Introduction
“The Lyon in Mourning” manuscript, currently held by the National Library of Scotland, is a unique document in Scottish history. Compiled by a Jacobite clergyman Robert
Forbes after the suppression of the final Jacobite Rising in 1746, the work consists
of ten octavo volumes totalling 2148 pages of transcribed conversations, narrative
accounts, poems, songs, letters and even material relics such as scraps of fabric
and pieces of a boat. As Forbes said of his task:
I have a great Anxiety to make the Collection as compleat &and exact as possible for the Instruction of future Ages in a piece of History the most
remarkable &and interesting that ever happened in any Age or Country.
This work is currently the focus of a SSHRC-funded Partnership Engage Grant between
Simon Fraser University’s Research Centre for Scottish Studies (RCSS) and Digital
Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL) and the National Library of Scotland. Using the digital images of the manuscript hosted on Simon Fraser University Library’s website, our project employs TEI encoding to display and analyze the contents of “The Lyon
in Mourning.” By coding and including metadata on the people, places and objects featured
in the pages of “The Lyon in Mourning,” our project will provide new evidence about
the nature and extent of Jacobite activity in post-1745 Scotland, despite government
attempts to suppress the Jacobite cause.
Images of LiM
Objectives
There are four objectives to our research:
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Evaluate the representation of “The Lyon in Mourning” in the catalogues and records of the NLS to determine how perceptions of the manuscript and the Jacobite cause have changed over time;
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Identify and analyze the original papers of Forbes distributed throughout the archives of the NLS and at National Records Scotland (NRS) that Jacobite Robert Forbes compiled and transcribed in “The Lyon in Mourning” to understand his composition of the manuscript;
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Employ qualitative and quantitative digital humanities methodologies to analyze the stories of individuals and the networks of people, places and communications represented in the manuscript to reconstruct Jacobite networks;
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Mobilize findings for both academic and general audiences, spotlighting stories of female, labouring-class and Gaelic-speaking individuals represented in the manuscript and providing interactive visualizations of the research
Learn More about the Project
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"Dr. Leith Davis on The Lyon in Mourning," Tea. Toast. &and Trivia podcast, season 3, episode 15, April 10, 2021.
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Dr. Leith Davis, "Networking Jacobites: Media, Cultural Memory and the 'Lyon in Mourning' Manuscript'," Centre for Data, Culture, &and Society, University of Edinburgh, May 12, 2021.
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Dr. Leith Davis, "Networking Jacobites and 'The Lyon in Mourning' Manuscript of Robert Forbes," The National Library of Scotland, September 26, 2021.
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Dr. Leith Davis, Joey Takeda, Jasmyn Bojakli, Taylor Breckles, Alyssa Bridgman, and Kaitlyn MacInnis, "NextGen Meets OldGen: Encoding an Eighteenth-Century Metadata Project," Poster Session, Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) 2021 Conference, October 26, 2021.
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Dr. Ralph McLean, "'The Lyon in Mourning' Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland," St. Andrews and Caledonian Lecture, Research Centre for Scottish Studies, Simon Fraser University, November 10, 2021.