It is said also that his vanquishers cut off his
head and hung it at the yard-arm of their ship, throwing his body into
the sea, and that as soon as the body struck the water the head began to
call, "Come on, Edward!" whereupon the headless body swam three times
around the ship. Personally I think there may be some slight doubt about
the authenticity of this part of the story. For, while from one point of
view we might say that to swim about in such aimless fashion would be
the very thing a man without a head might do, yet from another point of
view the question arises: Would a man whose head had just been severed
from his body feel like taking such a long swim?
And what a rich lot of other historic treasures!
Did you know, for instance, that Flora Macdonald, the Scottish heroine,
who helped Prince Charles Edward to escape, dressed as a maidservant,
after the Battle of Culloden, in 1746, came to America with her husband
and many relatives just before the Revolutionary War and settled at
Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), North Carolina? When General Donald
Macdonald raised the Royal standard at the time of the Revolution, her
husband and many of her kinsmen joined him, and these were later
captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, in 1776, and taken as
prisoners to Philadelphia.
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