Balmoral – Colonial Spoils

Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire. In reality, Scots have been loyal for only a 180 years.

Alex Salmond was recently asked why he had changed his mind since the referendum in 2014 about keeping the monarchy when Scotland was independent, why he now felt a republic might be attainable. His answer was matter-of-fact. “Back then, Queen Elizabeth was quite popular in Scotland. That is not the case now.” He elaborated, explaining pragmatically with a rhetorical question, why take on a paramount constitutional question and complicate it with confronting a large group of people quite happy to see Elizabeth spend a lot of time staying at her ‘favourite’ castle, Balmoral. There was no point in alienating support crucial to a vote for Scotland’s liberty.

Lately, a great deal of discussion appeared on the Internet quizzing how the English royal family got to own Balmoral, and that in turn prompted a short study of facts and figures. How Balmoral became another royal possession took time to work out, to sift from public relations guff churned out over decades endorsed and promoted by the colonial press.

Five facts easy to glean

Early History: The Balmoral Estate was built in 1390 by Sir William Drummond, formerly owned by King Robert II. In the 15th century, the estate was sold to Alexander Gordon, the third Earl of Huntly. In 1662, the estate was passed to Charles Farquharson of Inverey. He was a Jacobite sympathiser and was involved in rebellions from the 1700s. In 1798, James Duff purchased Balmoral and leased the castle to Sir Robert Gordon in 1830.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

Victoria possession: In 1852, after visiting Scotland and falling in love with the Highlands, Prince Albert purchased Balmoral Castle for his wife, Queen Victoria, for a cost of £32,000 which equates to £4.7 million today. As parents of nine children, Victoria and Albert decided that the castle was too small for their needs and so they hired architect William Smith to reconstruct the property. The Castle was completed in 1856 and the old building was demolished. Queen Victoria resided at the castle until her death in 1901. The Royal Family continued to use the home during annual visits.

Construction and extent

How big? The Balmoral Estate is located within the Cairngorms National Park. Today it is over 50,000 acres but was much smaller when Victoria first took up residence. It includes grouse moors, agricultural land and forests. The castle is built from granite and reportedly has fiftytwo bedrooms, alongside many reception rooms. Though hard to digest on first hearing by the usual photographs and postcards showing a long building, there are over 150 buildings on the estate, including Craigowan Lodge which was often used by Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they visited Balmoral.

Queen Elizabeth II

Lizzie’s tenure: Balmoral Castle is now owned by King Charles and although he does not live there permanently. Following the tradition of his mother, Charles uses Balmoral as a main residence. Before Charles, the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, spent twelve weeks during summer and early autumn residing at Balmoral Castle each year, and often went there for the Christmas festivities. In fact, Elizabeth chose to make Balmoral her last place of residence before she died. It is said, Elizabeth and now Charless too, use Balmoral as relaxed break away without from the hurly-burley of London life and duties.

Public Access

Private or public land? Since 1931, the castle gardens have been open daily for public visits between April and the end of July, which is when King Charles arrives for his annual stay. There is a gift shop and a cafe for the public to use during their visit, and they are also able to enter one room in the Castle: the Ballroom. However, one would not want to be found wandering the estate outside opening hours. On Sunday royal watchers used to see the Queen attending church at Crathie Chapel, the place where a day before the Scottish Referendum she made her unforgiveable intervention, well rehearsed and cued comment “Think very carefully about your future.”

The anglophone media

Normally, those five nuggests of tourist history are about all the average Scot need know about Barmoral and the monarchy. The curious, not afflicted by a short attention span, ask for more information. Delve deeper and there are interesting facts to discover. The anglophone media gave an obsessive amount of attention to Balmoral when Queen Elizabeth III died in her favourite bed in her favourite room, but not esssentially in her favourite country. To rub in her love of Scots people, (but not all of us) she was driven in a solemn, slow moving funeral cortège from the castle gates to lie in state in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, that most austere, musty and towering religous sepulchre. This activated a lot of misinformation and myth about Balmoral, again happily promoted by the colonial press.

What was striking was how little of Scot’s culture was promoted by newspapers and television, bar some lone piper in a kilt playing a lament. Television narration of the event, and radio discussion was almost entirely lumps of regurgitated English culture, a London-centric view of the event and its aftermath. For all Balmoral was promoted when she was alive as the Queen’s favourite castle, after she was flown to London it was all about England and English gushing ways and mores.

The shock was to see so many North Americans reporters, and Canadian television presenters, get so wrapped up in glutinous Anglocentric nostalgia. For a republic, the USofA can make itself a child-like, larger-than-life Number 1, sookie fan of the royals. Even sources that one expected to present critical and informed views were quite unable to see more than Brits curtseying and doffing their hats and do likewise verbally. The ceremonial aspects were somewhat dented, tainted even, by the presence of a sexual predator, Prince Andrew, no longer the royal’s favourite son, yet standing ramrod stiff, (pun) sticking out the humiliation as a show of his love for his privileged position in life.

Perhaps it is not surprising so many Americans are unaware od Scotland’s painful burden of being the fall guy, the cash rich bank, the functionary of the fag-end of the British Empire, Scot’s, trying to juggle or throw-off the monarchy at regular times of rebellion and intensity, make few headlines, but Balmoral “in the High-lands of Scatland” became an immediate centre of attention. and yet no Scot benefitted from the international interest, nor our mass movement for full rights.

That old chestnut, Brit or Brat?

I have written a length and in various essays of the Unionist’s ability to live with a split personality, to call them selves Scottish and a proud Brit.There is an entire list of misplaced Englishisms for the UK you can read (see foot of essay) that has no end, by which time steam will be coming out of every orifice. Yes, that fast shrinking chestnut: “Britain”, “British”, “United Kingdom” used interchangeably and an insult to the other UK nations. This semantic, chuck it all in the soup, blurring is ample proof of the Anglocentric discourse defined by and for the dominant group, the English. 

Both Britain and British are geographical terms, referring to the island of Britain – a territory, by the way, that has been home to multiple languages and ethnicities from the earliest recorded historical sources. It has never been homogenous. Succeeding Anglo-orientated political parties have gone to great lengths to try and resolve our cultural differences into a single ‘we share a common humany’ trope. And yet, as soon as a brit spots a nationalist they describe him or her as a separatist, and a potential terrorist.

That Balmoral symbol thingy

Many of the news stories around the death of Elizabeth included a sidebar about Balmoral. For example, National Public Radio, headquartered in Culver City, Los Angeles, sent out a news feed featuring a story called “What to know about Balmoral”, (link here). All that we need to understand, apparently, is that the land and castle only become important with the arrival of Queen Victoria in the 1850s. It was just a thistle-strewnm wind blown hills and grassland good for sheep until “Prince Albert bought and built Balmoral with his own money.” And so we are fed the usual Bran flakes about Balmoral as no more thana holiday retreat for members of the royal family.

There were other American splurges of royal worship in articles in the New York Times, the New York Post (link here), and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that should have known better (link here). The yuckiest of them all came from the BBC (link here).

It was frustrating searching for critical thinking. No one asked questions. Scottish newspapers, strapped for cash to pay more than a mail boy as editor, copied what they saw in other newspapers and squeezed out the same toothpaste for brainless twits. Every read was in purple prose, gushing tone descibing the wonderful indulgent pomp and ceremony. As soon as Elizabeth was enterred in St George’s Chapel, Windor Castle, Balmoral was ancient history, gone from the front pages and main item newscasts. Balmoral belonged to an inferior territory of the British Isles. Move on, nothing to see here.

Gaelic territory

In fact, the area around Braemar was thoroughly Gaelic-speaking well into the nineteenth century, until socio-economic forces caused massive dispossession of the Indigenous People. The place name itself is at least partially Gaelic; the second element may be Pictish, showing its great antiquity and the continuity of population right up until recent times. The last native Gaelic speaker in the Braemar area, Jean Bain, only passed away in 1984. (I expect new Gaelic speakers have settled in the area if they can find an affordable property, but that’s another issue.)

Lifting one of my frequent Postcards of Wisdom pieces and put it to good use: the estate of Balmoral was occupied by the chieftains of the Clan Farquharson for generations. The Farquharsons of Balmoral were Jacobites, and with the failure of the Jacobite Risings, the English government, moving swiftly in traditional brutal form, forfeited their estate. There were several different owners after that land grab, until it ended up barely a century later as one of the properties of Queen Victoria. The English monarch now holidays in the place created for a Scottish monarch. The estate and its original castle were bought from the Farquharson family in 1852 by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, and a few years later Albert bought more land around to enlarge the estate.

Elite Scots were happy she should have Balmoral. Down the ages it gave Billy Connolly a chance to play Queen Victoria’s ghillie and secret lover in a low-budget film, the plot about learning to love our kind hearted invaders and help grieving women throw off their widow’s weeds to indulge in a healthy knees up, or soles of their feet pointing to the ceiling. We are fascinated by monarchy, and hate it at the same time.

Summation in sadness

A Gaelic song-poem tells us the sentiments of the Farquharsons during the Jacobite Risings, entitled “Carn na Cuimhne” (the Cairn of Memory), a few lines of heartache for a people forceably removed from their land, their fathers run down and bayoneted at the Battle of Culloden. Here is one stanza.

Tha Carn na Cuimhne daigneann làidir
Mar chloich mhullaich druim na sràide;
’S a chaoidh cha ghluaisear e ás an àite
Dh’aindeoin àrdain Lònaig;
Nuair a ghabhadh seachad fir a’ chruadail,
Chuireadh clach ’s a’ charn ’s an uair sin
Leis gach aon, gun smàl, gun ghruaimean,
’N ùine chuireadh suas ’na thorr e.

The Cairn of Memory is strong and steadfast
Like a top-stone at the ridge of the path;
It will never be moved from its place
Despite the hubris of Lonag;
When the hearty men went past it
They would then place a stone in the cairn
Each one of them, without being dreary or gloomy
When it was time to erect it.

Scotland remains in the grip of a colonial power. As I write, they are back in force, Redcoats to a man though they hide the Butcher’s flag, ready to plunder Scotland again, empire victories uppermost in their mind. The have willing, smiley inferiors employed as scouts to round up the best of gullible locals with bribes and to cheer a welcome home. The Romans never managed widespread betrayal. They built a wall to keep us from moving south to the territory they had civilised. After three attempts they gave up on Scotland and went home. Today’s legions treat us as if warlike Picts. They have learned nothing.

Our oppressors are highly skilled at building artifices to legitimise their power and illegal authority. Now that the second Elizabethan era is over (the first executed Scotland’s Queen) perhaps it is time to take Balmoral back into public ownership, and if King Charles wants a fishing holiday he pays rent, same as anybody.

NOTES

England for UK or Scotland here: https://wp.me/p4fd9j-iY

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