Secret of the Glen

AUTHOR’S NOTE

AUTHOR’S NOTEThe cruelty of Highland Chieftains will never be forgotten or forgiven.

So that they might lease their Glens and braes to sheep farmers from the Lowlands and the English, the Chieftains cleared the crofts of men, women and children, using Police and soldiers if necessary.

Starting in 1785 in Sutherland, the last eviction took place in 1854 in Ross-shire. The early Clearances were almost always from the land to the coast simply because at the time when wool prices were rising the prices for kelp were rising too. Kelping was labour intensive and could soak up the excess population created by the evictions. Fishing was also put forward as a means by which the dispossessed Highlanders could earn money, but for many moved to the coast life was hard. They had to adjust to a new lifestyle and try to eke out a living from fishing, which most had no experience of. In many cases they continued to farm on their small plots of land scratching out a meagre living.

The alternative was to emigrate, usually with no choice involved, to the North American Colonies. Hundreds of thousands of Scots were forced to emigrate, a third of whom starved or died of cholera, typhoid or smallpox in the stinking holds of rotten ships. Fifty-eight thousand people left Britain for Canada in 1831 and sixty-six thousand the following year.

At the beginning of the Crimean War, the English turned instinctively for help to the Highlands for their superb fighting men. Between 1793 and 1815, over seventy thousand Highlanders had carried Wellington’s Armies to victory against Napoleon.

But in 1854 the Recruiting Officers were met with bleats and barks. One spokesman told the Landlords,

“Send your deer, your roes, your lambs, dogs, shepherds and gamekeepers to fight the Russians, they have done us no harm!”

The hills and moors of the North are now empty of those who once made glorious the history of Scotland and the tartan is their shroud.