Chapter 11
Messages from the Mountains

In the classic Western film My Darling Clementine, Wyatt Earp, played by Peter Fonda, embarks on a quest to track down and kill the clan that murdered his brother. An early scene depicts the soon to be no more James Earp fondly admiring his beautiful silver Celtic Cross that he keeps wrapped in cloth. It’s a talisman that brings him pride and keeps him comfort, until he is shot dead and the cross is stolen, to become incriminating evidence later in the film. Christianity tends not to be a feature of Western films, but the Celtic cross is the single, tangible image that connects early Christian Pictish sculpture with the roaming cowboys of the southern states. It represented the Clan faith, an icon of ancestral connection and of their way of life, then as now, from Moray to Ulster, to Virginia, Kentucky and westwards.