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Emigration from the Highlands to
America seems to have fairly commenced shortly after 1760, as,
in a pamphlet published in 1784, it is stated that between the
years 1763 and 1775 above 20,000 Highlanders left their homes
to settle on the other side of the Atlantic. The first
apparently to suffer from the altered state of things in the
Highlands, the decreasing value of men and the increasing
value of money, were the tacksmen, or large farmers, the
relations of the old chief, who had held their farms from
generation to generation, who regarded themselves as having
about as much right to the land as the lairds, and who had
hitherto been but little troubled about rent. After a time,
when the chiefs, now merely lairds, began to realize their new
position and to feel the necessity of making their land yield
them as large an income as possible, they very naturally
sought to get a higher rent for the farms let to these
tacksmen, who, in most cases, were the only immediate holders
of land from the proprietor. These tacksmen, in many cases,
appear to have resented this procedure as they would a
personal injury from their dearest friends. It was not that
the addition to the rents was excessive, or that the rents
were already high as the land could bear, for generally the
addition seem to have been trifling, and it is well known that
the proprietors received nothing like the rents their lands
should have yielded under a proper system of management. What
seems to have hurt these gentlemen was the idea that the
laird, the father of his people, should ever think of anything
so mercenary as rent, or should ever by any exercise of his
authority indicate that he had it in his power to give or let
his farms to the highest bidders. It was bad enough, they
thought, that an alien government should interfere with their
old ways of doing; but that their chiefs, the heads of their
race, for whom they were ready to lay down their lives and the
lives of all over whom they had any power, should turn against
them, was more than they could bear. The consequence was that
many of them, especially in the west, threw up their farms, no
doubt thinking that the lairds would at once ask them to
remain on the old terms. This, however, was but seldom done,
and the consequence was that many of these tacksmen emigrated
to America, taking with them, no doubt, servants and
sub-tenants, and enticing out more by the glowing accounts
they sent home of their good fortune in that far-off land.
In some cases, the farms thus vacated were let to other
tacksmen or large tenants, but in most instances, the new
system was introduced of letting the land directly to what
were formerly the sub-tenants, those who had held the land
immediately from the ousted tacksmen. A number of these
sub-tenants would take a large farm among them, sub-dividing
it as they chose, and each becoming liable for his proportion
of the rent. The farms thus let were generally cultivated on
the run-rig system, the pasture being common to all the
tenants alike.
That certain advantages followed these changes there is no
doubt. Every account we have of the Highlands during the
earlier part of the 18th century, agrees in the fact that the
Highlands were over-peopled and over-stocked, that it was
impossible for the land to yield sufficient to support the men
and beasts who lived upon it. Hence, this drafting off of a
considerable portion of the population have that which
remained breathing-room; fewer people were left to support,
and it is to be supposed that the condition of these would be
improved. Moreover, they would probably have their farms at a
cheaper rent than under the old system, when the demands of
both tacksmen and laird had to be satisfied, the former of
course having let the land at a much higher rate than that at
which they held it from their superior. Now, it was possible
enough for the laird to get a higher rent than before, and at
the same time the people might have their farms at a lower
rent than they had previously given to the tacksmen. There
would also be fewer oppressive services demanded of these
small tenants than under the old system, for now they had only
the laird to satisfy, whereas previously they had both him and
the tacksman. There would still, of course, be services
required by the laird from these tenants, still would part of
the rent be paid in kind, still would they be thirled to
particular mills, and have to submit to many similar
exactions, of the oppressiveness of which, however, it was
long before they became conscious; but, on the whole, the
condition of those districts from which emigrations took place
must to have some extent have been the better for the
consequent thinning of the population. Still no alteration
appears to have taken place in the mode of farming, the nature
of tenures, mode of paying rent, houses, clothes, food of the
people. In some parts of the Highlands and islands, no
alteration whatever appears to have been made on the old
system; the tacksmen were allowed to remain undisturbed, and
the people lived and held land as formerly. But even in those
districts from which emigrations were largely made, little, or
no improvement seems to have been the consequence, if we may
trust the reports of those who saw how things stood with their
own eyes. Pennant, Johnson, Buchanan, Newte, the Old
Statistical Account, all agree that but little improvement was
noticeable from 1745 down till near the end of the 18th
century.
One reason why emigration made so little difference in the way
of improvement on the condition in the way of improvement on
the condition of those who remained in the country was, that
no check was put upon the overstocking of the farms with men
and animals. In spite of emigration, the population in many
districts increased instead of diminished. A common practice
among those tenants who conjointly held a large farm was for a
father, on the marriage of a son or daughter, to divide his
share of the farm with the young couple, who either lived in
the old man's house or built a but for themselves and tried to
make a living out of the share of the pendicle allotted to
them. To such an extent was this practice carried, that often
a portion of land of a few acres, originally let to and
sufficient to maintain one family, might in a few years be
divided among six or eight families, and which, even if
cultivated in the best manner possible, would not support its
occupants for more than two or three month a year. On account
of this ruinous practice, Skye, which in 1750 had 15,000
inhabitants, most of whom were in a condition of misery and
want, in 1857, in spite of large and repeated emigrations, had
a population of about 23,000. This custom was common in many
Highland (chiefly western) districts down to the late 19th
century, and was fruitful of many consequences - of frequent
famines, the constant impoverishing of the soil, the
over-stocking of pasture-land, and continual wretchedness.
In some cases, the farms vacated by the old tacksmen, instead
of being let to the old sub-tenant, were let to whatever
stranger would give the highest offer. On farms so let, the
condition of the sub-tenants who were continued on the old
footing, appears often to have been miserable in the extreme.
These newcomer tacksmen or middlemen cared nothing either for
chiefs or people; they paid their rent and were determined to
squeeze from those under them as large a return as possible
for their outlay. In confirmation of these statements, and to
show the sad conditions of many parts of the Highlands in
their state of transition, we quote the following passage from
Buchanan's Travels in the Hebrides, referring to about 1780.
Even allowing for exaggeration, although there is no reason to
believe the writer goes beyond the truth, the picture is
almost incredibly deplorable:
"At present they are obliged to be much more submissive
to their tacksmen than ever they were in former times to their
lairds of lords. There is a great difference between that mild
treatment which is shown to sub-tenants and even scallags, by
the old lessees, descended of ancient and honorable families,
and the outrageous rapacity of those necessitous strangers who
have obtained leases from absent proprietors, who treat the
natives as if they were a conquered and inferior race of
mortals. In short, they treat them like beasts of burden; and
in all respects like slaves attached to the soil, as they
cannot obtain new habitations, on account of the combinations
already mentioned, and are entirely at the mercy of the laird
or tacksman. Formerly, the personal service of the tenant did
not usually exceed eight or ten days in the year. There lives
at present at Scalpa, in the Isle of Harris, a tacksman of a
large district, who instead of six days work paid by the
sub-tenants to his predecessor in the lease, has raised the
predial service, called in that and in other parts of
Scotland, manerial bondage, to fifty-two days in the year at
once; besides many other services to be performed at different
though regular and stated times; as tanning leather for
brogues, making heather ropes for thatch, digging and drying
peats for fuel; one pannier of peat charcoal to be carried to
the smith; so many days for gathering and shearing sheep and
lambs; for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other
distant places, and several days for going on distant errands;
as many pounds of wool to be spun into yarn. And over and
above all this, they must lend their aid upon any unforeseen
occurrence whenever they are called on. The constant service
of two months at once is performed at the proper season in the
making of kelp. On the whole, this gentleman's sub-tenants may
be computed to devote to his service full three days in the
week. But this is not all: they have to pay besides yearly a
certain number of cocks, hens, butter, and cheese, called
Caorigh-Febbin, the Wife's Portion! This, it must be owned, is
one of the most severe and rigorous tacksmen descended from
the old inhabitants, in all the Western Hebrides: but the
situation of his sub-tenants of those places in general, and
the exact counterpart of such enormous oppression is to be
found at Luskintire".
Another cause of emigration and of depopulation generally, was
the introduction of sheep on a large scale, involving the
junction into one of several small farms, each of which might
before have been occupied by a number of tenants. Those
subjects of the introduction of sheep, engrossing of farms,
and consequent depopulation have occupied, and still to some
extend do occupy, the attention of all those who take an
interest in the Highlands, and of social economists in
general. Various opinions have been passed on the matters in
question, some advocating the retention of the people at all
costs, while others declare that the greatest part of the
Highlands is fit only for pasture, and it would be sheer
madness, and shutting our eyes willfully to the sad lessons of
experience, to stock a land with people that is fit only to
sustain sheep, and which at its very best contains more specks
of arable ground, which, even when cultivated to the utmost,
can yield but a poor and unprofitable return.
Whatever opinion may be passed upon the general question,
there can be no doubt that at first the introduction of sheep
was fruitful of misery and discontent to those who had to
vacate their old home and leave their native glens to find
shelter they knew not well where. Many of those thus displaced
by sheep and by one or two lowland shepherds, emigrated like
the discontented tacksmen to America, those who remained
looking with ill-will and an evil eye on the lowland
intruders. Although often the intruder came from the South
country, and brought his sheep and his shepherds with him,
still this was not always the case; for many of the old
tacksmen and even sub-tenants, after they saw how immensely
more profitable the new system was over the old, wisely took a
lesson in time, and following the example of the new lowland
tenant, tool large farms and stocked them with sheep and
cattle, and reduced the arable land to a minimum. But,
generally speaking, in cases where farm formerly subdivided
among a number of tenants were converted into sheep farms, the
smaller tenant had to quit and find a means of living
elsewhere. The landlords in general attempted to prevent the
ousted tenants from leaving the country by setting apart some
particular spot either by the sea-shore or on waste land which
had never been touched by plough, on which they might build
houses and have an acre or two of land for their support.
Those who were removed to the coast were encouraged to
prosecute the fishing along with their agricultural labors,
while those who were settled on waste land were stimulated to
bring it into a state of cultivation. It was mainly by a
number of such ousted Highlanders that the great and arduous
undertaking was accomplished of bringing into a state of
cultivation Kincardine Moss, in Perthshire. At the time the
task was undertaken, about 1767, it was one of stupendous
magnitude; but so successfully was it carried out, that in a
few years upwards of 2000 acres of fine clay-soil, which for
centuries had been covered to the depth of seven feet with
heath and decayed vegetable matter, were bearing luxuriant
crops of all kinds. In a similar way, many spots throughout
the Highlands, formerly yielding nothing but heath and moss,
were, by the exertions of those who were deprived of their
farms, brought into a state of cultivation. Those who occupied
ground of this kind were known as mailers, and, as a rule,
they paid no rent for the first few years, after which they
generally paid the proprietor a shilling or two per acre,
which was gradually increased as the land improved and its
cultivation extended. For the first season or two the
proprietor usually either lent or presented them with seed and
implements. In the parish of Urray, in the south-east of
Ross-shire, about the year 1790, there were 248 families of
this kind, most of whom had settled there within the previous
forty years. Still the greater number of these, both tacksmen
and sub-tenants, who were deprived of their farms, either on
account of the raising of the rents or because of their
conversion into large sheep-walks, emigrated to America. The
old Statistical Account of North Uist says that between the
years 1771 and 1775, a space of only four years, several
thousands emigrated from the Western Highlands and Islands
alone. At first few of the islands appear to have been put
under sheep; where any alteration on the state of things took
place at all, it was generally in the way of raising rents,
thus causing the tacksmen to leave, who were succeeded either
by strangers who leased the farms, or by the old sub-tenants,
among whom the lands were divided, and who held immediately
from the laird. It was long, however, as have already
indicated, before the innovations took thorough hold upon the
Hebrides, as even down almost to the present time many of the
old proprietors, either from attachment to their people, or
from a love of feudal show, struggle to keep up the old
system, leaving the tacksmen undisturbed, and doing all they
can to maintain and keep on their property a large number of
sub-tenants and cottars. Almost invariably, those proprietors
who thus obstinately refused to succumb to the changes going
on around them, suffered for their unwise conduct. Many of
them impoverished their families for generations, and many of
the estates were disposed of for behoof of their creditors,
and they themselves had to sink to the level of landless
gentlemen, and seek their living in commerce or elsewhere.
Gradually, however, most of the proprietors, especially those
whose estates were on the mainland Highlands, yielded, in
general no doubt willingly, to change, raised their rents,
abolished small tenancies, and gave their lands up to the
sheep farmers. The temptation was, no doubt, often very great,
on account of the large rents offered by the lowland grazers.
One proprietor in Argyleshire, who had some miles of pasture
let to a number of small tenants for a few shillings yearly,
on being offered by a lowlander who saw the place £300 a
year, could not resist, but, however ruefully, cleared it of
his old tenants, and gave it up to the money-making lowlander.
It was this engrossing of farms and the turning of immense
tracks of country into sheep-walks, part of which was formerly
cultivated and inhabited by hundreds of people, that was the
great grievance of the Highlanders during the latter part of
the last century. Not that it could aggravate their
wretchedness to any great extent, for that was bad enough
already even before 1745; it seem to have been rather the fact
that their formerly much-loved chiefs should treat them worse
than they could strangers, prefer a big income to a large band
of faithful followers, and eject those who believed themselves
to have as great a right to the occupancy of the land as the
chief themselves. "The great and growing grievance of the
Highlands is not the letting of the land to tacksmen, but the
making of so many sheep-walks, which sweep off both tacksmen
and sub-tenants all in a body". The tacksmen especially
felt naturally cut to the quick by what they deemed the
selfish and unjust policy of the chiefs. These tacksmen and
their ancestors in most cases had occupied their farms for
many generations; their birth was as good and their genealogy
as old as those of the chief himself, to whom they were all
blood relations, and to whom they were attached with the most
unshaken loyalty. True, they had no writing, no document, no
paltry "sheep-skin", as they called it, to show as a
proof that they had as much right to their farms as the laird
himself. But what of that? Who would ever have thought that
their chiefs would turn against them, and try to wrest from
them that which had been gifted by a former chief to their
fathers, who would have bitten out their tongue before they
would ask a bond? The gift, they thought, was none the less
real because there was no written proof of it. These
parchments were quite a modern innovation, not even then
universally acknowledged among the Highlanders, to whom the
only satisfactory proof of proprietorship and chiefship was
possession from time immemorial. Occasionally a chief, who
could produce no title-deed to his estate, was by law deprived
of it, and his place filled by another. But the clan would
have none of this; they invariably turned their backs upon the
intruder, and acknowledged only the ousted chief as their head
and the real proprietor, whom they were bound to support, and
whom they frequently did support, by paying to him the rents
which were legally due to the other. In some cases, it would
seem, the original granters of the land to the tacksmen
conveyed it to them by a regular title-deed, by which, of
course, they became proprietors. And we think there can be no
doubt, that originally when a chief bestowed a share of his
property upon his son or other near relation, he intended that
the latter should keep it for himself and his descendants; he
was not regarded merely as a tenant who had to pay a yearly
rent, but as a sub-proprietor, who, from a sense of love and
duty would contribute what he could to support the chief of
his race and clan. In many cases, we say, this was the light
in which chief, tacksmen, and people regarded these farms
tenanted by the gentlemen of the clan; and it only seems to
have been after the value of men decreased and of property
increased, that most of the lairds began to look at the matter
in a more commercial, legal, and less romantic light.
According to Newte - and what he says is supported to a
considerable extent by facts - "in the southern parts of
Argyleshire, in Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, Moray and Ross,
grants of land were made in writing, while in Inverness-shire,
Sutherland-shire, the northern parts of Argylshire, and the
Western Islands, the old mode was continued of verbal or
emblematical transference. In Ross-shire, particularly, it
would appear that letters and the use of letters in civil
affairs had been early introduced and widely spread; for
property is more equally divided in that country than in most
other counties in Scotland, and than in any other of the
Highlands. Agreeably to these observation, it is from the
great estates on the northern and western side of Scotland
that the descendants of the original tacksmen of the land,
with their families, have been obliged to migrate by the
positive and unrelenting demands of rent beyond what it was in
their power to give, and, indeed, in violation of those
conditions that were understood and observed between the
original granter and original tenant and their posterity for
centuries". These statements are exceedingly plausible,
and we believe to a certain extent true; but it is unnecessary
here to enter upon the discussion of the question. What we
have to do with is the unquestionable fact that the Highland
proprietors did in many instances take advantage of the legal
power, which they undoubtedly possessed, to do with their land
as they pleased, and, regardless of the feelings of the old
tacksmen and sub-tenants, let it to the highest bidders. The
consequence was that these tacksmen, who to a certain extent
were demoralized and knew not how to use the land to best
advantage, had to leave the homes of their ancestors; and many
of the small farmers and cottars, in the face of the new
system of large sheep-farms, becoming cumberers of the ground,
were swept from the face of the country, and either located in
little lots by the sea-side, where they became useful as
fishers and kelp-burners, or settled on some waste moor, which
they occupied themselves in reclaiming from its native
barrenness, or, as was frequently the case, followed the
tacksmen and sought a home in the far west, where many of them
became lairds in their own right.
These then are the great results of the measures which
followed the rebellion of 1745-6, and the consequent breaking
up of the old clan system - extensive sheep-framing,
accompanied with a great rise in the rent of land,
depopulation and emigration. as to the legality of the
proceedings of the proprietors, there can be no doubt; as
little doubt is there than the immediate consequence to many
of the Highlanders was great suffering, accompanied by much
bitterness and discontent. As to the morality or justice of
the laird's conduct, various opinions have been, and no doubt
for long will be, expressed. One side maintains that it was
the duty of these chiefs upon whom the people depended, whom
they revered, and for whom they were ready to die, at all
events, to see to it that their people were provided for, and
that ultimately it would have been for the interest of the
proprietors and the country at large to do everything to
prevent from emigrating in such numbers as they did, such a
splendid race of men, for whose services to the country no
money equivalent could be found. It is maintained that the
system of large farms is pernicious in every respect, and that
only by the system of moderate sized farms can a country be
made the best of, an adequate rural population be kept up, and
self-respect and a high moral tone be nourished and spread
throughout the land. Those who adopt this side of the question
pooh-pooh the common maxims of political economy, and declare
that laws whose immediate consequences are wide-spread
suffering, and the unpeopling of a country, cannot be founded
on any valid basis; that proprietors hold their lands only in
trust, and it is therefore their duty not merely to consider
their own narrow interest, but also to consult the welfare and
consult the feelings of their people. In short, it is
maintained by this party, that the Highland lairds, in acting
as they did, showed themselves to be unjust, selfish,
heartless, unpatriotic, mercenary, and blind to their own true
interests and those of their country.
On the other hand, it is maintained that what occurred in the
Highlands subsequent to 1745 was a step in the right
direction, and that, it was only a pity that the innovations
had no been more thorough and systematic. For long previous to
1745, it is asserted the Highlands were much over-peopled, and
the people, as a consequence of the vicious system under which
they had lived for generations, were incurably lazy, and could
be roused from this sad lethargy only by some such radical
measures as were adopted. The whole system of Highland life
and manners and habits were almost barbarous, the method of
farming was thoroughly pernicious and unproductive, the stock
of cattle worthless and excessive, and so badly managed that
about one half perished every winter. On account of the
excessive population, the land was by far too much subdivided,
the majority of so-called farmers occupying farms of so small
a size that they could furnish the necessaries of life for no
more than six months, and consequently the people were
continually on the verge of starvation. The Highlands, it is
said, are almost totally unsuited for agriculture, and fit
only for pasturage, and that consequently this subdivision
into small farms could be nothing else than pernicious; that
the only method by which the land could be made the most of
was that or large sheep-farms, and that the proprietors while
no doubt studying their own interest, adopted the wisest
policy when they let out their land on this system. In short,
it is maintained by the advocates of innovation, the whole
body of the Highlanders were thoroughly demoralized, their
number was greater by far than the land could support even if
managed to the best advantage, and was increasingly every
year; the whole system of renting land, of tenure, and of
farming was ruinous to the people and the land, and that
nothing but a radical change could cure the many evils with
which the country was afflicted.
There has been much rather bitter discussion between the
advocates of the two sides of the Highland question; often
more recrimination and calling of names then telling argument.
This question, we think, is no exception to the general rule
which governs most disputed matters; there is truth, we
believe, on both sides. We fear the facts already adduced in
this part comprise many of the assertions made by the
advocates of change. As to the wretched social condition of
the Highlanders, for long before and after 1745, there can be
no doubt, if we can place any reliance on the evidence of
contemporaries, and we have already said enough to show that
the common system of farming, if worthy of the name, was
ruinous and inefficient; while their small lean cattle were so
badly managed that about one half died yearly. That the
population was very much greater than the land, even if used
to the best advantage, could support, is testified to by every
candid writer from the Gartmore paper down almost to the
present day. The author of the Gartmore paper, written about
1747, estimated that the population of the Highlands at that
time amounted to about 230,000; "but", he says,
"according to the present economy of the Highlands, there
is not business for more than one half of that number of
people... The other half, then, must be idle and beggars while
in the country".
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Once
the chiefs lost their powers following the Battle of Culloden,
many of them lost also any parental interest in their
clansmen. During the next hundred years they continued the
work of Cumberland's battalions. So that they might lease
their glens and braes to sheep-farmers from the Lowlands and
England, they cleared the crofts of men, women and children,
using police and soldiers where necessary.
The
Highlanders were deserted and then betrayed. It is the story
of people, and of how sheep were preferred to them, and how
bayonet, truncheon and fire were used to drive them from their
homes.
It has
been said that the Clearances are now far enough away from us
to be decently forgotten. But the hills are still empty. In
all of Britain, only among them can one find real solitude,
and if their history is known there is no satisfaction to be
got from the experience.
It is
worth remembering, too, that while the rest of Scotland was
permitting the expulsion of its Highland people it was also
forming the romantic attachment to kilt and tartan that
scarcely compensates for the disappearance of a race to whom
such things were once a commonplace reality. The chiefs
remain, in Edinburgh and London, but the people are gone.
Finally,
we have not become so civilized in our behaviour, or more
concerned with men than profit, that this story holds no
lesson for us.
From: The
Highland Clearances, by John Prebble. A Penquin Book, 1969.
The
Sutherland Clearances
-- by
Alexander MacKenzie
Truth is
stranger than fiction
To give a proper account of the Sutherland Clearances would
take a bulky volume. Indeed, a large tome of 354 pages has
been written and published in their defence by him who was
mainly responsible for them, called "An Account of the
Sutherland Improvements," by James Loch, at that time
Commissioner for the Marchioness of Stafford and heiress of
Sutherland.
This was
the first account I ever read of these so-called improvements;
and it was quite enough to convince me (and it will be
sufficient to convince anyone who knows anything of the
country) that the improvements of the people, by driving them
in the most merciless and cruel manner from the homes of their
fathers, was carried out on a huge scale and in the most
inconsiderate and heartless manner by those in charge of the
Sutherland estates.
But when
one reads the other side, MacLeod's "Gloomy
Memories." General Stewart of Garth's "Sketches of
the Highlanders," and other contemporary publications,
one wonders that such iniquities could ever have been
permitted in any Christian country, much more so in Great
Britain, which has done so much for the amelioration of
subject races and the oppressed in every part of the world,
while her own brave sons have been persecuted, oppressed and
banished without compensation by greedy and cold-blooded
proprietors, who owed their position and their lands to the
ancestors of the very men they were now treating so cruelly.
The
motives of the landlords, generally led by southern factors
worse than themselves, were, in most cases, pure
self-interest. They pursued their policy of extermination with
a recklessness and remorselessness unparalleled anywhere else
where the Gospel of peace and charity was preached -- except,
perhaps, unhappy Ireland. Generally, law and justice, religion
and humanity, were either totally disregarded, or what was
worse, in many cases converted into and applied as instruments
of oppression.
Every
conceivable means, short of the musket and the sword, were
used to drive the natives from the land they loved, and to
force them to exchange their crofts and homes -- brought
originally into cultivation and built by themselves, or by
their forefathers -- for wretched patches along the barren
rocks on the sea-shore. They had to depend, after losing their
cattle and their sheep, and after having their houses burnt
about their ears or razed to the ground, on the uncertain
produce of the sea for subsistence. The people, in many
instances, and especially in Sutherlandshire, were totally
unacquainted with a seafaring life, and quite unfitted to
contend with its perils.
What was
true generally of the Highlands, was in the county of
Sutherland carried to the greatest extreme. That unfortunate
county, according to an eye-witness, was made another Moscow.
The inhabitants were literally burnt out, and every
contrivance and ingenious and unrelenting cruelty was eagerly
adopted for extirpating the race. Many lives were sacrificed
by famine and other hardships and privations.
Hundreds,
stripped their all, emigrated to the Canadas and other parts
of America. Great numbers, especially of the young and
athletic, sought employment in the Lowlands and in England,
where, few of them being skilled workmen, they were obliged --
even farmers who had lived in comparative affluence in their
own country -- to compete with common labourers, in
communities where their language and simple manners rendered
them objects of derision and ridicule. The aged and infirm,
the widows and orphans, with those of their families who could
not think of leaving them alone in their helplessness, and a
number, whose attachment to the soil which contained the ashes
of their ancestors, were induced to accept of the wretched
allotments ordered them on the wild moors and barren rocks.
The mild
nature and religious training of the Highlanders prevented a
resort to that determined resistance and revenge which has
repeatedly set bounds to the rapacity of landlords in Ireland.
Their ignorance of the English language, and the want of
natural leaders, made it impossible for them to make their
grievances known to the outside world. They were, therefore,
maltreated with impunity. The ministers generally sided with
the oppressing lairds, who had the Church patronage at their
disposal for themselves and their sons. The professed
ministers of religion sanctioned the iniquity, "the
foulest deeds were glossed over, and all the evil which could
not be attributed to the natives themselves, such as severe
seasons, famines, and consequent disease, was by these pious
gentlemen ascribed to Providence, as a punishment for
sin."
The system
of turning out the ancient inhabitants from their native soil
throughout the Highlands during the first half of the
nineteenth century has been carried into effect in the country
of Sutherland with greater severity and revolting cruelty than
in any other part of the Highlands. It was done though the
Countess- Marchioness and her husband, the Marquis of
Stafford, were by no means devoid of humanity. However
atrocious and devoid of human feeling were the acts carried
out in their name by heartless underlings, who represented the
ancient tenantry to their superiors as lazy and rebellious,
though, they maintained everything was being done for their
advantage and improvement.
How this
was done will be seen in the sequel. South countrymen were
introduced and the land given to them for sheep farms over the
heads of the native tenantry. These strangers were made
Justices of the Peace and armed with all sorts of authority in
the county, and thus enabled to act in the most harsh and
tyrannical fashion, none making them afraid; while the
oppressed natives were placed completely at their mercy. They
dare not even complain, for were not their oppressors also the
administrators of the law?
The
seventeen parish ministers, with the single exception of Rev.
Mr. Sage, took the side of the powers that were, exhorting the
people to submit and to stifle their cries of distress,
telling them that all their sufferings came from the hand of
their Heavenly Father as a punishment for their past
transgressions. Most of these ministers have since rendered
their account, and let us hope they have been forgiven for
such cruel and blasphemous conduct. But one cannot help but
noting to what horrid uses these men in Sutherlandshire and
elsewhere prostituted their sacred office and high calling.
The
Sutherland clearances were commenced in a comparatively mild
way in 1807, by the ejection of ninety families from Farr and
Lairg. These were provided for, some fifteen or seventeen
miles distant, with smaller lots to which they were permitted
to remove their cattle and plenishing, leaving their crops
unprotected, however, in the ground from which they were
evicted. They had to pull down their old houses, remove the
timber, and build new ones, during which period they had in
many cases to sleep under the open canopy of heaven. In that
autumn they carried away, with great difficulty, what remained
of their crops, but the fatigue incurred cost a few of them
their lives, while others contracted diseases which stuck with
them during the remainder of their lives, and shortened their
days.
In 1809
several hundred were evicted from the parishes of Dornoch,
Rogart, Loth, Clyne and Golspie, under circumstances of much
greater severity than those already described. Several were
driven by various means to leave the country altogether, and
to those who could not be induced to do so, patches of moor
and bog were offered on Dornoch Moor and Brora Links -- quite
unfit for cultivation. This process was carried on annually
until, in 1811, the land from which the people were ejected
was divided into large farms, and advertised as huge sheep
runs.
The
country was overrun with strangers who came to look at these
extensive tracts. Some of these gentlemen got up a cry that
they were afraid of their lives among the evicted tenantry. A
trumped- up story was manufactured that one of the interlopers
was pursued by some of the natives of Kildonan, and put in
bodily fear. The military were sent for from Fort George. The
21st Regiment was marched to Dunrobin Castle, with artillery
and cartloads of ammunition. A great farce was performed; the
people were sent for by the factors to the Castle at a certain
hour. They came peaceably, but the farce must be gone through.
The Riot Act was read. A few sheepish, innocent Highlanders
were made prisoners, but nothing could be laid to their
charge. They were almost immediately set at liberty, while the
soldiers were ordered back to Fort George.
The
demonstration, however, had the desired effect in cowing and
frightening the people into the most absolute submission. They
became dismayed and broken-hearted, and quietly submitted to
their fate. The clergy all this time were assiduous in
preaching that all the misfortunes of the people were
"Fore-ordained of God, and denouncing the vengeance of
Heaven and eternal damnation on all those who would presume to
make the slightest resistance."
At the May
term of 1812 large districts of these parishes were cleared in
the most peaceable manner, the poor creatures foolishly
believing the false teaching of their selfish and dishonest
spiritual guides -- save the mark!
The Earl
of Selkirk, who went personally to the district, allured many
of the evicted people to emigrate to his estates on the Red
River in British North America, whither a whole ship-cargo of
them went. After a long and otherwise disastrous passage, they
found themselves deceived and deserted by the Earl, left to
their unhappy fate in an inclement wilderness. They were
without any protection from the hordes of red Indian savages
by whom the district was infested, and who plundered them of
their all on their arrival and finally massacred them. A small
remnant who managed to escape travelled through immense
difficulties, across trackless forests to Upper Canada.
The
notorious Mr. Sellar was at this time sub-factor, and in the
spring of 1814 he took a large portion of the parishes of Farr
and Kildonan into his own hands. In the month of March the old
tenantry received notices to quit at the ensuing May term. A
few days after the summonses were served the greater portion
of the heath pasture was, by his orders, set on fire.
By this
cruel proceeding the cattle belonging to the old tenantry were
left without food during the spring, and it was impossible to
dispose of them at a fair price, the price having fallen after
the war. Napoleon was now a prisoner in Elba. The demand for
cattle became temporarily dull, and prices were very much
reduced. To make matters worse, fodder was unusually scarce
this spring. The poor people's cattle depended for subsistence
solely on the spring grass which sprouts out among the
heather, but which this year had been burnt by the factor who
would himself reap the benefit when he came into possession
later on.
In May the
work of ejectment was again commenced, accompanied by
cruelties hitherto unknown, even in the Highlands. Atrocities
were perpetrated which I cannot trust myself to describe in my
own words. I shall give what is much more valuable -- a
description by an eye-witness in his own language. He says:-
"In
former removals the tenants had been allowed to carry away the
timber of their old dwellings to erect houses on their new
allotments, but now a more summary mode was adopted by setting
fire to them. The able-bodied men were by this time away after
their cattle or otherwise engaged at a distance, so that the
immediate sufferers by the general house-burning that now
commenced were the aged and infirm, the women and children.
"As
the lands were now in the hands of the factor himself, and
were to be occupied as sheep farms, and as the people made no
resistance, they expected, at least, some indulgence in the
way of permission to occupy their houses and other buildings
till they could gradually remove, and meanwhile look after
their growing crops.
"Their
consternation was therefore greater, when immediately after
the May term-day, a commencement was made to pull down and set
fire to the houses over their heads.
The old
people, women and others, then began to preserve the timber
which was their very own; but the devastators proceeded with
the greatest celerity, demolishing all before them. When they
had overthrown all the houses in a large tract of country they
set fire to the wreck. Timber, furniture and other article
that could not be instantly removed was consumed by fire or
otherwise utterly destroyed.
The
proceedings were carried on with the greatest rapidity and the
most reckless cruelty. The cries of the victims, the
confusion, the despair and horror painted on the countenance
of the one party, and the exulting ferocity of the other,
beggar all description."
At these
scenes, Mr. Sellar was present, and apparently, as sworn by
several witnesses at his subsequent trial, ordering and
directing the whole.
Many
deaths ensued from alarm, from fatigue, and cold, the people
having been instantly deprived of shelter, and left to the
mercies of the elements. Some old men took to the woods and to
the rocks, wandering about in a state approaching to, or of
absolute, insanity; and several of them in this situation
lived only a few days. Pregnant women were taken in premature
labour, and several children did not long survive their
sufferings.
"To
these scenes," says Donald MacLeod (author of `Gloomy
Memories'), "I was an eye-witness, and am ready to
substantiate the truth of my statements, not only by my own
testimony, but by that of many others who were present at the
time. In such a scene of general devastation, it is almost
useless to particularise the cases of individuals; the
suffering was great and universal. I shall, however, notice a
few of the extreme cases of which I was myself eye-witness.
John
Mackay's wife, Ravigill, in attempting to pull down her house,
in the absence of her husband, to preserve the timber, fell
through the roof. She was in consequence taken in premature
labour, and in that state was exposed to the open air and to
the view of all the by-standers.
Donald
Munro, Garvott, lying in a fever, was turned out of his house
and exposed to the elements.
Donald
Macbeath, and infirm and bed-ridden old man, had the house
unroofed over him, and was in that state exposed to the wind
and rain until death put a period to his sufferings.
"I
was present at the pulling down and burning of the house of
William Chisholm, Badinlkoskin, in which was lying his wife's
mother, an old bed-ridden woman of nearly 100 years of age,
none of the family being present. I informed the persons about
to set fire to the house of this circumstance, and prevailed
on them to wait until Mr. Sellar came. On his arrival, I told
him of the poor old woman being in a condition unfit for
removal, when he replied, `Damn her, the old witch, she has
lived too long -- let her burn.'
"Fire
was immediately set to the house, and the blankets in which
she was carried out were in flames before she could be got
out. She was placed in a little shed, and it was with great
difficulty they were prevented from firing it also. The old
woman's daughter arrived while the house was on fire and
assisted the neighbours in removing her mother out of the
flames and smoke, presenting a picture of horror which I shall
never forget, but cannot attempt to describe. Within five days
she was a corpse."
In 1816
Sellar was charged at Inverness, before the Court of
Justiciary, with culpable homicide and fire-raising in
connection with these proceedings. Considering all
circumstances, it is not at all surprising that he was `honourably'
acquitted of the grave charges made against him. Almost
immediately after, however, he ceased to be a factor on the
Sutherland estates, and Mr. Loch came into power. Evictions
were carried out from 1814, down to 1819 and 1820, pretty much
of the same character as those already described.
The
removal of Mr. Young, the chief factor, and Mr. Sellar from
power was hailed with delight by the whole remaining
population. Their very names had become a terror. Their
appearance in any part of the county caused such alarm as to
make women fall into fits. One woman became so terrified that
she became insane, and whenever she saw anyone she did not
recognize, she invariably cried out in a state of absolute
terror -- `Oh! sin Sellar -- Oh! there's Sellar.'
The
people, however, soon discovered that the new factors were not
much better. Several leases which were current would not
expire until 1819 and 1820, so that the evictions were
necessary only partial from 1814 down to that period.
The people
were reduced to such a state of poverty that even Mr. Loch
himself, in his `Sutherland Improvements,' page 76, admits
that -- `Their wretchedness was so great that, after pawning
everything they possessed to the fishermen on the coast, such
as had no cattle were reduced to come down from the hills in
hundreds for the purpose of gathering cockles on the shore.
Those who lived in the more remote situations of the county
were obliged to subsist upon broth made of nettles, thickened
with a little oatmeal. Those who had cattle had recourse to
the still more wretched expedient of bleeding them, and mixing
the blood with oatmeal, which they afterwards cut into slices
and fried. Those who had a little money came down and slept
all night upon the beach, in order to watch the boats
returning from the fishing, that they might be in time to
obtain a part of what had been caught.'
Loch,
however, omitted to mention the share he and his predecessors
had taken in reducing the people to such misery, and the fact
that at this very time he had constables stationed at the
Little Ferry to prevent the starved tenantry from collecting
shellfish in the only place where they could find them.
He
prevailed upon the people to sign documents consenting to
remove at the next Whitsunday term, promising at the same time
to make good provision for them elsewhere. In about a month
after, the work of demolition and devastation again commenced,
and parts of the parishes of Golspie, Rogart, Farr, and the
whole of Kildonan were in a blaze. Strong parties with faggots
and other combustible material were set to work. Three hundred
houses were given ruthlessly to the flames, and their
occupants pushed out into the open air without food or
shelter. Macleod, who was present, describes the horrible
scene as follows:--
"The
consternation and confusion were extreme. Little or no time
was given for the removal of persons or property; the people
striving to remove the sick and the helpless before the fire
should reach them; next, struggling to save the most valuable
of their effects. The cries of the women and children, the
roaring of the affrighted cattle, hunted at the same time by
the yelling dogs of the shepherds amid the smoke and fire,
altogether presented a scene that completely baffles
description -- it required to be seen to be believed.
"A
dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country by day, and
even extended far out to sea. At night an awfully grand but
terrific scene presented itself -- all the houses in an
extensive district in flames at once. I myself ascended a
height about eleven o'clock in the evening, and counted two
hundred and fifty blazing houses, many of the owners of which
I personally knew, but whose present condition -- whether in
or out of the flames -- I could not tell. The conflagration
lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced
to ashes or smoking ruins. During one of these days a boat
actually lost her way in the dense smoke as she approached the
shore, but at night was enabled to reach a landing-place by
the lurid light of the flames."
The whole
of the inhabitants of Kildonan, numbering nearly 2000 souls,
except three families, were utterly rooted and burnt out, and
the whole parish converted into a solitary wilderness. The
suffering was intense. Some lost their reason.
Over a
hundred souls took passage to Caithness in a small sloop, the
master humanely agreeing to take them in the hold, from which
he had just unloaded a cargo of quicklime. A head storm came
on, and they were nine days at sea in the most miserable
condition -- men, women and helpless children huddled up
together, with barely any provisions. Several died in
consequence and others became invalids for the rest of their
days. One man, Donald Mackay, whose family was suffering from
a severe fever, carried two of his children a distance of
twenty-five miles to this vessel.
Another
old man took shelter in a meal mill, where he was kept from
starvation by licking the meal refuse scattered among the dust
on the floor, and protected from the rats and other vermin by
his faithful collie.
George
Munro, the miller at Farr, who had six of his family down with
fever, had to remove them in that state to a damp kiln, while
his home was given to the flames.
And all
this was done in the name of proprietors who could not be
considered tyrants in the ordinary sense of the term.
General
Stewart of Garth, about a year after the cruelties perpetuated
in Sutherland, writes with regret of the unnatural proceedings
as the "the delusions practised (by his subordinates) on
a generous and public- spirited proprietor, which have been so
perseveringly applied, that it would appear as if all feeling
of former kindness towards the native tenantry had ceased to
exist.
To [these
subordinates] any uncultivated spot of moorland, however
small, was considered sufficient for the support of a family
[of the native tenantry]; while the most lavish encouragement
has been given to all the new tenants, on whom, with the
erection of buildings, the improvement of lands, roads,
bridges, etc., upwards of œ210,000 had been expended since
1808 (in fourteen years).
With this
proof of unprecedented liberality, it cannot be sufficiently
lamented that an estimate of the character of these poor
people was taken from the misrepresentation of persons
[interested in their own profit who failed (or refused) to
recognize or acknowledge the worthy character of the native
tenantry].
[Their
judgment was not based on] the conduct of the same men when
brought into the world where they obtained a name and
character which have secured the esteem and approbation of men
high in honour and rank. From their talents and experience,
[it would seem they were] perfectly capable of judging with
correctness.
With such
proofs of capability and with such materials for carrying on
the improvements and maintaining the permanent prosperity of
the county, [it could be done] when occupied by a hardy,
abstentious race, easily led on to a full exertion of their
faculties by a proper management.
Instead of
placing them, as has been done, in situations bearing too near
a resemblance to the potato-gardens of Ireland, they [could
be] permitted to remain as cultivators of the soil, receiving
a moderate share of the vast sums lavished on their richer
successors. Such a humane and considerate regard to the
prosperity of a whole people would undoubtedly have answered
every good purpose."
He then
goes on to show that, when the valleys and higher grounds were
let to sheep farmers, the whole native population was driven
to the sea shore. There they were crowded on small lots of
land to earn subsistence by labour and sea-fishing, the latter
so little congenial to their former habits and experience.
"And these one or two acre lots are represented as
improvements!!
He then
asks how in a country, without regular employment or
manufactories, a family is to be supported on one or two
acres? The thing was impossible. The consequence is that
"over the whole of this district, where the sea-shore is
accessible, the coast is thickly studded with thatched
cottages, crowded with starving inhabitants," while
strangers, with capital, usurp the land and dispossess the
swain.
Ancient
respectable tenants, who passed the greater part of their
lives in the enjoyment of abundance and in the exercise of
hospitality and charity, possessing stocks of ten, twenty and
thirty breeding cows, with the usual proportion of other
stock, are now pining on one or two acres of bad land, with
one or two starved cows. For this accommodation a calculation
is made, that they must support their families and pay the
rents of their lots, not from the produce but from the sea.
When the
herring fishery succeeds, they generally satisfy the
landlords, whatever privations they may suffer. When the
fishing fails, they fall in arrears and are sequestrated and
their stocks sold to pay the rents, their lots given to
others, and they and their families turned adrift on the
world. In these trying circumstances, he concludes, "We
cannot sufficiently admire their meek and patient spirit,
supported by the powerful influence of moral and religious
principle.
The
beautiful Strathnaver, containing a population equal to
Kildonan, had been cleared in the same heartless manner.
In 1828,
Donald Macleod, after a considerable absence, returned to his
native Kildonan, where he attended divine service in the
parish church, which he found attended by a congregation
consisting of eight shepherds and their dogs -- numbering
between twenty and thirty -- the minister, and three members
of his family. Macleod came in too late for the first psalm,
but at the conclusion of the service the fine old tune Bangor
was given out, "when the four- footed hearers became
excited, got up on their seats, and raised a most infernal
chorus of howling. Their masters attacked them with their
crooks, which only made matters worse; the yelping and howling
continued to the end of the service." And Donald Macleod
retired to contemplate the painful and shameful scene, and
contrast it with what he had previously experienced as a
member, for many years, of the large and devout congregation
that worshipped formerly in the parish church of his native
valley.
The Parish
Church of Farr was no longer in existence; the fine population
of Strathnaver was rooted and burnt out during the general
conflagration, and presented a similar aspect to his own
native parish. The church, no longer found necessary, was
razed to the ground, and its timbers conveyed to construct one
of the Sutherland "improvements" -- the Inn at
Altnaharra, while the minister's house was converted into a
dwelling for a foxhunter.
A woman,
well-known in the parish, travelling through the desolated
Strath next year after the evictions, was asked on her return
home for her news. She replied -- "O, chan eil ach sgiala
bronach! sgiala bronach!" "Oh, only sad news, sad
news! I have seen the timber of our well attended kirk
covering the inn at Altnaharra; I have seen the kirk-yard
where our friends are mouldering filled with tarry sheep, and
Mr. Sage's study turned into a kennel for Robert Gunn's dogs,
and I have seen a crow's nest in James Gordon's chimney
head;" after which she fell into a paroxysm of grief.
Mackenzie's
Pamphlet, 1881
by Alexander MacKenzie, F.S.A., Scot.
Edited by Janet MacKay, B.R.E.,B.Sc.
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Ross-shire
Clearances: Glencalvie |
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Eighteen
families, 88 people, lived here in Glencalvie in turf cabins
indistinguishable from the brown hills, growing barley and
oats, herding cattle and sheep on a total holding of no more
than 20 acres. The most incredible rent, almost four times
what a farmer in England would pay for the same land, was paid
for this land for generations without arrears except for some
weeks during the famine in 1836. The little community had no
paupers on the poor roll and no inhabitant of this valley had
been charged for any offence since years back. During the wars
it had furnished many soldiers.
After
departing their homes, the people were seated for a church
service on a green brae by the Carron, the women all neatly
dressed in net caps and wearing scarlet or plaid shawls; the
men wearing their blue bonnets and having their shepherds'
plaids wrapped around them. This was their only covering, and
this was the Free Church. There was simplicity extremely
touching in this group on the bare hillside, listening to the
Psalms of David in their native tongue and assembled to
worship God. They sang the 145th Psalm. In the Parliamentary
Church at Croick there were two families who had not followed
their neighbours into the Free Church, ten men, women and
children holding a service in English and the Gaelic.
The
week-end the only refuge for the people was the churchyard at
Croick, a little walled enclosure sheltered by a few trees.
Although it was May, the weather was wet and cold. Behind the
church, a long kind of booth was erected, the roof formed a
tarpaulin stretched over poles, the sides closed in with
horsecloths, rugs, blankets and plaids. Their furniture,
excepting their bedding, they got distributed amongst the
cottages of their neighbours; and with their bedding and their
children, they all removed on Saturday afternoon to this
place. They had been round to every heritor and factor in the
neighbourhood, and 12 of the 18 families had been unable to
find places of shelter. With the new Scotch Poor Law in
prospect, other cottages were everywhere refused to them. Many
of them, indeed, wished that their lot had landed them under
the sod with their ancestors and their friends, rather than to
be treated and driven out of house and home in such a ruthless
manner.
It was a
most wretched spectacle to see these poor people march out of
the glen in a body, with two or three carts filled with
children, many of them mere infants; and other carts
containing their bedding and their requisites. The whole
countryside was up on the hills watching them as they silently
took possession of their tent. No one dared to succour them
under a threat of receiving similar treatment to those whose
hard fate had driven them thus among the tombs.
A fire was
kindled in the churchyard, round which the poor children
clustered. Two cradles with infants in them, were placed close
to the fire, and sheltered round by the dejected looking
mothers. Others busied themselves into dividing the tent into
compartments by means of blankets for the different families.
Contrasted with the gloomy dejection of the grown-ups and the
aged was the, perhaps, not less melancholy picture of the poor
children thoughtlessly playing round the fire, pleased with
the novelty of all around them. There were 23 children in the
churchyard, all under the age of ten, and seven of them were
ill. There were also some young and unmarried men and women,
but most of the refugees were over forty.
Within a
week the churchyard was empty. Where the people went, to what
southern town or what emigrant colony is not known. The six
families for which it was claimed settlement was found, were
as thus: David Ross and his son got a piece of black moor near
Tain, 25 miles off, without any house or shed on it, out of
which they hoped to obtain subsistence. Another old man was
given a small lot at Edderton, and these three alone received
anything from which they might confidently expect to get the
barest of livings. The other three families were given turf
huts near Bonar Bridge. The rest are hopeless, helpless.
When they
took shelter in the graveyard at Croick, some of the people
scratched their names and brief messages on the diamond-paned
windows of the church. They wrote in English, as if
acknowledging that their own tongue would pass with them and
would not be understood in time. The words they wrote are
still there:
"Glencalvie people was in the church here May 24,
1845..."
"Glencalvie people, the wicked generation..."
"John Ross shepherd..."
"Glencalvie people was here..."
"Amy Ross..."
"Glencalvie is a wilderness blow ship them to the
colony..."
"The Glencalvie Rosses..."
From
accounts on the Highland Clearances
by John Prebble and Alexander Mackenzie
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Strathnaver
before the clearances
The valley
of Strathnaver is as green fold of earth, the richest in that
part of the country, a narrow twisting glen down which the
black water of the River Naver runs from south to north, from
the loch of its name to the Atlantic Ocean. The people who
lived there in 1814 were Mackays, by name or allegiance,
though the Countess was their Lord.
The houses
were grouped in a dozen small townships, northward down the
strath to the sea and westward along the shore of Loch Naver.
Because of
the mission there, Achness was perhaps the most important to
the people. It took its Gaelic name, Achadh an Eas, the
cornfield by the cascade, from the brown stream that still
falls in noisy delight from hills where once the Norsemen
buried their dead.
There was
Rhifail, the enclosure in a hollow, the smooth dale of Dalvina,
Skail the sheiling, and Syre where the young men had been
assembled in the spring of 1800 for service with the
Sutherland Highlanders.
Along the
loch, toward Altnaharra at its finger-tip, were Grummore and
Grumbeg. On these fell the evening shadow of Ben Klibreck
across the water, and if one stands among the few remaining
stones of Grummore today the mountain takes the naked shape of
a sleeping woman, the milky smoke of burning heather for her
hair, and her head turned away from Strathnaver.
If
Strathnaver were not the paradise some exiles believed it to
have been when they remembered it in their old age, the words
they used spoke of their love and longing for it.
I
remember, said Angus Mackay, who was eleven when he was driven
from the glen, I remember you would see a mile or half a mile
between every town if you were going up the strath. There were
four or five families in each of these towns, and bonnie
haughs between the towns, and hill pastures for miles, as far
as they could wish to go.
The people
had plenty of flocks of goats, sheep, horses and cattle, and
they were living happy, with flesh and fish and butter, and
cheese and fowl and potatoes and kail and milk too. There was
no want of anything with them, and they had the Gospel
preached to them at both ends of the Strath.
During the
clearances
"The sportsman now roams o'er the Sutherland hills
And down where the Naver runs clear;
And the land a brave race had for centuries owned
Is now trod by the sheep and the deer.
The halls, where our ancestors first saw the light,
Now blackened in ruins they lie.
And the moss-covered cairns are all that remain
Of the once pleasant homes of MacKay.
Happy homes by an alien's base mandate o'erthrown
Tender maidens and brave stalwart men
Were ruthlessly scattered like leaves in a gale
Far away from their dear native glen.
Brave clansmen who fought in fair liberty's cause
In the lowlands of Holland they lie.
For bravest in battle and second to none
Has aye been the Clan of MacKay
Not yet are they silenced through peaceful they lie,
And though far from the green mountain said,
They meet in the City of famous renown
On the banks of the dark flowing Clyde,
Where hearts still undaunted and beating as true
As when under a northern sky
They grasped their claymores when the slogan they heard
And followed the flag of MacKay.
Unflinching they bore the proud ensign aloft
When their foemen the penalty paid;
And the same noble spirit inspires them to-day
Their poor broken clansmen to aid.
The aged and weak they have sworn to protect
By the "Strong Hand" and kind watchful eye.
For faithful in friendship and valiant in war
Has aye been the Clan of MacKay.
Then flock to the standard and join the roll call!
Once more the banner's unfurled
The slogan's been sounded, and kinship been claimed
By clansmen all over the world.
Exiled or at home, love of country and clan
Are feelings we'll never let die;
Defy and defend, stand true to the end,
And honour the name of MacKay."
- By Elizabeth MacKay
Bridge of Allan 1889
Rev.
Donald Sage wrote about the last Sabbath in Strathnaver before
the burnings
"In
Strathnaver we assembled, for the last time, at the place of
Langdale, where I had frequently preached before, on a
beautiful green sward overhung by Robert Gordon's antique,
romantic little cottage on an eminence close beside us. The
still-flowing waters of the Naver swept past us a few yards to
the eastward.
The
Sabbath morning was unusually fine, and mountain, hill, and
dale, water and woodland, among which we had dwelt so long
dwelt, and with which all our associations of 'home' and
'native land' were so fondly linked, appeared to unite their
attractions to bid us farewell.
My
preparations for the pulpit had always cost me much anxiety,
but in view of this sore scene of parting, they caused me pain
almost beyond endurance. I selected a text which had a pointed
reference to the peculiarity of our circumstances, but my
difficulty was how to restrain my feelings till I should
illustrate and enforce the great truths which it involved with
reference to eternity.
The
service began. The very aspect of the congregation was itself
a sermon, and a most impressive one. Old Achoul sat right
opposite to me. As my eye fell upon his venerable countenance,
bearing the impress of eighty- seven winters, I was deeply
affected, and could scarcely articulate the psalm.
I preached
and the people listened, but every sentence uttered and heard
was in opposition to the tide of our natural feelings, which,
setting in against us, mounted at every step of our progress
higher and higher. At last all restraints were compelled to
give way. The preacher ceased to speak, the people to listen.
All lifted
up their voices and wept, mingling their tears together. It
was indeed the place of parting, and the hour. The greater
number parted never again to behold each other in the land of
the living."
WIDOW
BETSY MACKAY [Drover]
86 years of age, Kirtomy, Parish of Farr
I am a native of Strathnaver, and saw some of the burnings
that took place there. I was born at Sgall, a township with
six houses, where I lived till I was sixteen years of age,
when the people in the township were driven away and their
houses burnt.
Our family
was very reluctant to leave this place, and stayed for some
time after the summons for evicting was delivered. But
Sellar's party came round and set fire to our house at both
ends, reducing to ashes whatever remained within the walls.
The occupants had, of course, to escape for their lives, some
of them losing all their clothes except what they had on their
backs. The people then had plenty clothes (home spun), which
they made from the wool of their sheep.
The people
were told they could go where they liked, provided they did
not encumber Sellar's domain, the land that was by rights
their own. The people were driven away like dogs who deserved
no better fate, and that, too, without any reason in the
world, but to satisfy the cruel avarice of Sellar.
Here is an
incident that I remember in connection with the burning of
Sgall. My sister, whose husband was from home, was delivered
of a child at Grumb-mhor at this time. Her friends in Sgall,
fearing lest her house should be burnt, and she perish in her
helpless condition, went to Grumb-mhor and took her with them
in very cold weather, weak and feeble as she was. This sudden
removal occasioned to her a fever, which left its effects upon
her till her dying day.
ROBERT
MACKAY
Strathy, regarding Rhinnirie
I was about seven years of age when the township was burnt.
When Sellar's men arrived, my father and mother happened to be
in Caithness-shire, laying down the crops in Latheron, which
was to be their future home. An old woman, my aunt, remained
with me and my sister at Strathnaver.
We began
early in the day to remove our effects to the hill-side, in
anticipation of their visit; but, before we had finished, they
were upon us, and set fire, first, to the byre which was
attached to the dwelling-house.
This made
us redouble our efforts, as the flames were making rapid
progress. I remember we encountered serious difficulty when we
came to remove the meal-chest. To ask the assistance of
Sellar's men would be absurd; but we succeeded at last by
removing the meal in small quantities to the hill-side on
blankets.
We then
made a ring of the furniture and took our station inside, from
which we viewed the flames. Here we slept all night, wrapped
in woolen blankets, of which we had plenty; and I remember
very vividly the volumes of flames issuing from our
dwelling-house, and the crackling sounds when the flames
seized upon the fir couples and timber supporting the roof of
turf. At the same time, also the three remaining houses in the
township were fired.
GEORGE
MACKAY
80 years of age, crofter, Airdneskich, Farr
I was born at Ridsary on Strathnaver, and was about 10 years
of age when that part of the Strath where my father lived was
depopulated, and our habitations burnt to the ground. I saw
these four townships all in flames on the same day:-
*
Ceann-na-coille, with 7 houses
* Syre, with 13 houses
* Kidsary, with 2 houses
* Langall, with 8 houses
I saw in
all thirty houses burning at the same time.
When this
was taking place, I was leading two horses up the Strath, to
carry from Kidsary some of our furniture, which was left by my
father near the place, when we were evicted from our home a
few days previous to this. As the houses were all covered with
dry thatch, dwelling places and steadings, the crackling noise
as well as the fire and smoke were awful.
I noticed
one house at Langall, having a good stack of peats beside it,
which the burning party, on coming round, put to the same fate
as the houses, and if any other thing remained in or near the
premises it was at once consigned to the flames.
It may be
mentioned that the inhabitants left these houses a day or two
before they were set on fire, being ordered off the ground by
Sellar. It was heartrending to hear the cries of the women and
children when leaving their happy homes and turning their
faces they knew not whether.
The most
of our cattle died the first winter, as we had no provision
for them. We got no compensation for our burnt houses, not any
aid to build new ones, or trench land.
WILLIAM
MACKAY (Ban)
80 years of age, army pensioner and crofter, Achina, Farr
I am a native of Rossal on Strathnaver, and now living at
Achina. One morning in May, when I was about twelve years of
age, I went up to Achcaoilnaborgin to see Sellar's party
putting the houses in that township on fire, as I, like a
child, thought it grand fun to see the houses burning. The
burning party was under the leadership of one Branders. When I
reached the place the houses were ablaze, and I waited till
they were all burnt to the ground, six in number. Then I
accompanied the burners to Achinlochy, were six more houses
were reduced to ashes.
In one of
these houses I saw an old man, Donald Mackay (MacWilliam), who
was over 100 years of age, lying in bed. Branders and his men,
on coming to this house, glanced at the old man in bed, and
then set fire to the house in two or three places, and the
poor man, who could not escape, was left by them to the tender
mercies of the flames.
The cries
of the sufferer attracted the attention of his friends, who,
at their own peril, ran in and rescued him from a painful
death. It can be said with certainty that the terror and the
effect of the fire on his person tended to hasten the man's
death.
I may
state that I have travelled a large portion of the four
quarters of the globe, lived among heathens and barbarians
where I saw many cruel scenes, but never witnessed such
revolting cruelty as I did on Strathnaver, except one case in
the rebellion of Canada.
I knew
Donald Macleod, the author of "The Gloomy Memoirs of
Sutherland", to be honest and truthful, and what I read
in this book was nothing but the simple truth.
ANGUS
MACKAY
89 years of age, crofter, Leadnagiullan, Farr
I spent twenty-three years on Strathnaver, in my birthplace
Ceann-na-coille, and I am confident they were the happiest
days I ever spent. We were very happy and comfortable on the
Strath.
There were
seven houses in Ceann-na-coille, which I, with a sad heart,
saw burnt to the ground. I saw Rossal, with upwards of twenty
houses, also burnt. Sellar's orders to the people were to have
their furniture, and whatever else they wished to bring with
them, removed from these townships before a certain day.
My
friends, and several of the townspeople endeavored to obey
this cruel summons, and carried their effects down to the
river's side. Here they formed a kind of raft, whereon was
placed all their furniture, farm implements, clothes, etc., in
fact all their wordly possessions, except their cattle. Then
they took shelter, and anxiously awaited the rising of the
river to enable them to float the raft down the stream towards
their new home.
Soon,
however, the furious burners came, and in spite of the poor
people's entreaties and promises, the raft was easily set on
fire, and before the party left the ground it was all in ashes
along the banks of the river.
Nor did
the ruthless work of Sellar's party end here. They now turned
their course to the township of Baclinleathaid, and there
commenced the burning again. In a certain hut there, there was
an old woman who, perhaps, had none of her friends alive, or
at least at hand, to be of any help to her in the hour of
need. The party came to the hut of this friendless woman, set
fire to the house, and instantly marched off, leaving the poor
decrepit woman, who was within the house, to burn. It is true
the woman's body was taken out by some neighbours who, too
late, knew what was taking place, but death relieved her from
pain ere they carried her across the threshold of her burning
house.
I was well
acquainted with Donald Macleod, who wrote "The Gloomy
Memoirs of Sutherland", and always found him to be a
truthful man. I heard some parts of his book read, and can
emphatically say from my own experience, which now extends
over a period of eighty-nine years, that it states the truth.
Macleod
only wrote what hundreds could testify to ten years ago, but
now almost all the people who knew much about the Strathnaver
cruelties are dead, and the young generation, though they have
heard sof these things from the lips of their fathers, cannot
testify to them as eye-witnesses could. People now-a-days
cannot imagine the awful cruelties perpetrated on Strathnaver
by Sellar and his minions.
I declare
this statement of mine is true.
Angus Mackay
Witnesses:
-- Ann MacKay
-- Murdo Mackay
29th Aug. 1883
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