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Homecoming Scotland 2009 gets a return of an unexpected kind – the stolen Glenfinnan Stone
The historic Glenfinnan Stone is a foot across and has a hole cut into it allegedly to support the standard of Bonnie Prince Charlie when he raised it at Glenfinnan on Monday 19 August 1745, launching the second Jacobite rebellion.
In 1989 the stone vanished from where it had always lain, on a mound near the monument at Glenfinnan at the head of Loch Shiel.
The stone and its disappearance was mentioned to presenter Ben Fogle in a episode of the BBC’s Countryfile programe by Iain Thornber, a local historian from Lochaline in Morvern, across from Argyll’s Isle of Mull and in the same land mass as Glenfinnan.
Two weeks after the transmission of the programme the BBC received a letter which they passed on to Iain Thorber. It was from a woman who had seen the show while on holiday in Skye but was herself from Hartlepool. She had the stone in her rockery there but had not known what it was or where it had come from.
It has emerged that the stone was taken from Glenfinnan and domesticated in a rockery somewhere in Scotland, from where it was passed on to the Hartlepool lady for her own rockery. After making contact with Iain Thornber when she found out about the stone on Countryfile, she has voluntarily returned it.
The West Highland Museum in Fort William, custodian of several Jacobite relics, will house the Glenfinnan Stone until, according to Iain Thornber, arrangements for its secure display in its own place can be made with the Roman Catholic Church which owns the Glenfinnan site.
The photograph of Genfinnan above is by Flaxton and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.
Celtic Connections Music Festival adds three-day Gaelic Film Festival to 2009 programme
The Celtic Connections music festival in Glasgow, drawing performers and audiences from across the world, will add three days of Gaelic films to its January 2009 programme.
Films to be shown include:
- the 1962 Adventure Sullisgeir, which focuses on the Men of Ness from the Isle of Lewis on their annual hunt of gannets to make the traditional ‘guga’. Gordon Ramsay cooked guga not so long ago – the film may be interesting but his advice would be to avoid sentimentality about the guga, which was ‘disgusting’.
- Lip Service is set in a Community School in North Dublin on the day of an exam in oral Gaelic
- North Carolina follows the journey from their home place of the first Gaelic emigrants
- Raising the Standard features the band Capercaillie (led by Celtic Connections’ Artistic Director, Donald Shaw) letting rip with the songs of the Jacobite Rising. The location is Glenfinnan, where the ’45 began with Cameron of Locheil bringing his men over the hill to the Standard of Bonnie Prince Charlie raised there.
Donald Shaw says: ‘Gaelic culture has always been very close to the heart of Celtic Connections and forms a hugely important strand of the festival each year’.
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Scottish west coast ‘earthquake’ last week? It were the Navy wot done it in Joint Warrior
Last week the Media reported an earthquake on the west coast of Scotland on 10th October. It was registered at Glenfinnan at the head of Loch Sheil in Lochaber and the British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded it at 3.4 on the Richter Scale.
Reports of it were received from Fort William, Glenfinnan, Ardgour, Strontian and Drumnadrochit – a wide spectrum of the west coast above Argyll and penetrating deep inland.
It has now been admitted by the Royal Navy that the explosions recorded and previously accepted as an earthquake were in fact caused by mine clearance training in The Minch during the international Joint Warrior military exercise taking place until 17th October.
The Minch runs between the mainland and the Western Isles and the explosions were registered at magnitudes of 1.1, 1.5 and 1.9.
BGS experts felt that the characteristics of the seismograms suggested they were not looking at an earthquakes, but failing alternative formal explanations, they initially registered the phenomenon as an earthquake. Now the Navy has put its hands up.
Joint Warrior (formerly Neptune Warrior) is the name for twice yearly (May and October) coalition exercises designed and led by the UK’s Joint Tactical Exercise Planning Staff (JTEPS), based at Northwood in London. They involve air, sea and ground ‘assets’ from participating allied and NATO forces.
The American Navy contingent for the current Joint Warrion set sail from the east coast on 19th September, arriving at Faslane in Argyll on 1st October. It includes: USS Mitscher (DDG 57), USS Doyle (FFG 39), USS Klakring (FFG 42), USS Hawes (FFG 53) and USNS Leroy Grumman (T-AO 195). Sailors from these ships will play a major role in the exercise whcic is intended to improve ‘interoperability’ between coalition naval forces, preparing participants for future deployments.
Captain John Kersh, US Commander DESRON 24 (Commander Destroyer Squadron), says:
‘Joint Warrior will provide our Sailors with an opportunity to engage in a variety of training scenarios that explore real-world challenges on a strategic, operational and tactical level – in a controlled environment. We will focus our efforts on enhancing our ability to operate in a multinational, multi-platform environment’.
The scenario for the exercise sees three sovereign nations, disputed territory and a state sponsored terrorist movement. Starting with a period of Force Integration Training (FIT) the Exercise will develop over its two week duration, through a period of tension into ‘simulated warfighting and open hostilities’.
Civilians may well wonder about the critical difference between ‘simulated warfighting’ and open hostilities’. It may be that it was ‘open hostility’ action that shook uo so much of the Scottish west coast mainland on 10th October.
Practical footnote: Who pays for any damage caused by the ‘earthquake’?