Open Writing

The plaintive call of the curlew is the only sound to disturb the empty strath. It lies barren. The ruins of its crofts stand untended, taken over by the bracken and the adder. It is a lonely, mournful place, shrouded in mist. A shudder runs down the spine. The guardians of the strath, the ghosts of the folk from the neolithic age, hover around the tall standing stone and are not happy, something terrible has happened here.

The mist lifts to reveal another time, a happier time. The strath is alive as it has been for generations, more than folk can remember. Once the laird of the clan had lived amongst his people, had been one of them, and they had always rallied to his call. Now he was away in the South, returning every so often, with his London friends, to his new castle on the firth. He leaves the running of his estates to his factor but the crofts are busy lively places. The strath is filled with families. Men are on the hillsides tending their stock, women are harvesting crops and spinning wool, children are doing what children always do, running wild, getting into mischief and helping with the chores, while the old folk sit in the sun by the doorpost and talk of bygone days. Peat smoke rises from the chimneys and blackened pots, filled with simmering broth, hang over the hearth. All is well.

Neighbours visit and sit around the firesides telling stories and discussing the day. A fiddle starts to play and dancing begins and the old Gaelic songs ring out. Hogmanay is brought in by first footing, all doors are open and food and drink left on the table for anyone who cares to call. It is a good place to live, the clan belongs together and the ancient guardians by the standing stone are pleased with what they see. All is well in the glen.

They are God-fearing folk, these strath dwellers. The Good Book has pride of place on the dresser and is read every day. Each Sunday all the families walk to the kirk to worship their god. The sabbath is sacred, no work is done; that is the way of things. They are peaceful, law-abiding people who love their land and way of life.

Then, suddenly, early one morning everything changes. The laird needs more money. The rents are a pittance. The land would be better for sheep; they are lucrative and need less folk to tend them. These crofters are a liability, let’s get rid of them. No thought of the responsibilities of being the leader of the clan, the head of this large extended family, and the factor is a hard man and an incomer to boot.

So early on that fateful morning, the factor and his men with their escort of armed guards rode into the glen.

No warning was given. The men put up a fight when ordered to leave. “The rent had been paid. What was the problem?” “OUT!” Beaten back, they watch their women folk, some heavily pregnant, being dragged from their homes. Children rush around screaming and bewildered only to be run down by men on horseback. Bedridden old folk are thrown out onto the ground to watch the roofs of their homes being torn down while lighted torches set fire to their crofts, their belongings, their treasures, all they have. Anger, fear, sheer terror and eventually, a sense of hopelessness runs through the strath.

Night falls. Only the burning embers remain. Folk sift through the ruins, searching for the odd, remaining possession, a charred bible, a bit of a spinning wheel, a child’s toy, a pathetic collection. It is cold and the wind is rising. They need shelter but where can they go? Slowly they all begin to drift to the one place they feel they will find sanctuary, their kirk.

The door is barred against them. The minister is in the pay of the laird and has to do as he is told; there is no room in this inn. Huddled against the outside walls and among the gravestones they try to keep warm. One woman has a diamond ring and with it they write their names and their stories on the outside of the windows, an everlasting record of that day.

Dawn breaks, as dawn always does, on a new stage in their lives. There can be no going back to their strath and their crofts; those days are over, gone for ever. Some drift to the coast and try to establish new crofts on the poor, stony land, eking out a living from the sea, for even seaweed is food. Others head for those well known destinations, America, Canada and Australia, but for a few others another alternative presents itself.

About this time the New Zealand Company, founded by Gibbon Wakefield was trying to promote emigration to far off New Zealand. Gibbon Wakefield had a carefully thought out plan to get together groups of people with various skills, a true cross section of society, in the hope that well balanced communities, which would be self supporting, could be set up in this new land and he was advertising for such a group to sail for the far south of the country. A small group of Scotsmen were gathering together in the hope of finding a better life away from their native land and it was to this group that some of the folk from the strath attached themselves; they needed a new place to go. The voyage would be long, four months, provided the weather was good, and it would be dangerous, but the risk was worth taking. And so it was that in November, 1847, this small band of intrepid men, women and children boarded the two little ships, the Philip Laing and the John Wickliffe and set sail for the other side of the world. And there we will leave them for now.

To be continued...