It is not realistic to hope to give a full account of the Clearances in a few or even a half-dozen chapters. All one can do is to cover the major events, include as much reason, cause and effect as possible, and document some of the atrocities. This is what this look at the Highland Clearances will do, not a full history of the tragic episode.

Chiefs no longer protected the clans, no longer had pride and importance from the number of loyal clansmen who would have followed him into battle - and Scottish history had plenty of battles. And the clansmen, from all of the evidence, were equally proud to be called and to die gloriously if necessary. But now the chief no longer commanded the unquestioning loyalty he once had from their clansmen and women. Instead, by turning over the land to sheep-farming, or indeed crops, they acquired wealth in the form of cash and this naturally gave the power-starved chiefs a taste for the good living. This generally afforded them a lavish life-style. But if they still could not afford this life-style, they mortgaged their lands to to others who would work them. Many willing lenders were not Highlanders, some were not even Scottish.

Life for the tenants (in the Highlands they were known a crofters) and cottars (farm workers) became more and more harsh and uncertain in these conditions.

The Highlander, although he'd always paid tribute to the chief, whether in cash or service, regarded the land as his own. It was not. Chieftains and underlings, tacksmen, or factors, who held leases on acres of land; paid rent to the laird and took rent from the peasants. When the tacksmen's rents were raised, the increase was passed down the line, and if there were any problems, the tacksmen's leases could be ended. And the tacksmen too had their social positions to maintain. But, the laird lost nothing in losing the tacksman. There were others who could and would pay better rents; Lowland sheep farmers. Slowly, insidiously, the glens began to be emptied of humans and populated with Cheviot sheep. Some of them left quietly, turning to crofting in the wilder parts. Some went to the cities where the boom of the industrial revolution was creating a need for workmen in factories. Some emigrated to the Colonies or left for other parts. But many, unaccustomed to any other way of life than that which their ancestors had lived for 1,000 years, did not go away so quietly.

Those that emigrated at first, although forced, they were not yet 'evicted' Highlanders -- not at this point. Some emigrated willingly. From 1772-1791, nearly 7,000 Scots emigrated from Inverness and Ross alone. The numbers of evicted tenants that would be forced to emigrate later on, would be as high as 40,000, as in the Skye clearances.

In the first stages of forcible evictions, men were not driven from Scotland -- not right away. They moved to miserable little plots on the rocky coastlines to scrape a living from miserable small holdings and fishings -- and quite often died.

Deserted Coastlines of Scotland


Even on the rocky shorelines, the peasant was not to be his own man. There was the matter of kelp, the flourishing seaweed among the rocks, and at times it was even more profitable than sheep. The lairds, naturally, assumed ownership of it. During the brief season in April and May, the peasants gathered it, for poverty wages.

One irony was that the kelp-gathering needed a hugh labour force whilst the people were constantly being reduced in number. As one laird commented, "If the country has any inhabitants at all, they must be expelled."

Some contemporaries blamed the ordinary Highlander for his own plight. They claimed that his old loyalty (to the chief) was so deeply ingrained, and although he might willingly attack outsiders at the chief's order, he could or would not attack or rebel against the chief himself. He submitted to the callousness of the laird.

Of course, this is a rather harsh view to explain one's own greed -- to blame the problem of the landless Highlander on himself. It is reminiscent of a remark made by a former US president who claimed that many homeless were homesless because "they preferred to sleep under the stars." It is always easier for the oppressor to find the oppressed deserving of their fate by belittling them.

Unfortunately, very often the Highlander did think they could be helped by their former chiefs or new landlords. Many believed they had hereditary rights to the land. The new laws didn't allow for clan system hereditary rights. The landlords were insistent and brought in the military, sheriffs and their officials to forcibly evict them. Their homes were burnt down, often over their heads, and they were driven off the land.

If they fled, they were pursued and if caught taken to ships for transportation to the colonies. " The people were terrorized, utterly impoverished....the litany of their sufferings would fill volumes." [E.Richards, The Highland Clearances].

Repeal of the Proscription Act

Highlander

In 1782 the Proscription act banning Highland dress, language, customs and traditions was repealed. But it was not done to please the suffering Highlanders. The law was repealed partly because the rest of Britain was discovering the Highlanders were a romantic group. Books by Sir Walter Scott (and others) confirmed this in such glorified and best-selling novels as "Rob Roy MacGregor", making him a Highland hero practically overnight. Well-bred Lowlanders began acquiring the habit of tracing some Highland ancestry, however remote, and wearing Kilts to show their family connections.

One tragic result of the Proscription Act which also banned Gaelic, was that with the generation or two that lapsed between the Proscription (ban) and the repeal, Gaelic had not been taught to an entire generation of Highlanders who were mostly now illiterate. When it was allowed again, most could not write or teach the language of their ancestors, having been brought up speaking English or Scots-English. Even those who still spoke it were unaccustomed to writing it. They were told speaking of "Irish" (as the English and Lowlanders called Gaelic) was an inferior language and made the speaker an inferior person. Unfortunately, many Highlanders believed it and in some areas of Scotland this notion still exists.

The Glengarry Clearances

The Clearances proper, or the forced evictions, began in earnest in 1785, where one of the better known chiefs, MacDonell of Glengarry, allowed his wife Marjorie to evict 500 tenants from Glen Quoich to make room for a sheep-walk. (Keep this woman's name in mind as she figures again in this story).

Voluntary emigrations gave way to legal evictions. Marjorie continued to evict Glengarry tenants in 1787 and 1788, when her docile husband Duncan finally died.

He was succeeded as heir to the Glengarry lands by his son Alisdair Ranaldson MacDonell, whose portrait in Highland dress by Raeburn is one of the most famous and seems to epitomize the proud, honourable father of a Highland clan. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Alisdair played at being a Highland Chief and his games were quite convincing to even Sir Walter Scott, to whom Alisdair conveyed on Scott some of his least accurate ideas on Highlanders. For a start he killed Flora MacDonald's grandson in a duel, but was able to get himself aquitted at his trial. He strutted proudly in full Highland dress, including broadsword, dirk and pistols, and was followed by his 'tail' of henchmen, bard, piper and bodyguard.

But his expensive play-acting life-style made him short of cash. So he leased more and more land, very profitably, to southern sheepmen. To do so, of course, he had to evict more and more of his clansmen to make way for the Cheviots.

The earlier and previously true portrait of a Highland chief, as a man who from self-interest as much as self-preservation, was genuinely concerned about the welfare of his clansmen, gives way now to the self-indulgent chief who felt no sense of responsibility to anyone but himself. There were no longer dangerous neighbours to rob him if he didn't have the loyal and faithful clan to protect him. The law now protected him.

It is significant that Walter Scott admired Alisdair Ranaldson MacDonell enormously and that Robert Burns called him a cold-hearted tyrant.

MacDonell's whole life is astonishong. He evicted his own clansmen, then was furious when he learned they were emigrating! What he expected them to do isn't clear. He sold his lands to sheepmen to get rich, then he detested the sheepmen. He despised the new 'Caledonian Canal' being constructed to link three lochs of the Great Glen, making it possible to sail from Inverness to Fort William. So he stole timber and bricks from the construction area, and when confronted, he made the barbed remark that a Highland gentleman was not accustomed to making a fuss over a few scraps! He was involved in numerous court cases, but always managed to pry himself from the hands of justice.

He died in hugh debt. Within a generation of his death, there were no Glengarry clansmen left on Glengarry lands.

I've made mention of the Cheviot sheep previously. But it was not until 1790 that the new and hardy strain of Cheviot sheep were introduced into the Highlands, thus replacing the older sheep. They were so hardy and successful in the cold, harsh Highlands they could bring quite a profit, and thus wealth to the owners. But one first had to get rid of the people. Glengarry, for one, had shown the way.

The Strathglass Clearances

In 1801, William, the 24th Chisholm, whose wife was the daughter of Marjorie MacDonell of Glengarry (mentioned earlier) began the clearances in Strathglass. In one years time, half of the clans were evicted and many sailed for Canada and Nova Scotia.

After William's death, his son was still a minor; but his wife Elizabeth continued the evictions with a single-minded purpose: to pay for her son's (the future 25th Chisholm) education at Cambridge.

She had promised to the tenants, who went to her for help, to come up with a solution - but if she never did, even if her intentions were real. It continued with that Cambridge educated son, her heir, the 25th Chisholm, Alexander. He followed in his parents footsteps and totally depopulated Strathglass. It was said that only one Chisholm remained. Bard and poet in the old Gael tradition, Donald Chisholm, wrote these words:

"Our chief is losing his kin! He prefers sheep in the glens, and his young men away in the camp of the army!!"