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Am Bratach No. 209
Bookends Fasachadh An-Iochdmhor Ratharsair (The Cruel Clearance of Raasay) by Calum Macleoid. 2007, Clo Arnais. £7.99. The name Calum Macleod will be known to all interested in Highland affairs: he was the Raasay crofter who between 1962 and 1976 built the road that ever since has borne his name, having failed to get the relevant authorities to provide one. He was also an accomplished writer, particularly in Gaelic, and not only had articles published during his life, but left behind a number of book-length works, of which this is the first to be published. The text is in Gaelic, with an English translation on each facing page. He begins by quoting Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, who visited Raasay in 1773. Macleod describes how Raasay’s sheltered location between Skye and the mainland ensured it was protected from the worst of the weather. The Clearances had their roots in the behaviour of the profligate James Macleod, the Chief of Raasay from 1786, and who paid for the rebuilding of his mansion by increasing rents. On James’ death, his son John sold the island, and in 1846 it was bought by George Rainy. Already, people were leaving the island because of the extortionate rents. Rainy, the son of a Sutherland minister, made his fortune by dubious means in the West Indies. He turned much of Raasay into one large sheep farm, and removed over 1,000 people from fourteen townships. Those crofters who chose not to emigrate were forced into the barren and rocky northernmost part of the island. To keep them out of the more fertile area, where they had lived for generations, he built a dyke now known as Balla Rainy or Rainy’s Wall. Its remains can be seen on Raasay to this day. He also instigated a set of draconian rules, the breach of which would lead to expulsion from the island. Perhaps the most inhumane of these was the bar on any crofter marrying without his consent. Macleod also has little time for the landowners who followed Rainy. Representations were made to the Napier Commission. He also quotes the experiences of a well meaning if naïve Englishman, called Ballance, who for three years rented the mansion house and shooting rights on Raasay. He was horrified by the poverty he saw on the island and even more disturbed by the cruelty of the laird’s staff, who would not let him distribute the meat from a stag to the crofters. Instead, the gamekeeper insisted on the body of the stag being buried. The kindly Ballance found a way of letting the crofters know where the stag was buried. The callousness of the Raasay owners reached new depths in 1918. Twenty-two men from Raasay — 10% of the island’s population — lost their lives in the First World War. When the surviving soldiers returned they found their thatched houses in danger of collapsing and their boats and fishing gear rotted. Neither the government nor the landowner would help, other than arranging emigration to Canada on payment of £10 (a considerable sum in those days). Eventually, a group of crofters took the law into their own hands and occupied the land from which their fathers had been evicted years before. They were arrested and jailed. In 1945, the population of Raasay was only a tenth of what it had been in the 1851 census. The centralisation of education led to a further decrease in the population. The first school had opened in 1811, and eventually there were five schools on the island, with most of the teaching taking place in Gaelic. After 1870, most teaching was in English and Latin. The five schools were closed and replaced with two larger schools, which necessitated children as young as five having to walk up to five miles a day over rough and rocky terrain, sometimes without proper footwear. In 1954, Inverness County Council decided that Raasay pupils over ten years old should go to Portree High School on Skye. Not only did this mean the break up of families, but according to Macleod it cost parents over £200 per pupil. As a result many families with children decided to leave the island, and once a community loses its young people, it begins to die. The book ends with some fascinating accounts of what happened to families who left Raasay for Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Macleod’s book is a valuable contribution to the literature of the Clearances.
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