Our growing group of "Scotland Lovers" is off to a fine start this year and with lots to look forward to for the remainder.

The immensely talented volunteers of the Executive Committee has traveled both locally and to neighboring states to steal ideas from other St. Andrew’s Societies and I am proud to report that they have come back with only the best! John Wallace seems to have a real knack for this sort of thing, but he is closely challenged by Rita and "The Bruce" as they look more innocent than the retired Sea Captain.

As you will notice on page three’s calendar, we will have two "Pub Crawls" this summer in lieu of a regular sit-down dinner. This is a way to keep things going forward as we enjoy the established wind at our back. This entailed some change for our "grounded infantry," but they have smelled the hops and are now willing to give it a whirl. Now, what the difference is between a regular meeting and a pub crawl is that there are no minutes read or financial report presented—other than that, everything is the same.

A full room at the Forbidden City for the May meeting was excellent; let’s do it again on June 6 at the same time and place. It was very nice of them to offer us orange slices and almond cookies while we waited to pay the bill.

Some of us have toured the new Princess Anne Country Club and it is very room, comfortable, and really first class for our planned St. Andrew’s Day celebration and Burns’ Night Supper.

A small word of advice for the fair-haired and freckled ones among us: wear sunscreen this summer and you will be better off in the long run.

Best wishes for a grand summer,
     Bob

The Spottiswood ‘Amen’ Glass ca. 1745 wine glass with drawn trumpet bowl and spiral air twist stem height: 8¼ inches. Engraved with the verses of the Jacobite anthem, the cipher of King James VIII or Scotland and the word ‘Amen,’ this is the finest and most outstanding of the highly prized series of ‘Amen’ glasses engraved in the 1730-45 period. The ‘Amen’ inscription (‘Let it be’) is combined with the King’s Scottish title, indicative that the unknown engraver was working for a Scottish patron who wished, above all, to see the Stuarts restored to their ancestral (and original) throne. Preserved for many years by the Spottiswoode family in the County of Berwickshire, the glass spent most of the 19th century stored in a special box in a cupboard under the stairs of Spottiswoode House. It is a tour-de-force of the art of free-hand diamondpoint engraving, as well as being a superb example of a large drawn stem goblet.

Over the past twenty years, the Drambuie Liqueur Company has assembled the finest collection in existence of works of art from the Jacobite period from 1688 when James VII of Scotland and II of England was forced from the throne to 1788 and the death of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. For many in Scotland during this one hundred year period, it was essential to maintain loyalty to the Jacobite cause. Works of art, bearing the likeness, mottoes or symbols of the Stuart dynasty became vital weapons in the battle to win hearts and minds over to the cause. Selections from the Drambuie Collection have been on tour in the United States over the past year including stops at the Wintertur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, and at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. It is fitting for Drambuie to have amassed this collection as the liqueur is in itself a relic, some might say a work of art, from the time period. Captain John MacKinnon was one of the Bonnie Prince’s most ardent supporters on the Isle of Skye. Having fought with the Jacobite army in 1745, he helped conceal the Prince during his fugitive days following Culloden. With no remaining possessions, the Prince gave Captain MacKinnon the recipe for his personal liqueur, a mixture of heather honey, herbs and whisky. This recipe was the basis for Drambuie—Gaelic for "the drink that satisfies"—that is still made in Edinburgh to the same recipe by the company still owned by the MacKinnon family.

A miniature portrait of Prince Charles by James Ferguson (1710-1775) c.1734 pencil on paper height: 3 inches.

Flora MacDonald by James Faber after Thomas Hudson (1701-1779) 1748 mezzotint 12-1/4 x 10 inches.

Scottish Map Websites: Several asked for the URLs for the maps shown at the April dinner meeting.
www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/scotland/maps.html
www.hamrick.com/names/
www.nls.uk/maps

Caryl Felty
Bob & Kim MacDonald

It is with great sadness that members of St. Andrew’s Society note the death, on May 15th, of Olive Baird, widow of Captain Richard S. Baird. Dick was a longtime member of St. Andrew’s Society, but it was as President of the Scottish Society of Tidewater that Dick, with Olive helping with newsletters, correspondence and much more, made a major contribution to our Scottish Community. At its May meeting, the St. Andrew’s Society Executive Board approved a donation to the Scottish Society’s Captain Richard S. Baird Scholarship Fund in Olive’s memory.