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The population of this
extensive parish in 1755 was 1223; in 1795 it increased to 1764; in
1801 to 2000; in 1821, it was 1995; in 1831, it rose to 2137; and in
1841 it came down to 1781; in 1871, it was only 973; while in the Census
Returns for 1881 we find it stated at 714, or less than one-third of
what it was fifty years before.
The late Dr. Norman
Macleod, after describing the happy state of things which existed in
this parish before the clearances, says:-
"But all this was changed
when those tacksmen were swept away to make room for the large sheep
farms, and when the remnants of the people flocked from their empty
glens to occupy houses in wretched villages near the sea-shore, by way
of becoming fishers—often where no fish could be caught. The result has
been that 'the Parish,' for example, which once had a population of 2200
souls, and received only £11 per annum from public (Church) funds for
the support of the poor, expends now [1863] under the poor law upwards
of £600 annually, with a population diminished by one-half [since
diminished to one-third] and with poverty increased in a greater ratio.
. . . . Below these gentlemen tacksmen were those who paid a much lower
rent, and who lived very comfortably, and shared hospitality with
others, the gifts which God gave them. I remember a group of men,
tenants in a large glen, which now has not a smoke in it, as the
Highlanders say, throughout its length of twenty miles. They had the
custom of entertaining in rotation every traveller who cast himself on
their hospitality. The host on the occasion was bound to summon his
neighbours to the homely feast. It was my good fortune to be a guest
when they received the present minister of 'the Parish,' while en route
to visit some of his flock. W Ie had a most sumptuous feast-oat-cakes,
crisp and fresh from the fire; cream, rich and thick, and more beautiful
than nectar,—whatever that may be; blue Highland cheese, finer than
Stilton; fat hens, slowly cooked on the fire in a pot of potatoes,
without their skins, and with fresh butter—'stored hens,' as the superb
dish was called; and though last, not least, tender kid, roasted as
nicely as Charles Lamb's cracklin' pig. All was served up with the
utmost propriety, on a table covered with a fine white cloth, and with
all the requisites for a comfortable dinner, including the champagne of
elastic, buoyant, and exciting mountain air. The manners and
conversations of those men would have pleased the best-bred gentleman.
Everything was so simple, modest, unassuming, unaffected, yet so frank
and cordial. The conversation was such as might be heard at the table of
any intelligent man. Alas! there is not a vestige remaining of their
homes. I know not whither they are gone, but they have left no
representatives behind. The land in the glen is divided between sheep,
shepherds, and the shadows of the clouds."
The Rev. Donald Macleod,
editor of Good Words describing the death of the late Dr. John Macleod,
the "minister of the Parish" referred to by Dr. Norman in the above
quotation, and for fifty years minister of Alorven—says of the noble
patriarch:-
"His later years were
spent in pathetic loneliness. He had seen his parish almost emptied of
its people. Glen after glen had been turned into sheep-walks, and the
cottages in which generations of gallant Highlanders had lived and died
were unroofed, their torn walls and gables left standing like mourners
beside the grave, and the little plots of garden or of cultivated
enclosure allowed to merge into the moorland pasture. He had seen every
property in the parish change hands, and though, on the whole, kindly
and pleasant proprietors came in place of the old families, yet they
were strangers to the people, neither understanding their language nor
their ways. The consequence was that they perhaps scarcely realised the
havoc produced by the changes they inaugurated. 'At one stroke of the
pen,' he said to me, with a look of sad ness and indignation, 'two
hundred of the people were ordered off. There was not one of these whom
I did not know, and their fathers before them ; and finer men and women
never left the Highlands.' He thus found himself the sole remaining link
between the past and present —the one man above the rank of a peasant
who remembered the old days and the traditions of the people. The sense
of change was intensely saddened as he went through his parish and
passed ruined houses here, there, and everywhere. `There is not a smoke
there now,' he used to say with pathos, of the glens which he had known
tenanted by a manly and loyal peasantry, among whom lived song and story
and the elevating influences of brave traditions. All are gone, and the
place that once knew them, knows them no more! The hill-side, which had
once borne a happy people and echoed the voices of joyous children is
now a silent sheep walk. The supposed necessities of Political Economy
have effected the exchange, but the day may come when the country may
feel the loss of the loyal and brave race which has been driven away,
and find a new meaning perhaps in the old question, 'Is not a man better
than a sheep? ' They who `would have shed their blood like water' for
Queen and country, are in other lands, Highland still, but expatriated
for ever.
From the dim shieling on
the misty island,
Mountains divide us and a world of seas,
But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
And in oui dreams we behold the Hebrides.
Tall are these mountains, and these woods are grand,
But we are Exiled from our father's land." |
