by Kirsty Gunn
See too the story below, taken from a local pamphlet ‘Melvich and Naver District’, of the Dundonald Estate in the North East Sutherland/Caithness borders, for an example of a landholding with a history and background not dissimilar to that which governed the interests of the Sutherland family of Rogart, subjects of ‘The Big Music’:
Today, Dundonald Estate and The Big House and cottages are two independent Highland Estates that have always stayed outside the clan system of landholding in the north east and are representative of extensive though modestly represented economic interests.
The ‘modern’ story of the estate begins with the participation of Donald MacKay MacDonald in the Jacobite Rising of 1715 and the resulting forfeiture of land he held further south that brought to an end the essentially feudal landholding system practised in that region. At this point he retreated to the far north where he took up residence with the Donald family who had acted as foresters to the Earls of Farr from at least the 17th century – the duties of forester were to ‘protect the game, to supervise timber-extraction, to conserve the woodland, and to apprehend trespassers.’ During this time he secured the property known as ‘The Big House’ and its surrounding land and, as a result of resolving the forfeiture of 1716, was able to buy an adjoining property that later became known as The Dundonald Estate.
The next owners of the Estate were his sons, James and Duncan MacDonald, who increased the landholding to the north, including securing fishing rights extending from the Fastwater of Clear, to the sea. Papers give the year of this purchase as 1739 – however, some National Survey documents suggest 1745 is more likely – as we have surviving three letters from the then vendor Lord Naver detailing his difficulties in selling ‘such choice and favoured waters such as I would prefer to keep them for myself.’
Nevertheless other records make clear that Lord Naver’s intentions were to sell this portion of land so as to help ‘provide’ for James MacDonald’s wife and son – Frances, herself a cousin of his, and ‘the boy John who has always been my favourite’.
When, in subsequent years, the Estate fell on difficult times, at no point were the fishings sold for these sentimental reasons – and they remain in the possession of the MacDonald family to this day.
In general, then, we see how the Estate has been held and managed independently since the eighteenth century despite a landholding system that was, at the time of the redeployment, still essentially feudal – with the landowner himself and his sons and grandsons (John and Donald MacDonald, sons of John) continuing to act as foresters, and feuars in their own right. Along with him other feuars who managed land this way include John Farquaharson (Invercauld), Patrick Farquaharson (Inverey), Donald Farquaharson (Allanaquoich).
Dundonald remains in private ownership today, though much reduced. The Big House is rented to fishing parties, and some stalking is available on the Estate.
v
Literary history
Caithness and Sutherland gave birth to a strong lyric tradition that came to prominence around the time of the Jacobite Rebellion. A large body of these songs survive and are sung today, though not always in the original Gaelic.
Poets of this era include Rob Donn MacKay, Duncan Ban MacIntyre, William Ross and Alexander MacDonald, who was present when Prince Charles raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan.
The Sutherland poet Rob Donn MacKay did not take part in the rising, and his chief – Lord Reay – supported the Hanoverian side (the incumbent rulers). But Rob was still for the Prince, as this fragment shows:
Today, today, tis right for us
To rise up in all eagerness,
The third day since the second month
Of winter now has come to end;
We’ll welcome thee full heartily,
With laughter, speech and melody,
And readily we’ll drink thy health,
With harp and song, and dancing too.
Prolific creators or rewriters of Jacobite songs based on old models included James Hogg, Lady Caroline Nairne and Robert Burns. Burns published ‘It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King’, ‘The Highland Widow’s Lament’ and a song about love called ‘Charlie He’s My Darling’. Lady Nairne wrote lyrics for ‘Wi a Hundred Pipers’ and ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again?’ She also wrote a more warlike set of words for ‘Charlie is My Darling’.
March tunes had lyrics attached, for example ‘The Sherramuir March’ and ‘Wha Wouldna Fecht for Charlie’. James Hogg wrote Jacobite lyrics for both of these tunes and many others. Hogg published and perhaps wrote ‘Both Sides of the Tweed’, a popular song known today.
Later, the work of Neil Gunn and George MacKay Brown, in particular, came to represent a way of life that is depicted in mythic, lyrical terms as well as the actual and historic. Gunn’s famous novel The Silver Darlings and his Green Isle of the Great Deep are two examples on different ends of the literal/literary spectrum, both describing, to different degrees, a place that is both real and unreal, factual as well as fictional. In this, he and Brown, both, reach back to a tradition outlined above and before it, of fairy tale and Norse myth, of song and story, where the literal and invented worlds merge and blend in our imagination, become the same place.
Appendix 3a: History of the Highland North East region 1850–present
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional subject, of enormous importance to the vexed question of the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The crofters (tenant farmers who rented only a few acres) were politically powerless, and as a result of this, it has been suggested, many had joined the breakaway ‘Free Church’ by and after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted in different regions throughout the Highlands during this period, only quieting when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which gave voice to grievances formerly silenced. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and creating a Crofting Commission. The crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, when the Liberal Party came to represent, more and more, the interests of the tenant farmers of the region. Yet, as we saw over the previous historical period, there remained certain families and interests outside the general political movement that was changing the way Highland society was being managed. Always, it is important to bear in mind the way the land, in the region of north-east Scotland, accommodated a range of economic and cultural ambitions that in turn gave much back to the community and society in terms of enlarging the sense of Highland life and expanding its horizons.
i
One particular section of Sutherland that has, since the middle of the nineteenth century, resisted the changes that were sweeping the rest of the Highlands is the land around the hills Mhorvaig and Luath, an area that has been settled, records show, since and before the mid-eighteenth century by the Sutherland family, first of ‘Grey Longhouse’, Parish of Rogart and environs. See the following Appendix 4: ‘The Grey House’ for more details of the family’s history and activities throughout this period, as well as certain sections in the Taorluath and Crunluath movements of ‘The Big Music’.
ii
Local maps
Maps indicating immediate region; incl. rivers; landfall
Appendix 4: The Grey House – history; plans; evidence
i
Site
As described in the Taorluath section of this book, The Grey House – also known as ‘Ailte vho
r Alech’ or ‘The End of the Road’ – was originally a traditional Sutherland ‘longhouse’ or ‘blackhouse’, the foundations of which can still be seen to the side of the current structure, comprising the kitchen and larders. This longhouse, of two rooms with a connecting space to link them, was built – probably over an existing dwelling – around the early eighteenth century and was established as a place of shelter for those passing through the ‘corridor’, as it was known in the time of the great sheep droves of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that commences inland from the northwest of Brora and provides a route through the great hills of Mhorvaig and Luath all the way to the markets of Lairg on the west (see relevant maps in preceding Appendices).
The site is on an elevated position at the northern end of the strath known as Blackwater, run through as it is with one of the tributaries of the river bearing that same name, yet well sheltered by Ben Mhorvaig at its back and Ben Luath beside it. It is some two-thirds of a mile from the river Blackwater ‘Beag’ and is south-facing, well drained, on soil that comprises Torridonian sandstone with peat depositories and of rich mineral store. Current excavation of the site reveals deposits of granite boulders and bone, suggesting the area was inhabited as far back as the early thirteenth century – and though there is no evidence of similar foundations in the area, this early show of inhabitation suggests that the site may have been one of many dwelling areas in the region.
Survey maps today mark both the ‘Beag’ water and the House itself, corresponding with surviving drawings made by the first John Sutherland (1736–1793), who is recorded in ‘The Big Music’ as having established the House as a place where music might be heard, and show a similar configuration of dwelling place to water, though there are irregularities present in his representation that are clarified in the later project. Further details pertaining to the House and its history and location can be found in the relevant sections under List of Additional Materials at the back of this book.
ii
Construction
The current construction of The Grey House is of a substantial three-storey building of granite and lead, the east side of which has been built over the original ‘Grey Longhouse’, as previously stated, and is itself an extension of what is known as ‘The Old House’, that is the building that was erected by John ‘Elder’ Roderick Callum Sutherland (1800–1871) and written of in the same Taorluath movement as above. Details of floor plans can be found, as above, in the List of Additional Materials.
Appendix 5: The Grey House – domestic history
i
How life was lived
‘The Big Music’ throughout contains details of the history and day-to-day life of the House from the eighteenth century onwards, see in particular ‘doubling on fourth variation’ and similar embellishments, Crunluath movement.
ii
The role of women
The women who married into the Sutherland family have always been known – in stories of one generation passed down to the next, or as shown in letters and journals that survive – as individuals of significant skill, intelligence and foresight. The wife of the first John Roderick MacKay Sutherland recorded in ‘The Big Music’ was one Elizabeth Mary MacKay, who is acknowledged in the local ballad ‘The Kind Hills’ by name, and noted for her beauty and thoughtfulness, and for her and her husband’s hospitality in the third verse beginning:
Elizabeth Mary said to me,
Will you not stop for this while?
My husband welcomes you
to his hearth and his home
– as do I …
And later:
and the table of the House was spread then
with a cloth as white and fine,
and music played, music played …
And she did not mind.
Her granddaughter-in-law was Anna Alexandra of Tongue (b.1807, wife of John ‘Elder’ Roderick Callum, 1800–1871), who kept a journal and was an enthusiastic gardener, extending the original plot of the old house and planting crab apple and plum trees in the sheltered lee of the small hill that rises from the end of the paddock at the back of the House. These fruit trees (her journal shows she took the seedlings from her native village of Tongue, a district known for its gentle climate and agricultural variety) are still in place today, growing alongside subsequent trees that were taken from them, from the main back garden of The Grey House – an area of beauty and practicality, both, established by that resourceful woman.
Her daughter-in-law, in turn, one Elizabeth Jean (b.1835, wife of John Callum MacKay, 1835–1911), established further planting to the south side of the House and was renowned for her skills in the kitchen – all her recipes remain and some are in use today by Margaret MacKay, who cooks in her kitchen. She was also a great seamstress and planned and was involved in the sewing of many dinner cloths and tray tables that are still in use – fine, fine Victorian counted threadwork and embroidery on show in the archive and still in good condition.
So, though the names of the women disappear into Sutherland, still evidence of their lives and work are present and vivid through the life of the House. In the kitchen, in the drawing room, in the Music Room – we see evidence of their thoughts and intelligence, kept in records of papers and domestic accounts. Elizabeth Clare, John Sutherland’s mother, established, as has been noted in ‘The Big Music’, a Schoolroom at the top of the House where she educated, to a certain age, not only her own son but also those children of local farmers and workers.
The line of these women was cut, one may say, when the John Sutherland of ‘The Big Music’ became married to a woman who would have no intention of visiting The Grey House, much less live there – but was sewn up again when Margaret MacKay of Caithness was employed by Elizabeth Sutherland as housekeeper in 1964.
iii
The House as local primary school – including record of pupils
In 1928 the attic space under the eaves of the north end of The Grey House was converted into a single room that became known as the Schoolroom – and it was here that Elizabeth Sutherland educated her son and, thereafter, those children of the nearby lands and villages whose parents would release them for morning lessons.
The room was established as a formal teaching and educational space (though two existing photographs show that lessons were also highly creative) with a blackboard and desk (later desks) at one end and a small library and a play area at the other, where there were toys and games and also a large table that was set out for painting and glue-collage activities. A bright mural depicting the alphabet and illustrated with animals was pinned up along the long far side of the room and Elizabeth’s own desk was placed at the north window, an Edwardian armchair beside it to make the most of the light, where she sat to read to her son and later the village children, or conducted lessons on a more informal basis.
This ‘Schoolroom’ has been written about in the local Brora Journal of the time – as an example of forward-thinking and enlightened educational principles that would have real effect in the community. As above, and as we read about in the Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ and in embellishment/2b, in particular, at a period in Sutherland history when primary schools were few, the Schoolroom served a particular and necessary local function. Were it not for Elizabeth Sutherland taking in the local children of the area for lessons, it is unlikely, in many instances, they would have been educated at all – for at this time small farmers and crofters could ill afford to lose their children by sending them far away to one of the state primaries in Dornoch or Golspie, where they must board. As it was, a local farm lorry could bring them to the House in the morning, along with the deliveries, and return them to their farms later in the day.
This arrangement was started in 1934 when Elizabeth’s own son, John, was sent away to Inverness to school and she found she wanted to continue those lessons she had started with him. It terminated in 1950 when the Local Schools Act demanded that all children of even the most remote Highla
nd regions attend a regulated state primary school until the age of twelve, after which they must attend a regional high school.
The record of children who attended the Schoolroom through the above period is, then, as follows:
1934–35: John Ross; Iain Sinclair
1935–36: as above
1936–37: as above; also Helen Ross
1937–38: as above
1938–39: as above
1939–40: Iain Sinclair; Helen Ross; John Sinclair
1940–41: as above; also Jean McCaddie
1941–42: John Sinclair; Jean McCaddie’; Catriona McKay; Hector Gunn; Ishbel S utherland
1942–43: as above; also Donald McCaddie
1943–45: as above, minus Ishbel Sutherland, but also Neil McIndoe; Jean Gunn
1945–46: as above, plus Iain Sutherland
1946–47: as above, minus Catriona McKay; Hector Gunn
1947–48: as above, plus Jamie Robb; Amelia MacKay; Katherine Sutherland