by Kirsty Gunn
Or, on the other hand, whether one is to agree with the many others who say that the very scale of the operation has weeping in it, the echo of which carries in the empty hills to this day. They will say, those who argue to this side, that it would have been far better to have left things alone there, that they themselves had family who would have liked to have been left alone, that it’s no one’s right ever to turn people away from their homes when they were living in a way they were used to and could even say were accepting of and fond – for they knew no other. They had their family there, they will say, who gave birth to their babies, and gathered around fires to talk, exchange information: these were communities – and who can have the right to break these up into pieces, make the people go away?69 Also, it will be argued, that it was in the very days before the Clearances, when families would have their couple of sheep and their cow, would have some milk and cheese and some wool and the women kept looms and wheels, that there was a civility, dignity, to life. That, in the way these remote and impoverished people put themselves together, clothed themselves, told all their stories and made their music, was a culture that was lost to the mills and factories and gin houses of the town, a way of life that would be hard to find again, put back together again.
So it will be said.
So it is said.
For in those stories …
In that music …
Is where an Urlar might start.
Where you might make for yourself a ground upon which to stand.
And from that beginning, the rest can come.
So what I am getting at here70 – in the idea of the home as ground, as the starting place – is an image of a group of people with a certain ‘sound’ to them, you could say, a particular clustering of notes that comes through the tune as a recurring theme. And there’s a certain appearance to them, also, these people – in their story and that sound – certain genes cast down from the time of the Viking invasion71 hundreds of years ago, from inter-relations with those Northern armies, and with something left too from the original people of this place that’s fast and animal, with a quick-foot-ed’ness that made them excellent for the hills and for getting over a river at spate or dodging the exciseman when he came. So that when parts of the Highlands were cleared in a mass of clans and groupings … These certain families wrested out a living just so much longer.
You can say, then, for these families – for this man – the Clearances didn’t happen in the way of others. Yes, much was lost, much swept away, but, in the sense that this particular man used his cleverness to avoid the fate his neighbours were commanded by, he was not affected by the large scope of the operation. He and his family were let alone. For by offering at that point in history – when all was falling away for so many, for those he must have known and loved – to run the sheep that were being brought in, that were part of the great change that was affecting so much in the region, and to offer to manage the flocks himself for an absent laird on a piece of land that that man had perceived to have no value …
Was the beginning of his own ground, for sure.
His advantage gained, his place upon the land made good.
Though there may be some cannot understand this. How good can come out of ill, when so many others are suffering. But the fact is that this man’s foresight and strength of character, of decision, cleverness – that word again – will always keep a family safe. So when the great House of Sutherland carved up that part of the Highlands and placed builders at the coast and inland through Strath Naver for certain fishing and shooting pleasure, starting work on building the fine lodges and estate buildings and bridges that you can see to this day in various places through that landscape … They had taken no account of this particular strath where the foundations of The Grey House are lying now.72 To that extent cleverness can be a hidden thing. For that little mark of stone you see from a great distance on the low side of the greyish-green hills – you could barely make it out as a place where a man may start to think about creating something more for himself. Yet that is where it had begun for him, this one man. That first Sutherland’s own grandfather’s croft was that stone, his history already there, an understanding of the land already established in that most inhospitable place. So there was a stone you might not think any more than a stone but it had been where a whole family had kept itself protected, where generations of their forebears had grown and flourished – that, this family understood, knew about and could work with, this particular part of the hills.
One could say then, he might have said, that all he was doing, John Roderick Callum Sutherland, was making good that mark. Going to the factor, fixing for himself that bold appointment – to suggest that the great Duke of Sutherland’s men might be better off were they to let him manage this bit of unproductive hill. It was where the shepherds came through annually for the Lairg run, he would have told them, and where there could easily break out skirmishes and thefts of the Duke’s livestock, and could develop even various ways against him and those that worked for him that could turn into a kind of vendetta, a civil war. That there could be raids against the estate lodgings, and into the neighbouring estates even, and so animals continually would be killed and taken – but that if John Roderick Callum might keep this thin strip of land that was no more than a path, really (and he might have used that expression, even, ‘no more than a path’), between Lairg and Rogart, where it was so bleak and wasted away that nothing could come of it, but bleak and wasted enough that it could be the scene, too, of a kind of a civil war …
He could then keep the peace.
And this, he said to the factor, at no cost. No favour. For look at the land! What could you do with that sort of land! ‘Bleak and wasted’ were the words used in the paragraph above but he could have just as easily used them.
So then the factor had taken back his proposal to the estate and it had been agreed – that indeed this man Sutherland would be best to keep the strip for himself, that he could buy it even, in time, as he earned it, from the Sutherland Estates, that the local people might know that he was in a separate dwelling, amongst the great and the good, perched between the boundaries of their lands like a kind of peacekeeper and known to be respected. Not that he was a man whose loyalties could be bought. For now that he had this thin strip of his own between the estate hills he was an independent landowner himself, with similar interests at stake as to the very rich and powerful, but because he was one of the people, too, who were his friends, so he could control them. This is how the Sutherland factor could figure it, and his laird: that if scoundrels were to rise up on the drove they’d rise up against this one man and not themselves, not against the life they’d made for themselves, the style that had been created. If it came to blows, was the thinking in the estate office, the people would damage the Sutherland, the John Roderick Callum, and not destroy anything of the history and sense of privilege that all the big landowners in the Highlands were trying to establish at that time, giving some glitter and swish of the grand cities and grand ideas of Europe to these bleak hills.
So they thought they were using him. So he let them so think. This John Roderick Sutherland of Sutherland. So he let them continue to think.
For his Urlar was down, the foundations already established. Free land. The stones upon the foundations of his grandfather’s croft now set in a square – the longhouse of his grandfather extended.73 And month by month, year upon year, the first Callum, Sutherland of the parish of Rogart, built upon that square of stone.
doubling on third variation/The Grey House: history of land ownership in the North East of Scotland
The Sutherland family would have originally been tenant farmers (later called crofters) who were, over the years, able to purchase the small piece of land they farmed, and in time, extend it – at first by lease, from the Sutherland Estates tack, and then, through ownership.
This practice, of building up land piecemeal – through lease then purchase – is more common than
many popular Highland histories would have us believe. See in particular Sir John Sinclair’s General View of the Agriculture of the Northern Counties (Edinburgh, 1814); G. and P. Anderson, ‘Guide to the Highlands and Islands – Agricultural Intelligence’, Rossshire Quarterly Report (Farmer’s Magazine, 1815); J. Barron’s ‘The Northern Highlands – Agricultural Intelligence’, Ross-shire Quarterly Report (Farmer’s Magazine, 1820); and J. Anderson, ‘Essay on the Present State of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’ (Constable, 1816). More recently, Eric Richards’ and Monica Clough’s Cromartie: Highland Life 1650–1914 (Aberdeen University Press, 1989) provides a comprehensive study on land and social mobility in a neighbouring area, using, in particular, the case study of the MacDonalds of Strathpeffer.
Crofting, a system of landholding unique to the Highlands and islands of Scotland, need not be the cramped, post-Clearances condition of life it is all too often portrayed as being but can offer an independence of state and sense of flexibility and options that, according to writers and historians such as Ian Carter were not available to the indentured factory worker or servant. Indeed, he writes, this so-called peasant class in fact enjoyed autonomy and a sense of control over their means and end not experienced by many of us today – see in particular his book Farmlife in Northeast Scotland for a detailed record of life as it was lived over the period from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century.
As we may see, by following on from this story of an autonomous peasant class, with its own particular mores and values, crofting is still a system of landholding in use today that goes against and liberates certain social and class inhibitors. That’s because a croft is not, as many people think, a house but instead a small agricultural landholding which is normally held in tenancy and which may or may not have buildings or a house associated with it and can then, in time, be bought. Much croft land today is now independently owned because the former tenants have bought that land. There is no control over changes in ownership of croft land, although there is a statutory obligation to advise the C rofters Commission, and every change in the tenancy of a croft is regulated by the Commission whose written consent is required for every proposed assignation.
Assignation is a term used in crofting to describe the permanent transfer of a tenancy from one person to another. In a normal year three to four hundred croft tenancies are assigned. In more than half of these the current crofter passes the croft to a member of their family and the majority of the remaining tenancies are transferred to people already known to the crofter.
This is only the beginning of a process that is often complicated and private, wrought with families’ and communities’ and the individual’s interests. There is, therefore, something almost fictional about the whole idea. It is like no other version of land ownership – and the land itself is seen in a different way as a result of its processes and history.
fourth variation/The Grey House: history of land ownership
By the time of the late 1700s, then, the foundation that had borne no more than a little bothy sitting at the foot of the long hills and offering shelter, a grey mark on the hill, was a substantial dwelling place. And as the old century turned into the new it was built upon again, the longhouse that it had been was further extended. As a thin tune from a ceilidh74 rising up into the air becomes many-stranded with the voices that contribute towards it, and continuous, so did the House take on rooms and a central stair and develop qualities around the original building, as Callum’s son John Callum added to the central portion, developed the original and made it more substantial, a dwelling place of many parts.
Thus was the House established enough by the mid-1800s that if you’d been a shepherd then, by the next generation, you’d not have stayed with the family as in the past75 but in a separate part of the house now – for The Grey House, as it was now called, was large enough to have accommodation within it for those who would come and take lessons here in the winter – and indeed John Callum, or ‘Old John’ as he became known, was the first to make within the house a ‘Music Room’ and to conduct formal lessons there. Indeed, though the House had a musical history in this respect, of a place for teaching and learning piobaireachd, it was only at this time that arrangements were made for what became known as a full School of Piping – though the same shepherds whose fathers and grandfathers used to arrive at the House every winter were there, too, for the music and companionship and shelter. Coming into the kitchen still for the broth76 made by John’s wife Elizabeth just as John Roderick’s wife, Elizabeth Mary, used to make it for them three generations before.
And by now it was 1870, 1880 … The House had the date 1878 carved above the door when Callum’s son had added on the handsome front to the original part of the building.
‘You’ve done fair for yourself, and no rogue either – for you could have been so …’ – this is marked down in a history paper referenced from the Golspie Library, dated 1882, and the subject of the paper ‘John Callum Sutherland and Land Management’.77 For by now these records don’t just itemise the open facts of one man offering shelter the way he did when it was required, a family history there, in a son following the traditions and practice of his father and grandfather, and great-grandfather. But they also take into account the way the hard-won good fortune of the family was allowed to spread around those he knew – that the benefit of good husbandry, increased yields and income might come to be of advantage to the region in general.
In this, this branch of the Sutherlands bears something in common with certain families further north and along the east coast who benefited from the herring78 at a similar time of the country’s history – a similar atmosphere of good fortune come out of a past of hardship. For the money was not simply kept but tithed again, we must come to understand, in the same way it had been used in the past. A tithe not so much a payment as investment, so as to put back into development that which would be of advantage to all – in roads, and shelters, byres and pens. It is a cost, then, that is levied but that comes back upon the community in good – not simply taken by one individual and thereby held. So here’s the House increasing in its place upon the hill, and the standard of fare and lodging for the men also therefore increasing – but there is, too, the additional benefit that becomes economic. For by offering certain sheep to the shepherds to raise as their own, returning to them the same methods of husbandry as the Sutherlands themselves had earlier had the advantage of and thereby raising their rural prospects beyond subsistence to greater stability and prosperity, in turn the payments to The Grey House may also be increased. It was in just the same way as in the past the old Callum would keep back certain sheep that otherwise would have foundered on the run south, down to the North of England, and further, some of them, holding back one or two of the black cattle that were destined for the Midlands and London even. So, as in those days,79 John Callum now would let some of his own animals go to a shepherd who would take an interest in increasing the wellbeing of his flock, or would hold back stock that was otherwise in poor condition, not fit for the run south with the others yet young enough, and then return these animals to the men when they passed back again, heading home – well-fed and cared for in that interim, some put to the tup, the lambs increased in number and in size. All telling of, as is shown in these papers, in the histories and letters kept in local libraries, in Golspie and elsewhere, a sense of enablement that was extended beyond the gables of the House, beyond the Sutherlands’ own land and livestock.
Livelihood and prosperity extended well beyond those four square marks of stone upon the hill.
doubling on fourth variation/The Grey House: domestic history
The foundations of The Grey House were established as far back as the early eighteenth century or before, when a simple ‘blackhouse’ or ‘longhouse’, as these buildings were first called, was built on the original southfacing site and life would have been set out as a simple routine whereby domestic needs were answered by the peat fire burnin
g in the grate and sleeping quarters arranged so as to accommodate a large family all occupying the same room.
Meals were straightforward, consisting mainly of oatmeal and dairy products – cheese and butter from the family’s cow and a few sheep and goats – some simple greens provided by the kitchen garden, supplemented sometimes by meat when possible or when occasion demanded it.
Because the Sutherland family have always been musicians – even from before the time of ‘The House’ being known as a stop-over place for crofters and shepherds – there would have been a social aspect to the domestic arrangements of their home, even when it was little more than a couple of rooms attached to a byre. This arrangement would have seen space made available around the fire for the singing of canntaireachd and outdoors on the flat for the playing of pipes for ceilidhs or musical nights – this when the weather was fine – and for this reason, the original ‘longhouse’ would have been slightly larger than usual (as the original foundations show) and the area around it arranged in such a way as to accommodate a number of guests when they arrived for the music. Later, when the House was firmly established within the ‘corridor’ region of Sutherland, effectively connecting a pathway through the difficult terrain between Ben Mhorvaig and Luath, the House was given over more and more to visitors – who were accommodated for a night or more in an extra room built on at the far end of the House. The kitchen was now set up as a dining area that would take eight or more adults, and the fire and grate areas were made more of a feature of the room. Family records show three large kettles from this time as well as four iron dishes, or casseroles – all denoting a significant increase in domestic activity – and there are still exisiting two skillets from this period and an early remnant of a tablecloth, that has been worked with a beautiful tatted trim.