I'm going to add a bit to James V1 but first let me say that while Neil Oliver dismisses the 1820 uprising as a minor event, its significance is in the extent of the unrest it signalled. It simmered all the way across the industrial belt of Scotland, from Fie to south Ayrshire. That's what made it a setting for Bubbles in the Cauldron.

Anyway, back to Jimmy, His Majesty felt the Western Isles might be subdued by arranging to have people from the other side of Scotland there. The people who were arranging this exercise were called, most appropriately, undertakers, and organised a settlement of Fife natives at Stornoway. The islanders were so busy fighting ewach other that things went well to begin with but, in a lull, Torquil MacLeod took exception to the strangers and slaughtered most of them - as usual, in the snow.

One woman with a baby escaped and was quietly dying in the Forest of Fannig when a Hebridean noticed them and took pity on the bairn. He killed his pony, gutted it and put the woman and baby inside for warmth. Sir Walter Scott does not record how he got the dead pony to habitation but the woman survived and married a well-to-do man in Edinburgh. She was in the Cannongate one day and heard someone say in Gaelic, "This would be a rough night for the Forest of Fannig." The speaker turned out to be her rescuer, involved in a lawsuit. The woman got her husband to take up her rescuer's case and it was sorted in his favour.

It's maybe a longish short story, but there's plenty of meat.

http://sullatoberdalton.com/pen-sullatober




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