Description
unmarked, the baluster body with simple reeded girdle and foot rim, the hinged cover with scroll thumb piece and engraved armorial of Cluny MacPherson within foliate scroll formed cartouche
Dimensions
6cm high, 5cm wide, 3.2oz
Footnote
Ewen MacPherson of Cluny, better known as Cluny MacPherson, was chief of Clan Chatton during the 1745 Jacobite uprising. After the disastrous battle of Culloden, at which Cluny and his six hundred men weren't present but were guarding the passes at Badenoch, and the demise of the Jacobite rebellion, Cluny went into hiding; arguably the most famous period of his life.
He headed towards Loch Ericht, and found a small cave, not much more than a hole in the ground with a fallen tree for a roof and was ultimately to remain there for nine years, hiding from the Hanoverian troops. He was joined by Bonnie Prince Charlie himself, for a period of five months; and it was said that during this time the young pretender asked Cluny for his thick plaid to keep him warm, refusing Cluny offered to share and so they reportedly slept under the same plaid for those five months.
He was later made famous by the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson in his 1886 novel 'Kidnapped'; in which the main character David Balfour meets Cluny in his hiding place, known as 'Cluny's Cave'. Stevenson portrays him as a man who often entertains travellers, taking them in and entertaining them with a sense of dignity despite his meagre circumstances.
In 1765 Cluny escaped to France, but he died soon after, reportedly of a broken heart, pining for his native Speyside.