Welcome, Royal Charlie!

Note: I am assuming you know about the Jacobite cause, here. Here is a link that should give you necessary background.
My English neighbor would probably kill me. It's all I can do to keep from singing Jacobite songs in the hallway. But I love Jacobite songs, and I sing them all the time. I checked to see which side the clan that maybe some of my ancestors came from was on. I found out they were neutral. They live just at the border of the Highlands and Lowlands according to the map I found, so I guess neutral was a good thing for them. But then I found "Bonnie Dundee"--a Jacobite guy from Charlie's father or grandfather, I forget. If you weren't on his side (and he had some religious skirmishes going on), he was "Bloody Clavers". History (of which I don't know the bias) seems to favor the "Bloody Clavers" side of this things to this neutral, peace-loving American hundreds of years later, but there is a song about "Bonnie Dundee". While: 1.) I don't like the song, and 2.) It's unlikely that "Bonnie Dundee" and I are related, it is fun to look at a song and wonder if the guy in the song is related closer than everybody is.

But my favorite Jacobite period is that of 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie's time. My impression is that "Royal Charlie" was a class B jerk and the loyalty of his Highland men was undeserved, but, then again, who deserves loyalty? But I also see him as a fellow who was just 24 years old and probably somewhat spoiled, who probably wasn't too mature (but who am I to talk? I'm fourteen and act about half my age!), who never thought he could loose and never thought that there were folks (besides the obvious, I mean) who didn't like him. He had to be led away from Culloden Moor, shocked at his own defeat.

Anyway, I am working on a project to learn songs either from Charlie's time or a long time after (like Lady Nairne's songs) which are about him or the cause at that point. It's coming along slowly, as I bogged down in a song with a long list of--what? Clan names? Names of places? Famous people? I don't know!

I hope to post it here when I'm through, and it should be more interesting than my pondering about a cause I doubt many kids my age are even interested in!...