CATSCRALDE AND THE CLEARANCES

Now the Conservative Coalition is embarking on Social Engineering by stealth I thought I would quote a couple of observations concerning the Highland Clearances. They speak for themselves.

" How we enjoyed ourselves in those far away days!Those were the happy days and there was neither sin nor sorrow in the world for us.But the clearances came upon us,destroying all.....
turning our joy into misery,gladness into bitterness,our blessing into blasphemy...Oh,dear man ,the tears come on my eyes when I think of all we we suffered, and of the sorrows,hardships and oppressions we came through".....Peigidh nic Cormaig

the words are an English translation.They are more moving in the Gaelic which Peggy MacCormack used. She had been born a MacDonald and she lived at Aird Bhuidhe,the yellow hill above Loch Boisdale.In her old age,many years after the Clearances came upon her,she would still weep if reminded of the time when her chief sold Uist and Benbecula for £96,ooo,when his evicted and unwanted people were driven to the shore of the emigrant the Admiral "Were you to see," said another witness of those days,"were you to see the racing and chasing,you would think you had been transported to the banks of the Gambia on the slave coast of Africa "It was the last great sale of wide lands once held in Arisaig and Moidart, in the westering islands of the Hebrides. By 1838,when Ranald George MacDonald,20th chief of ClanRanald,sold South Uist and Benbucula to that great evictor John Gordon of Cluny,he had received more than £2ooo,ooo for the surrender of his inheritance.

MacDonald had Little recognisable feelings for the people on his lands, being inclined to remove them himself if he thought their black stone cabins spoilt the view from his windows.