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Octogenarian—“How many
folk are in the parish this time, maister?”
Enumerator of 1871—“Not so many as yon have seen, Charles.”
Oct.—“Fye, fye ! No ane
for sax that I hae seen; an' sic men tee I Ye’re naething but ablachs to
the pretty men that were in my young days. Fye, fye!”
Enum.—“Oh, yes, Charles, you’re going over the score now. There are more
than one for six. I grant yon the country parts have much fewer people
now than then. But look at Balia ter—I dare say you remember when there
was scarcely a house in it.”
Oct.—“ Ballater ! I mind when there wisna a house ava in’t; an’ the
first house was a wearie heather housie doon near the water side.
Ballater I umph! an’ what about it? I mind, man, when there was achteen
reekan’ houses i’ the Daugh; an’ noo there’s only twa; an’ a’ ither
toons sic like. Ballater, awyte 1 umph I ”— Veritable Conversation.
OF late years we have had much sentimental writing regarding the
depopulation of the KS/J Highlands. The subject has been viewed both in
relation to military and agricultural interests; and widely different
conclusions have been arrived at respecting the matter in both
relationships. Some have contended that, however cruel or oppressive
these clearances, as they are called, may have been, it was for the
advantage of the poor people that they should be removed, as in the
altered condition of the nation they could have remained only to be a
burden on the country, or to be once every three or four years subjected
to the pinch of famine; and that, as a nursery for soldiers, the time
had passed away when Britain required such a nursery, the surplus
population of our large towns being more than sufficient to supply our
military wants. On the other hand, it has been maintained that the
cruelty was great at the time, and the injury to the nation irreparable,
inasmuch as the loss of so many hands has been the cause of the great
rise in the wages of agricultural labourers and farm servants, and
consequently, in order to sustain this rise, a corresponding increase in
the price of provisions has taken place, so that the labouring classes
are now, not better, but worse off than they were in the olden time. As
to the army, being composed as it is now of the scum of our city back
slums, it has degenerated so far that no respectable person is to be
found in its ranks; and that it will be an evil day for this country
when it has to rely for its safety on its atmy as at present
constituted.
Without attempting to solve so knotty a point, the object of the writer
of these pages is merely to exhibit the change that has taken place in
respect to population, as well as in other respects, on Deeside since
the middle of last century. The district embraced by these observations
consists of the parishes of Aboyne, Glentanner, Glenmuick, Tullich,
Glengairn, Crathie, and Braemar, with the district of Cromar, comprising
the parishes of Coull, Tarland, and Logie-Coldstone. The population of
the whole, according to the census of 1871, amounts to 7782; and there
is no very marked disparity between this number and what the same
district contained in 1801, the first year in which we have reliable
statistics. The difference, therefore, within the century, though
noticeable, has been gradually effected, and is still going on in the
same direction, viz., an increase in the £ villages, and a decrease in
rural districts.
The great Highland clearances began about twenty years prior to 1801,
and continued for ten or twelve years to be practised in the northern
counties with great rigour. The depopulation of Upper Deeside was
effected with less severity, because the course adopted was a gradual
dispossession extending over a much longer period of years, but it began
quite as early.
At what date the population of Deeside reached its maximum is not quite
clear, but it is certain that the pressure of surplus numbers was felt
before the ’45. As, however, up to that time the strength of a chief
consisted in the number of broadswords he could bring into action, no
effort was made to reduce the occupants of his lands, but rather the
reverse—to increase their numbers irrespective of the capability of the
district to maintain them. This state of things could not long continue.
Want of employment gendered habits of idleness, at the back of which
stood poverty and famine. To provide against this was the duty of the
chief, and, more frequently than anything else, drove him to desperate
courses, cattle-lifting, raids, and other spulzieing expeditions. Long
before the ’45 the law had become too strong for the chiefs to provide
for their followers in this reckless manner with impunity, but they
winked at it when practised by their dependants, and even made money out
of it by pretending to restrain them in consideration of receiving
blackmail.
But with every shift that could be devised, the prospects of the
Highland chiefs at the opening of the 18th century were of the gloomiest
They were surrounded by an indolent, starving crowd of tenants, for whom
they could find neither work, money, nor victuals, and whose services in
the only employment they were willing to engage in the Government had
declared to be a capital offence, and was sufficiently powerful to carry
its threat into execution on both chief and follower. Matters had come
to a crisis at the accession of George I., and the rebellion of the Earl
of Mar was felt to be a positive relief by many a chieftain who was at
his wits’ end what to do with his people. Though the insurrection failed
in restoring the exiled king, it for a time relieved the pressure on the
resources of the chiefs, many of whom, seeing little help from risings
of the kind, turned their attention to other means of extricating
themselves from their difficulties. An attempt was made in many parts to
employ the people in improving the property of the lord of the soil, but
though a wise, it was at first an unpopular step and was nowhere very
successful.
A second time within the century the chiefs had an opportunity of
utilising their followers in military service, and when Prince Charles
invited them to give employment to their retainers in helping him to the
throne of his forefathers, he made liberal promises to them that, if
they succeeded, he would take care that they should be rid of all their
difficulties for the future. Yet strange to say, there was much more
backwardness manifested in rallying round the standard of the Prince
himself, than thirty years before had been displayed in bringing forward
the clans under the Earl of Mar. In the space of two months Mar
assembled a force of 10,000, all Highlanders. During a campaign of eight
months’ duration Charles Edward was never at the head of an army of more
than 7000, and of these a good many were Lowlanders. The reason was that
during these thirty years several Highland proprietors had directed
their attention to, and endeavoured to engage their followers in
peaceful avocations, and were finding that, though a slow, it was a sure
way of turning the tide of their fortunes, and were therefore unwilling
to sacrifice the hope that had dawned on them, for so hazardous a
speculation as the Prince held out to them. But in the districts—and
Deeside was one of them —that went pretty heartily into the rebellion,
we may infer from the number of men contributed, that our glens were
then teeming with a warlike population.
A rule which was the growth of ages, like the patriarchal system of
government in the Highlands, could not be destroyed by one disaster, or
by the enactment of an imperial law. The latter puts an end to its
actual exercise, and admits of its being disputed; but, sentimentally,
its decay must be like its growth, the work of time. Hastened it may be
by many circumstances, but the passing of a bill will not destroy it in
the hearts of the people. Neither the defeat at Culloden, the severity
of martial law that followed, nor the Act abrogating the jurisdiction of
the chiefs, was sufficient to drive the people from looking to their
former rulers for protection and support Some few, both high and low,
mostly the former, had to escape for their lives; others, from the wreck
of their fortunes, were compelled by destitution to emigrate to the
colonies, but there was no desire* on the part of the inhabitants
generally to quit their native glens, and none on the part of the
proprietors to drive them away. But as little progress was made in
agriculture, and the population was largely increasing, there began
about 1755 a period °f distress arising from excess of inhabitants.*
The nation was now preparing for war both on the continent and in
America, and had little time or inclination to think of the poor
Highlanders; in fact, had no sympathy with their sufferings, and they
might have been left to be reduced to a sustainable number by famine,
but for the wise, consideration of a single man. That man was Lord
Chatham. So early as 1756 he proposed to the government of George II. to
employ the Highlanders in the King’s service. President Forbes had done
the same thirty years before, and, had his advice been followed, in all
probability there would have been no rising in 1745. Lord Chatham was
more successful; royal letters were issued to Sir Archibald Montgomery,
son of the Earl of Eglinton, to try whether the Highlands might not be
relieved and his Majesty’s Service promoted by giving the overcrowded
glens an opportunity of sending to it their surplus men. Deeside
profited largely by this offer. Within a month more than 200 had joined
the regiment in which Charles Farquharson, younger of Balmoral, held the
post of first Lieutenant The following account of the enrolment of this
regiment has come down to us: “Battalions on battalions were raised in
every part of the Highlands among those who a few years before were
devoted to, and had too long followed the fate of the race of Stuart
Their chiefs or connections obtained commissions; and the lower class,
always ready to follow, with eagerness endeavoured who should be first
listed.”
The success of this attempt at recruiting in the Highlands was so
signal, that within the next three years five regiments were similarly
enrolled, draining from the overpeopled glens a larger number of men
than were present under the Prince at Culloden. Of one of these
regiments, Keith’s Highlanders, we propose to take more particular
notice afterwards. It was raised almost entirely .from the districts of
Braemar and Atholl. In addition to the two above-mentioned regiments,
the northern contingents of which were enlisted mostly in the upper
parishes, another regiment, the Gordon Highlanders, was raised in the
same year (1759), was largely recruited from the Gordon estates in the
lower parishes. Deeside must have been in a strange condition, when
within two years it could not only spare 400 of its adult male
population, but when the opportunity to enlist was eagerly coveted.
Well might Lord Chatham, many years after, in his celebrated speech on
our differences with America, say: “I sought for merit wherever it was
to be found; it is my boast that I was the first minister who looked for
it, and found it in the mountains of the north. I called it forth, and
drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men, who, when left
by your jealousy, became a prey to the artifices of your enemies, and
had gone nigh to have overturned the state in the war before the last
These men in the last war were brought to combat on your side; they
served with fidelity, and they fought with valour, and conquered for you
in every part of the world.’
The repeated drains to which we have alluded, had at last the effect of
reducing the population almost to a number that could be fairly
supported. In 1762 peace was concluded, and it was evident that if the
Highland regiments were disbanded and the soldiers returned to their
native glens, a worse state of matters than anyone then living had yet
seen would be brought on. There was great reason to apprehend such a
result; the Government was reducing the military establishments of the
country to a peace footing, and many regiments were already discharged.
Such, however, had been the services of the Highlanders in the late war,
and such were the representations made from many quarters of the evils
likely to arise from sending back the men to their poverty-stricken
glens, now only beginning to show symptoms of peaceful industry, that it
was resolved to disband as few of these regiments as possible, and to
offer the discharged soldiers free grants of land in Canada. Under this
wise policy the dreaded evil was averted.
Meantime, however, the home population was again becoming excessive. The
nine years of peace that followed to the nation were not years of
prosperity and quiet to Deeside. The proprietors had embraced the
opportunity afforded by the drafting of so many of their tenants to the
late war to enlarge the holdings of those who remained, and had reaped
the advantages of the plan by an increase of rent They were not,
therefore, disposed to revert to the old system of subdividing the
holdings among the children of their tenants; but, notwithstanding the
increase in the population, and the lack of military or other employment
for the daily increasing surplus, they resolved to embrace and make
occasions for still farther adding field to field and house to house.
The consequence was that the district began again to swarm with idle and
discontented men, who rather obstructed than aided the progress of
industry. Seeing no hope of getting rid of these by drafting them off to
the army, several proprietors, and one at least on Deeside, attempted to
eject them from their estates, by serving upon them warrants of removal;
and when these were disregarded their domiciles were pulled down about
their ears. Many were thus forced, much against their inclinations, to
emigrate to foreign lands.
But a relief was at hand for those landlords who did not choose to
follow this cruel line of treatment The revolutionary war in America
broke out, and at the same time the Mahratta war in India. Great
exertions were made by the Government to increase the numerical force of
the regiments already on the military list, and as many of these were
Highland regiments, recruiting companies were sent into the parts where
the regiments had originally been raised to complete their numbers. But
besides these, in the course of one year alone (1778) no fewer than five
new Highland regiments were added to the line. The number of recruits
obtained from Deeside cannot be accurately ascertained, but it is
noticeable that the honour of contributing to the first Highland
regiment enrolled after the '45 (Montgomery’s Highlanders) fell to
Braemar and Atholl; and singularly enough the command of the new levy
was given to Colonel James Murray, son of Lord George Murray, who had
the command of the old rebel army at Culloden. This is enough to show
how great had been the change which these thirty-two years had effected
in the sentiments of both the Government and the Highlanders.
Whilst the Braemar contingent of the Atholl Highlanders, or 77th
Regiment of the line, was being raised in that district, a new regiment
was receiving large additions to its ranks from the parishes of
Glenmuick and Aboyne. This was the 81st or Aberdeenshire Highlanders.
The full number of men for both regiments was enlisted in less than two
months. The terms on which they took service were that they should be
bound for three years, or until the war was ended.
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