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By
(dedication)
Dedicated to Captain Cameron,
Whose glory it is to have thrown up his place rather than proceed in command of the
steamer "Lochiel," which was to convey the police
expedition against the Skye crofters in the winter of 1884.
(epigraph)
(preface)
I SEEM to hear many a reader ask whether such atrocities as are described in
"The Heather on Fire" have indeed been committed with the memory of this
generation. Let him be assured that this is no fancy picture; that, on the contrary, the
author's aim has been to soften some of the worst features of the heart-rending
scenes which were of such frequent occurrence during the Highland Clearances. Many of them are
too revolting for the purposes of art; for the ferocity shown by some of the factors and
ground-officers employed by the landlords in evicting their inoffensive tenantry, can only
be matched by the brutal excesses of victorious troops on a foreign soil. But even in those cases
where no actual violence was resorted to, the uprooting and transplantation of whole communities
of Crofters from the straths and glens which they had tilled for so many generations must be regarded in the light of a national crime.
No traveller can have failed to be struck by the solitude and desolation which now constitute
the prevalent character of the Scottish Highlands. "Mile after mile," says
Macaulay, speaking of Glencoe, "the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, or
for one human form wrapped in a plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd's
dog, or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile, the only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a
bird of prey from some storm-beaten pinnacle of rock." His words might
appropriately stand for a description of a great part of the north of Scotland. But it was not
always so. The moors and valleys, whose blank silence is only broken by the rush of tumbling
streams or the cry of some solitary bird, were once enlivened by the manifold sounds of some
human industry and made musical with children's voices. The crumbling walls and
decaying roof-trees of ruined villages still bear witness to the former populousness of
many a deserted glen. Perhaps these humble remains touch our
feelings more deeply than the imposing fragments of Greek temples and Roman amphitheatres. For it was but yesterday that they were inhabited by a brave, moral, and industrious peasantry, full of poetic instincts and ardent patriotism, ruthlessly expelled their native land to make way for sporting grounds rented by merchant princes and American millionaires.
During a visit I paid to the Isle of Arran in the summer of 1884, I stood on the site of such a
ruined village. All that remained of the once flourishing community was a solitary old
Scotchwoman, who well remembered her banished countrymen. Her simple story had a thrilling
pathos, told as it was on the melancholy slopes of the North Glen Sannox, looking across to the
wild broken mountain ridges called "The Old Wife's Steps." Here, she said,
and as far as one could see, had dwelt the Glen Sannox people, the largest population then
collected in any one spot of the island, and evicted by the Duke of Hamilton in the year 1832. The
lives of these crofters became an idyll in her mouth. She dwelt proudly on their patient labour,
their simple joys, and the kind, helpful ways of them; and her brown eyes filled with tears as
she recalled the day of their expulsion, when the people gathered from all parts of the island to see the last of the Glen Sannox folk ere they went on board the brig that was bound for New Brunswick, in Canada. "Ah, it was a sore day that," she sighed, "when the old people cast themselves down on the seashore and wept."
They were gone, these Crofters, and their dwellings laid low with the hill-side, and
their fertile plots of corn overrun with ling and heather; but the stream went rushing on as of old,
and as of old the cloven mountain peaks cast their shadow on the valley below whence the once
happy people were all gone--gone, too, their dwelling-places, and, to use the
touching words of a Highland minister, "There was not a smoke there now." For
the progress of civilisation, which has redeemed many a wilderness, and gladdened the solitary
places of the world, has come with a curse to these Highland glens, and turned green pastures and
golden harvest-fields once more into a desert.
(notes)
"La population des Crofters, des Highlands et des Iles, si peu importante
qu'elle soit, est une pépinière de bons travailleurs et de bons citoyens pour
tout l'empire. Par sa vigoureuse constitution physique, son intelligence native et sa bonne
éducation morale, elle est particulièrement propre au recrutement du peuple dans
les grands centres industriels, qui, s'il n'était alimenté de la sorte
par les sources saines des districts ruraux, ne manquerait pas de
dégénérer, sans l'influence des mauvais logements, d'occupations malsaines et d'habitudes énervantes. . . .
"Mais ce c'est pas seulement au point de vue de ces avantages particulieres qui
la population des Crofters a une utilité indiscutable. Elle constitue une base naturelle pour
la défense navale du pays, défense qui ne peut être improvisée et
dont l'importance, dans certaines circonstances, ne saurait être es timée trop
haut. La population maritime des Highlands et des Iles fournit, en ce moment, 4431 hommes
à la réserve de la marine royale, nombre équivalent aux équipages
de sept navires de guerre cuirassé de Ire
classe, et qui pourrait être encore beaucoup accru au moyeu d'avantages
proportionés.
"Il en est de même du recrutement de l'armée de terre. Les
enrôlements deviennent de plus en plus rares dans les Highlands,
l'émigration moissonant la partie la plus robuste et la plus determinée de la
population rurale."
--"Les Highlands et la Question des Crofters,"
par Le Cte Louis Lafond.
follow their countrymen to America and Canada. They were to be treated as if they were nothing better than Africans, and the laws of their country on a level with those which regulated South American slavery. The people, however, had no alternative but to accept any offer made to them. They could not get an inch of land on any of the neighbouring estates, and any one who would give them a night's shelter was threatened with eviction themselves. It was afterwards found not convenient to transport them to Australia, and it was then intimated to the poor creatures, as if they were nothing but common slaves, to be disposed of at will, that they would be taken to North America, and that a ship would be at Isle Orsay, in the Island of Skye, in a few days to receive them, and that they must go on board. The Sillery soon arrived, and Mrs. Macdonell and her factor came all the way from Edinburgh to see the people hounded across in boats, and put on board this ship, whether they would or not. An eye-witness who described the proceeding at the time, in a now rare pamphlet, and whom I met last year at Nova Scotia, characterises the scene as indescribable and heart-rending. The wail of the poor women and children as they were torn away from their homes would have melted a heart of stone! Some few families, principally cottars, refused to go, in spite of every influence brought to bear upon them, and the treatment they afterwards received was cruel beyond belief. The houses, not only of those who went, but of those who remained, were burnt and levelled to the ground. The Strath was dotted all over with black spots, showing where yesterday stood the habitations of men. The scarred, half-burnt wood--couples, rafters, and bars--were strewn about in every direction. Stooks of corn and plots of unlifted potatoes could be seen on all sides, but man was gone. No voice could be heard. Those who
refused to go aboard the Sillery were in hiding among the rocks and the caves, while their friends were packed off like so many African slaves to the Cuban market."
--"The Highland Clearances,"
by Alexander Mackenzie
(pp. 267,
268).
--Hugh Miller.
its course; and yet while abroad over the earth Highlanders were the first in assault and the last in retreat, their lowly homes in far-away glens were being dragged down, and the wail of women and the cry of children went out on the same breeze that bore too upon its wings the scent of heather, the freshness of gorse blossom, and the myriad sweets that made the lowly life of Scotland's peasantry blest with health and happiness."
--"The Highland Clearances,"
by Alexander Mackenzie
(pages 320,
321).
those that had thrown in their lot with Prince Charles, had their lands practically confiscated. The Highland chiefs, in short, were assimilated in position to English landlords. They were by the central government invested with the fee-simple of the land which was once held by the laird and the clansmen in common, and so a great wrong, amounting to a national crime, was done to the Highland population."
--"Storm-Clouds in the Highlands" J. A. Cameron." Nineteenth Century," Sept. 1884.
-- Dr. D. G. F. Macdonald.
and fact of collective and limited ownership of land, the notion of individual and absolute ownership had got pretty well established in England by the middle of last century. So, after the Rebellion of 1745, the Highland chiefs being greatly impoverished, the devil came to them in three different shapes, one after another. First he appeared in a guise he very often assumes--the guise of a pressing creditor; then he came as a jolly sheep-farmer from the south, with lots of tin in his pockets; and, said the jolly sheep-farmer to the impecunious Highland chief: 'Clear out these ---- rascals, who call themselves your clansmen. Sheep will pay you better than men, and if you will let the hills and glens to me, I'll double, triple, quadruple your rental.' And last of all the devil came to the Highland chief in another shape he very often assumes--that of a sharp lawyer. The chiefs knew very well that they were but joint-owners with their clans of the land they occupied, and that crofter townships had rights of grazing on the hills sanctioned by immemorial custom; and they knew very well that, though many a chief's estate had been forfeited by Acts of Attainder, by no Act of Parliament had their clansmen's customary rights been forfeited. 'But,' said the devil in the shape of the sharp lawyer, 'never mind that. In England they act now on the notion of absolute ownership, and we'll just assume that your people are tenants-at-will, and that you can do what you like with them and theirs.' And it was simply on this assumption, a pure legal fiction, directly in the teeth of all historical facts, that the Duke of Athole began the Highland Clearances in clearing Glen Tilt, just one hundred years ago (1784), and worthily have followed suit the Dukes of Sutherland and of Argyll."
--Article on "The Crofters' Revolt,"
by J. S. Stuart Glennie,
in "Our
Corner" (p. 202).
their conduct. They maintained that more food and clothing would be produced by the new system, and that the people themselves would have the advantage of the produce of the sea as well as that of the land for their support. The result, however, proved them to be mistaken, for thenceforth the cry of Highland destitution began to be heard, culminating at intervals into actual famines, like that of 1836-37, when £70,000 were distributed to keep the Highlanders from death by starvation. . . Just as in Ireland, there was abundance of land capable of cultivation, but the people were driven to the coast and to the towns to make way for sheep, and cattle, and lowland farmers; and when the barren and inhospitable tracts allotted to them became overcrowded, they were told to emigrate.
"The actual effect of this system of eviction and emigration-- of banishing the
native of the soil and giving it to the stranger --is shown in the steady increase of poverty,
indicated by the amount spent for the relief of the poor having increased from less than
£300,000 in 1846 to more than £900,000 now; while in the same period the
population has only increased from 2,770,000 to 3,627,000, so that pauperism has grown about
nine times faster than population. . . .
"At the present time more than two million acres of Scottish soil are devoted to the
preservation of deer alone--an area larger than the entire counties of Kent and Surrey
combined. Glen Tilt Forest includes 100,000 acres; the Black Mount is sixty miles in
circumference; and Ben Aulder Forest is fifteen miles long by seven broad. On many of these
forests there is the finest pasture in Scotland, while the valleys would support a considerable
population of small farmers; yet all this land is devoted to the sport of the wealthy, farms being
destroyed, houses pulled down, and men, sheep, and cattle all banished to
create a wilderness for the deer-stalkers! At the same time the whole people of England are shut out from many of the grandest and most interesting scenes of their native land, gamekeepers and watchers forbidding the tourist or naturalist to trespass on some of the wildest Scotch mountains."
"The cruel practice of evicting the Highlanders to make room for sheep seems to be
passing into the pernicious system of converting grazing lands into
sporting grounds. Only the other day an extensive tract was cleared of 7000 sheep to
add to the already wide forests of Glenstrathfarar and Culligran, the property of Lord Lovat, let to
Mr. Winans of Brighton, at £7000 per annum. It is said that this nobleman, being desirous
of securing more broad acres for his American "Sportsman!" who boasts of having,
with the help of his two sons, brought down twenty-seven stags in about an hour last
September, has leased the sheep-farm in question at a rent of £1000
a-year, and sub-let it to Mr. Winans for £2000, thus netting
£1000 per annum by the transaction. I blush to think that a Scottish nobleman should lend
himself to satisfying the insatiable desire of a foreign millionaire contractor to make a profit by a
system which depopulates the Highlands, is a curse to Scotland, and, as you very properly
observed, 'a scandal to British legislation.'
"Sad it is to see the rights and welfare of the Highlanders pitilessly disregarded, and
the beautiful hills, straths, and glens of Scotland immolated to the sporting snobbishness of greedy
capitalists. The existence of 'mammoth deer-forests' is one of the gravest
wrongs of the people, perpetrated under the mask of a false political economy, and I defy anyone
to prove the utility of the cruel clearances that have so scandalised the Northern Highlands.
"We may wander whither we will, the busy life that once enlivened these solitudes has
departed. The cots are bare, and cold, and roofless; the patches which once grew crops of golden
corn are now absorbed by sporting playgrounds; voices of men, women, and children no longer
echo from the surrounding hills --nought but barren solitary pomp
'Where
once a garden smiled.'
Family after family have been chased away,
leaving us to saddening memories of the past."
--D. G. F. Macdonald, LL.D.--"The Echo," 1878.
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 those scenes 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 devastation it is almost useless to particularise the cases of individuals: the suffering was great and universal. I shall, however, notice a very few of the extreme cases, of which I was myself an 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 the view of all the bystanders. Donald Munro, Garvott, lying in a fever, was turned out of his house and exposed to the elements. Donald Macbeath, an 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 Chisholme, Badinloskin, in which was lying his wife's mother, an old bedridden woman of nearly one hundred years of age, none of the family being present. . . . Fire was 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. Within five days she was a corpse."
--"Gloomy Memories,"
by Donald Macleod.
" 'The scene presented at Knoydart was most heart-rending. As far as
the eye could see the face of the strath had it black spots, where the houses of the crofters were
either levelled or burnt. The ruins of these habitations of men, and the silence and solitude that
prevailed, rendered it unnecessary for any tongue to tell me that here humanity was most cruelly
sacrificed to the god of sheep-farming and expatriation. The blackened rafters lying
scattered among the grass, the couple-trees cut through the middle and thrown away, the
walls broken down, thatch and cabers mixed up together, and grass beginning to grow on the
threshold and hearthstone, told a tale which required neither tongue nor pen to unfold. The scene
was rendered more painful as the Strath was dotted with stacks of corn, large plots of potatoes,
and with grass that could be easily mowed down by the scythe. But the voice of man was
gone-- he was not to be found.'"
--"The Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws,"
by Professor
Blackie.
--Dr. D. G. F. Macdonald.
immediate authority. The splendid and comfortable mansions of these gentlemen were reddened with the glare of their neighbours' flaming houses, without exciting any compassion for the sufferers; no spiritual, temporal, or medical aid was afforded them; and this time they were all driven away without being allowed the benefit of their out-going crops! Nothing but the sword was wanting to make the scene one of as great barbarity as the earth ever witnessed; and in my opinion, this would, in a majority of cases, have been mercy, by saving them from what they were afterwards doomed to endure. The clergy indeed, in their sermons, maintained that the whole was a merciful interposition of Providence to bring them to repentance, rather than to send them all to hell, as they so richly deserved."
--"The Highland Clearances,"
by Alexander Mackenzie
(p. 30).
"Q.--'Do you recall that these people were caught and sent to America,
just like an animal going to market?'
"A.--'Just the same way. I saw a man who lay down on his face and
knees on a little island to hide himself from the policeman, who had
dogs searching for him in order to get him aboard the emigrant ship. . . . There was
another case of a man named Angus Johnson. He had a dead child in the house, and his wife gave
birth to three children, all of whom died. Not-
withstanding this he was seized and tied on the pier at Loch Boisdale and kicked on board. The old priest interfered and said, 'What are you doing to this man? let him alone, it is against the law!' The wife of the man who was tied and put aboard afterwards went to the vessel. The four dead children would be buried by that time. These things happened in the years 1850-51. The people were hiding themselves in caves and dens for fear of being sent away from the island. . . . There were many such cases at the time. It was about forty years ago."
--"Crofters' Evidence," given before the Royal Commission.
length that no other alternative remained for them, they gathered in a body in the churchyard of the district, to take leave of their country for ever, and of the dust of their fathers' last. And there, seated among the graves, men and women, the old and the young, with one accord, and under the influence of one feeling, 'lifted up their voices and wept.' This tract of the Highlands is now inhabited by sheep."
--Hugh Miller.
came with the officers on an attempt being made to handcuff them; and that some who ran away were not brought back, in consequence of which four families at least were divided, some having come in the ships to Quebec, while other members of the same families are left in the Highlands. . . .
"The undersigned finally declare that they are now landed in
Quebec so destitute that, if immediate relief be not afforded
them, and continued until they are settled in employment, they will be liable to perish with want.
(Signed) HECTOR LAMONT,
and seventy others."
--"The Highland Clearances,"
by Alexander Mackenzie
(pp. 257,
258).
--Sir Walter Scott.
clearings, the Inverness-shire clearings, the Perthshire clearings, and, to some extent, the Argyleshire clearings. . . . Crossing to the south of the great glen, we may begin with Glencoe. How much of its romantic interest does the glen owe to its desolation? Let us remember, however, that the desolation, in a large part of it, is the result of the extrusion of its inhabitants. Travel eastward and the footprints of the destroyer cannot be lost sight of. Large tracts along the Spean and its tributaries are a wide waste. The southern bank of Loch Lochy is almost without inhabitants, though the symptoms of former occupancy are frequent. When we enter the country of the Frasers, the same spectacle presents itself--a desolate land. Trace the Beauly through all its upper reaches, and how many thousands upon thousands of acres, once peopled, are, as respects human beings, a wild wilderness. . . . Sutherland, with all its atrocities, affords but a fraction of the atrocities that have been perpetrated in following out the ejectment system of the Highlands. In truth, of the habitable portion of the whole country, but a small part is now really inhabited.
"Let us leave the past, however, and consider the present, and it is a melancholy
reflection that the year 1849 has added its long list of Highland ejectments. While the law is
banishing its tens for terms of seven or fourteen years, as the penalty of deep-dyed
crimes, irresponsible and infatuated power is banishing its thousands for life for no crime
whatever."
--Hugh Miller: "The Witness."
(docImprint)
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