MORVERN lines
DURING the Gulf War, a headline caught my attention. It was about a young Kuwaiti soldier who took his life in his hands to recapture a regimental tank flag taken by the enemy during a skirmish on the Iraq border. As the details emerged, it reminded me of a stone in Kiel graveyard, Morvern, and a story connected with it that used to be told in the parish many years ago of an 18-year-old man called Donald Livingstone who rescued his clan banner at Culloden in 1746.
Donald Livingstone, better known locally as Domhnall Mollach (Gaelic for ‘hairy Donald’) was born in 1728 at Savary near Fiunary, on the shores of the Sound of Mull. The Livingstones first arrived in Morvern from Appin through Mull many centuries ago. Although they were tenants of the Duke of Argyll, who owned most of the parish at the time of the ’45, Donald and his four brothers, one of whom was the great-great-grandfather of Dr David Livingstone, the famous missionary and explorer, were Jacobites and fought under the Stewarts of Appin.