Donegal Annual / Bliainiris Thír Chonaill, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1948)

JOURNAL or THE COUN''t'Y f'.>ONEG.AL ilISTORICAL SOCr:mT~ A MEMORY of the -By--· CAPTAIN E. O'BOYLE (Vice-President Co. Donegal Historical Society) YOUNG PRETENDER THE author of "The Hidden Ireland," in the townland of Malinmore, Glencolumbdiscussing the Aisling, points (•Ut c11le. that the personality of the Stuarts had Malinmore, eighteen miles westward not the same human appeal for the Irish from K11lybegs, lies at the foot of the as for the Highland Gaels-and that Irisll landward slope of Rossan Point, the most Jacobite poetry treats them allegorically westerly peninsula in Donegal, comwith eyes and sense ever looking beyond manding a sea-line from Arranmore to them to Ireland. As far as Ireland was the Stags of BI'.oadhaven. .. In the eighconcerned, the cause of the Stuart was teenth century this sea-line was an something remote and the whole struggle avenue for general schooner craft, and cold with distance. it was customary for schooners passing In view of this analysis, it is interest- off Rossan, to pick up passengers from ing to find that one tiny spark of focal fishing boats. From the village tradition, in a very limited area in this the land rises gradually for about a mile country, does suggest personal contact to reach a 400 feet cliff level at the nose with the Young Pretender on his flight of the point. At the land end of the from Scotland tQ France. after the battle north flank of the peninsula rises a cliff of Culloden Moor, and it may not be with- some forty feet higher than the point out value to record this tradition. It proper, known locally as "The Look-Out." is regretted that insufficient detail sur- After a fairly steep descent of 100 feet, vives to permit the story of his landing, the northern shoulder of "The Look-Out" stay and departure being woven into one headland is scooped so as to form a consecutive narrative. The Famine recess giving on the sea, called "Foxes' probably destroyed many essential Den" where ferns, juniper, and bent grow memories of the episode~presupposing among huge boulders. It is the only that the tradition has a ba;3iS in fact. part of Rossan from which the beach is, As far as I can trace, there is no by way of' a rough cliff-patn, accessible record of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" having with ~my ease. In this recess is a wandered in Ireland after Culloden. c. natural shelf of rock called "Prince S. Terry in his "Life of the Young Pre- Charlie's Bed." tender" and Andrew Lang in "Prince Tradition tells that in this ideal Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pre- cover he sp.ent his nights, arid that from tender" (books purporting to give a fun · "The ·Look-Out" the spot selected by the account of his .movements after the British Admiralty, 168 years later, as the Battle) confine his wanderings to the site of an important observation post, Highlands of Scotland. he watched by day for the ship of his But according to local tradition it delivery. The surviving member of the would seem that he did come to Ireland, present family is an old lady aged about and spent some months on the South- eighty-six years. The Mrs. Morrow of western sea-board of Donegal. The Prince Charlie's time was her greatgreater part of the tradition has been grandmother. The account given by handed down by a family named Morrow, the mother of the present family (who one of a community of small farmers in died in 1910, aged 95), is as follows112

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQxNzU3