverness.
During the spring and summer following Culloden, ‘Butcher’ Cumberland instigated vicious reprisals against all areas which had provided troops for the Jacobite cause. Lochbroom was targeted in May by Captain John Fergusson and his redcoats, who killed cattle, seized arms, burned houses and inflicted other unrecorded brutalities on an already traumatised population.
Then, in late July, two Highland militia companies made their hostile presence felt in Lochbroom. The First Company of Mackays, from Sutherland, was captained by George Mackay of Skibo, son of the chief of the Reay Mackays. He was joined by George Munro of Culcairn, leading his company of Munros from Easter Ross. These men were looking to confiscate weapons and find any ‘lurking’ Jacobite troops. They would have created further terror among the general population, especially the Mackay militia. This company had not participated in the Battle of Littleferry, but had been involved in another battle three weeks earlier, at Tongue, when over a hundred Jacobite men bringing arms and gold aboard a French ship were seized. The Mackays divided up prize-money after that.
Having spent a week or so in Lochbroom, the two militia companies received orders to go to Lochaber, where Captain George Munro was shot dead by a Cameron. After mopping-up operations ended that autumn, the twenty or so independent militias were paid off.
There must have been great suffering and bitterness among the people here during these cruel months, and for years to come, with so many men lost and livelihoods destroyed. No parish in Scotland paid a higher price for its involvement in the ’45 Rising than Lochbroom.
Lochbroom’s Minister at the time of the Rising, James Robertson, travelled to London in 1746 to plead for clemency for local men, and succeeded in having a handful freed. He continued as minister here until 1776, living to see the Hector sail away in 1773 with would-be emigrants including some of his own parishioners as well as some poor Sutherland people among the rest. Robertson was succeeded as minister by Alexander Stronach, who was in turn followed in 1808 by a youngish Sutherland man called Thomas Ross. Ross was born in Creich in 1768 and he would have personally known some of the men who had attacked Cromartie’s Regiment in April 1746. Another Ross from Creich, William Ross, was among the Mackay militia in Lochbroom in July 1746.
Thomas Ross was to remain at Clachan Church until his death in 1843. During his last years, surely memories of the ‘45 had faded, and there were other pressing problems. Perhaps Littleferry was never held against Sutherland people, or at least not in the way Glencoe was held against the Campbells. More Sutherland folk had moved here and been accepted, such as the Mackay couple whose son Donald was born in 1808. He married Johanna MacLean and their son John, born in 1853, married Georgina Mackenzie and had a long marriage; their gravestone is in Clachan Church burial ground.
Thomas Ross and his wife Jane, a daughter of Mackenzie of Dundonnell, also knew Mary Macrae, who was born in 1821 in Kildonan, Dundonnell. She married John MacLean of Letters and their daughter Janet, born 1848, was their third child. My mother-in-law Hazel Mackenzie (nee Mackay), who is still with us and has a memory as sharp as ever, still remembers talking to both this Janet MacLean, who was her granny, as well as to John Mackay, her grandfather.
In other words, when all is said and done, we are only a few generations on from a time when the battles of Littleferry and Culloden were in sharp focus. The connections going back feel personal for many people.
The viciousness with which the Sutherland militia attacked fellow-Highlanders at Littleferry has to be understood in context. The Earl of Cromartie had stupidly ordered the burning down of a local factor’s house some days before, which was something the Jacobites did not generally do. One man on his own side later wrote that the men had hated doing this. And Cromartie was an appalling leader on that 15th April, abandoning his men to their route-march south while he insisted his officers take refreshments with Lady Sutherland at Dunrobin Castle, as she was a Jacobite sympathiser, unlike her husband who was by now away with yet another militia company supporting Cumberland.
The Sutherland militia were motivated that fateful day, and they had an easy opportunity to attack. Their ferocity, and the fact that they accepted a direct order from Cumberland, may leave an uneasy feeling today. The turns and twists of the ’45 still have the power to anger us, even after 276 years.
Donnie Mackenzie, who sadly died last year at a grand age, fought with distinction as a Chindit in Burma in the Second World War. He also knew his ancestry and was proud that his forebears were Jacobites. He was also a descendant of the Lochbroom minister, Alexander Stronach, and of the
Mackenzies of Ballone. Donnie’s granddaughter Donna is also Hazel’s granddaughter and so she is descended from Lochbroom Jacobites as well as Sutherland Hanoverians. As the decades passed after Littleferry and Culloden, Highlanders came together in peace and fellow-suffering: people from Wester Ross and Sutherland emigrated together on the Hector, Thomas Ross came from Creich to be minister here, Mackays and Mackenzies intermarried.
But memories run deep, including the folk-memory, and they can still be inflamed after a long interval of time.
For long, the Jacobite narrative has captured the public imagination. Culloden is felt to be a tragic, haunting place, and it is. It is understood now that Culloden and Littleferry marked not just the end of a dramatic Rising that could so easily have succeeded, but also the beginning of an evil period when Butcher Cumberland and his men crossed the line of decency to commit countless war crimes.
The way we remember those lost in wars is important. Commemorations held on 11th November are solemn.
So ‘remembering Littleferry’ in a formalised way needs to be respectful to both sides. The conflict was a victory in a narrow military sense but not one to be proud of, in the long-term. The militia happily divvied up further prize-money afterwards, yet within the year, the Sutherland people, like all Highlanders, were paying the price of Butcher Cumberland’s victory as new legislation came into force, forbidding them to carry arms or wear their plaids. The Earl of Sutherland was humiliated by Cumberland and both he and his wife died within a few years. His granddaughter instigated brutal clearances between 1807 and 1821 with her husband the Marquess of Stafford, turning on her own people. Her grandson in his turn married the heir to the Cromartie estate and together they attempted to carry out evictions at Coigach and Elphin in the 1850s. They failed.
The Battle of Littleferry commemoration is to include the playing of a new piobaireachd echoing a traditional call to battle. Here in Lochbroom, the playing of The Highland Widow’s Lament would be more appropriate. Listen to Shona Donaldson singing that Robert Burns poem, on YouTube, over a film-clip where grieving wives search for their dead husbands on Culloden battlefield, and try not to have a lump in your throat. Picture the actresses as actual Coigach or Lochside women, and think how they could not even get to Littleferry battlefield to pay respects, or see their menfolk before they were transported.
Remembrance triggers powerful emotions. When Maymie Mackenzie’s wonderful old photos were kindly put on the Ullapool Community page recently by Michael Lavelle, and people and scenes from long ago were brought back, on-screen, there were many touching comments. Those images evoked a community as it was. They remind us that things are always changing and fine people sadly but inevitably pass away. We can then, at least, remember them fondly.
But things rarely changed in this parish as shockingly or cruelly or quickly as they did in 1746, when dozens of families were suddenly bereft of their husband/father/son.
I hope that the inscription on the Battle of Littleferry memorial stone may reflect that tragedy. Other commemorations include a battlefield trail, and a history of the battle. Updates are on the Battle of Littleferry Facebook page. DS
Janet Mackenzie (nee MacLean) is still remembered today. As a girl, she knew elderly people who had watched the ship Hector sail in 1773, and whose fathers had fought at Littleferry in 1746. Here she is outside the family home on Mill Street in the 1930s, with her grandson.
