Boundary Dwellers

By Hell4Murph

A Dangerous Woman?

For some reason, i have never stepped inside the gates of the tiny, old North Leith cemetary. Perhaps the gates have been locked. When I've passed?

It is on a triangular piece of land between the Water of Leith and Coburg St, which would have been two busy transport routes of the Victorian town. New housing and warehouse retail has filled all the free space around it, but the graveyard has been preserved.

A plaque inside the gate may explain why: buried in this yard are members of three interesting families:
Gladstone - the politician's grandparents
Johnstone - founder of the Blind Asylum
and...

"Colonel Anne" Lady Farquharson-Mackintosh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Anne_Farquharson-MacKintosh

I was impressed with her independence of mind till I read that her Jacobitism was of a kind after her period of arrest following the defeat at Culloden she returned to her former life with her Government-supporting husband, and even to dance with the Duke of Cumberland.

However, she did counter the Duke's pointed selection of a pro-government tune with a Jacobite one. Perhaps her return to her former life as a clan chief's wife was a choice to survive?

Her 'prison' had been her mother-in-law's house, presumably at the request of her husband. The conversations there must have been 'interesting'. And the courts, and army, were being harsh in their punishments of both civilian and military Jacobites at the time. Perhaps an ultimatum had been given.

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