'Outlander' Attempts Full Circle with "Abies Fraseri" & "Muskets, Liberty & Sauerkraut"
Outlander continues its spiritual pilgrimage to a place where authentic identities are forged, regardless of era.
In Outlander’s latest episode, “Muskets, Liberty & Sauerkraut,” just as Jamie Fraser and a-no-longer-so-young Ian Murray (John Bell) arrive at Fraser’s Ridge, Rachel, the Quaker young woman now Ian’s second wife, tells him the American Continental Army has raided, destroyed, and sabotaged many Native American villages. Among them, they targeted the Mohawk community, where Ian’s former wife, Wahionhaweh, and son, Tehiokas neh To’Tis (Swiftest of Lizards) live. Ian insists on traveling north to see what has happened; Rachel and Oggy go with him – to make sure he stays connected to them. They’ll be back to take Ian’s late father’s place fighting by Jamie’s side in the Battle of King’s Mountain (a real battle the Americans won).
They are a third young “satellite” family; to wit, son, daughter, grandchildren – like Roger, Brianna, Jem, and Mandy; and Fergus, Marsali, and their seven children. Jamie utters a prayer in Gaelic, wishing them a safe journey.
The prayer is about an Irish wandering saint who made pilgrimage a central aspect of a spiritual or ethically meaningful life, doing good in the name of Christ, a self-imposed exile to create a new, restored life with others, from which they might wander again. It’s said this archetypal myth has become a post-modern form of personhood, and ties to others through love, time, and work. It is peculiarly appropriate for our unstable era, subject to natural catastrophe, devastating, ruthless, ferocious wars, attempted genocide, unmitigated capitalism and its gross inequalities, and traumatic individual, tribal, massive flight as refugee immigrants seeking safety, a place to build houses again, to re-make needed roots, obligations, and responsibilities, again.
