Annotation:Theodore Napier
X:1 T:Theodore Napier (The Wallace Patriot) M:C L:1/8 R:March C:J. Scott Skinner S:Skinner – Harp and Claymore (1904) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:A E | c>deA (GB)(A>G) | FA EA G/F/G/A/ BE | c>deA d>efd | e{g}a B/c/d/B/ {B}cAA :| g | (aA) c/d/e (fd)(eA) | FAEA G/F/G/A/ Be | {g}(aA) c/d/e (df){f}(ed) | A{g}a B/c/d/B/ {B}cAAe | {g}aA c/d/e f/e/d/f/ ec/A/ | FA EA G/F/G/A/ B/d/c/B/ | (c>de).A (d>ef).a | g/a/e/a/ B/c/d/B/ {B}cAA ||
One of the people who kept the annual celebration of the Battle of Bannockburn alive in the period 1893 – 1914 was the Australian businessman and Scottish patriot, Theodore Napier (1845-1924), seen in this photograph at the Borestone in his Jacobite dress, in the style of 1714 (great belted kilt and eagle – feathered blue bonnet). The outfit always guaranteed press coverage, and many hundreds of people, members of the Scottish Patriotic Association and the Scottish Home Rule Association assembled at Bannockburn every year under Napier’s guidance.
Napier was treasurer of the Scottish National Association of Victoria, and his first pamphlet, Scotland’s Demand for Home Rule, was published in Melbourne, 1892. In Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Year, he organised a monster petition to the Queen requesting that her government should stop using the terms English and England instead of British and Britain. Napier also organised the fund raising for the Wallace Monument at Elderslie, and the commemoration for the 600th anniversary of the death of Wallace in 1905.
