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printer friendly version (pdf) The Ell-Wand and the Swordthe historical fiction of Neil MunroPage 2/2. Go back to page 1. The New Road was Munro's last novel. It was completed in 1914 at outbreak of the First World War. This required his return to full time journalism and such were the burdens of the job that he seems never to have had the time again for extended creative writing. The New Road is a very accomplished and wonderfully entertaining anti-Jacobite novel (unusual in itself!). The action takes place about the year 1733 and deals, among other things, with the building of Wade's famous road between Stirling and Inverness. The setting is Inveraray and Inverness and all the country in between. The two main characters, Ninian Macgregor Campbell and the young Aeneas Macmaster, travel from Hanoverian Argyll to the country of Jacobite Simon Fraser Lord Lovat in the far north to investigate gun running and vandalism of the New Road and also to assess the possibility of buiding up trade with the northern Highlands. As they progress they gradually uncover the mystery of the death of Paul Macmaster, Aeneas's father. He was a Jacobite (unusual for an Argyllshire man) who was alleged to have been killed at the Battle of Glenshiel in 1719. As the plot unravels, however, it turns out that he was not the casualty of a romantic cause but, in fact, the victim of a sordid murder by an unscrupulous and greedy friend, Sandy Duncanson, his business manager. By guile and treachery Duncanson had succeeded in acquiring Paul's estate of Drimdorran. The novel is first and foremost an eighteenth century whodunnit! The story starts and finishes at the mysterious doocot at Carlunan in the grounds of Inveraray Castle. We are held in suspense as to the identity of the murderer until the very last page when we discover that the doocot is in fact a tomb. But The New Road is much more than an 18th Century whodunnit. It builds on real historical characters such as General Wade, Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes of Culloden. It is great historical fiction showing the forces which shape the destiny of the Highlands. Aeneas Macmaster, like Scott's Edward Waverley, sets out on his journey with Ninian, full of romantic notions about the Highlands and the chiefs and the north. But as he journeys on he becomes more and more disillusioned. First he meets Col of Barisdale a chief who turns out to be nothing better than a bully and a cattle thief. Then he gets involved with some Macdonalds at Druimbeg and is appalled when Ninian honours him in accordance with Highland tradition "for blooding himself" when he kills one of them. This he regards as barbaric and it sickens him. Then in Inverness he meets a group of chiefs who turn out to be nothing more than rapacious schemers. His greatest and most powerful disillusionment comes, however, in his meeting with the most powerful Jacobite chief in the North, MacShimi himself i.e. Simon Fraser Lord Lovat. He is an out and out rogue. In his specious paternalism to his people Lovat treats them with utter contempt. He even refuses them schools and education to keep them under his thumb so that they will be available to support his hegemony in the north. Like Waverley, then, the veil has been lifted form Aeneas MacMaster's eyes and he now see the Highlands for what they really are. The only aspect which has remained true to his earlier romantic notion of them is the image of his Jacobite father, Paul Macmaster, who proved not be corrupt in any way. Against this rot, however, we have the regenerative aspect of the book. We are conscious of the hand of the current Duke of Argyll and his brother Islay, supporters of the Hanoverian government, in the background managing things for the better. They are civilised men of the Scottish Enlightenment, "improvers". Likewise the supportive Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the Lord Advocate, is presented as a reasonable man, a Highlander torn between instinctive clan loyalties to the past and the need for civilisation in the modern world. Most interesting of all, however, in this regard is the highly charismatic character of Ninian Campbell, beachdair (scout) and Messenger at arms to the Duke of Argyll. It has frequently been remarked that Aeneas and Ninian are counterparts to David Balfour and Alan Breck in Stevenson's Kidnapped. Superficially this is true. But where Munro rings a very skilful change is in placing his highly charismatic Alan Breck equivalent (ie Ninian), not on the side of the romantic Stuart cause, but on the side of Argyll and the Hanoverian establishment. The mere act of doing this transforms the credibility and attractiveness of the Hanoverian side in the reader's eyes. The regenerative aspect of the novel is further intensified in the character of Aeneas's merchant uncle Alan Iain Alain Og. He sees Wade's new road, not just as a means of moving soldiers but also as an opportunity for trading with the north, and, like Scott's Bailie Nicol Jarvie, thinks trade and commerce are the only way for a modern nation to progress, rather than the feuding of the past. Indeed, he believes that trade and commerce and the provision of luxury items for the unruly chiefs is the way to ultimately defeat them and pacify the north. Then we come to the New Road itself. It will penetrate a land previously impenetrable to all but the brave or foolhardy. Wade's road will open up the country from Stirling to the Moray Firth and this will radically improve trade and prosperity. In short the road itself becomes a symbol of peace and prosperity. But there will be a price to pay for it and sacrifices will have to be made. As Ninian says, at one point, the whole Gaelic way of life will change irretrievably:
Indeed, the process of change initiated by Wade's road continues to this day as the north is relentlessly stripped of its Gaelic character. The New Road, then, is much more than a whodunnit. It deals at a more profound level with the forces which have shaped modern Scotland and the direction which, as Munro saw it, a modern Scotland had to take – whatever our views may be of this today! It is, I believe, Neil Munro's finest work. John Splendid and The New Road then with their concern for progress and the rule of law and their support for change and "civilisation" can be argued to justify Cunninghame Graham's claim that Neil Munro is the "apostolic successor of Sir Walter Scott". But Munro has his own very distinctive voice and with his expert knowledge of its language and culture he articulates Gaeldom with more precision and sensitivity than Sir Walter and, indeed, RLS. Neil Munro should be read for himself. Ronnie Renton Chairman of the Neil Munro Society
Go back to page 1. Or view the entire article. 2 Munro, Neil, The New Road, (introduction by B.D.Osborne), Edinburgh: B&W Publishing, 1999; pp34 & 35. |