The sheep-cot was a most wretched habitation, quite unfit for human beings, yet here the widow was compelled to remain until the month of December following. When her son came home from the harvest in the south, he was amazed at the treatment his aged mother and his children had received. He was then in good health; but in a few weeks the cold and damp of the sheep-cot had a most deadly effect upon his health, for he was seized with violent cramps, then with cough; at last his limbs and body swelled, and then he died! When dead, his corpse lay across the floor, his feet at the opposite wall, and his head being at the door, the wind waved his long black hair to and fro until he was placed in his coffin.
The inspector of poor, who, be it remembered, was ground officer to Lord Macdonald, and also acted as the chief officer in the evictions, at last appeared, and removed the old woman to another house; not, however, until he was threatened with a prosecution for neglect of duty. The grandchildren were also removed from the sheep-cot, for they were ill; Peggy and William were seriously so, but Sandy, although ill, could walk a little. The inspector for the poor gave the children, during their illness, only 14 lbs. of meal and 3 lbs. of rice, as aliment for three weeks, and nothing else. To the grandmother he allowed two shillings and sixpence per month, but made no provision for fuel, lodgings, nutritious diet, or cordials—all of which this old woman much required.
When I visited the house where old Flora Matheson and her grandchildren reside, I found her lying on a miserable pallet of straw, which, with a few rags of clothing, are on the bare floor. She is reduced to a skeleton, and from her own statement to me, in presence of witnesses, coupled with other inquiries and examinations, I have no hesitation in declaring that she was then actually starving. She had no nourishment, no cordials, nothing whatever in the way of food but a few wet potatoes and two or three shell-fish. The picture she presented, as she lay on her wretched pallet of black rags and brown straw, with her mutch as black as soot, and her long arms thrown across, with nothing on them but the skin, was a most lamentable one—and one that reflects the deepest discredit on the parochial authorities of Strath. There was no one to attend to the wants or infirmities of this aged pauper but her grandchild, a young girl, ten years of age. Surely in a country boasting of its humanity, liberty, and Christianity, such conduct should not be any longer tolerated in dealing with the infirm and helpless poor. The pittance of 2s. 6d. a month is but a mockery of the claims of this old woman; it is insulting to the commonsense and every-day experience of people of feeling, and it is a shameful evasion of the law. But for accidental charity, and that from a distance, Widow Matheson would long ere this have perished of starvation.
Three men were afterwards charged with deforcing the officers of the law before the Court of Justiciary at Inverness. They were first imprisoned at Portree, and afterwards marched on foot to Inverness, a distance of over a hundred miles, where they arrived two days before the date of their trial. The factor and sheriff-officers came in their conveyances, at the public expense, and lived right royally, never dreaming but they would obtain a victory, and get the three men sent to the Penitentiary, to wear hoddy, break stones, or pick oakum for at least twelve months. The accused, through the influence of charitable friends, secured the services of Mr. Rennie, solicitor, Inverness, who was able to show to the jury the unfounded and farcical nature of the charges made against them. His eloquent and able address to the jury in their behalf was irresistible, and we cannot better explain the nature of the proceedings than by quoting it in part from the report given of it, at the time, in the Inverness Advertiser:—
“Before proceeding to comment on the evidence in this case, he would call attention to its general features. It was one of a fearful series of ejectments now being carried through in the Highlands; and it really became a matter of serious reflection, how far the pound of flesh allowed by law was to be permitted to be extracted from the bodies of the Highlanders. Here were thirty-two families, averaging four members each, or from 130 to 150 in all, driven out from their houses and happy homes, and for what? For a tenant who, he believed, was not yet found. But it was the will of Lord Macdonald and of Messrs. Brown and Ballingal, that they should be ejected; and the civil law having failed them, the criminal law with all its terrors, is called in to overwhelm these unhappy people. But, thank God, it has come before a jury—before you, who are sworn to return, and will return, an impartial verdict; and which verdict will, I trust, be one that will stamp out with ignominy the cruel actors in it. The Duke of Newcastle had querulously asked, ‘Could he not do as he liked with his own?’ but a greater man had answered, that ‘property had its duties as well as its rights,’ and the concurrent opinion of an admiring age testified to this truth. Had the factor here done his duty? No! He had driven the miserable inhabitants out to the barren heaths and wet mosses. He had come with the force of the civil power to dispossess them, and make way for sheep and cattle. But had he provided adequate refuge? The evictions in Knoydart, which had lately occupied the attention of the press and all thinking men, were cruel enough; but there a refuge was provided for a portion of the evicted, and ships for their conveyance to a distant land. Would such a state of matters be tolerated in a country where a single spark of Highland spirit existed? No! Their verdict that day would proclaim, over the length and breadth of the land, an indignant denial. Approaching the present case more minutely, he would observe that the prosecutor, by deleting from this libel the charge of obstruction, which was passive, had cut away the ground from under his feet. The remaining charge of deforcement being active, pushing, shoving, or striking, was essential. But he would ask, What was the character of the village, and the household of Macinnes? There were mutual remonstrances; but was force used? The only things the officer, Macdonald, seized were carried out. A spade and creel were talked of as being taken from him, but in this he was unsupported. The charge against the panel, Macinnes, only applied to what took place inside his house. As to the other panels, John Macrae was merely present. He had a right to be there; but he touched neither man nor thing, and he at any rate must be acquitted. Even with regard to Duncan Macrae, the evidence quoad him was contemptible. According to Allison, in order to constitute the crime of deforcement, there must be such violence as to intimidate a person of ordinary firmness of character. Now, there was no violence here, they did not even speak aloud, they merely stood in the door; that might be obstruction, it was certainly not deforcement. Had Macdonald, who it appeared combined in his single person the triple offices of sheriff-officer, ground-officer, and inspector of poor, known anything of his business, and gone about it in a proper and regular manner, the present case would never have been heard of. As an instance of his irregularity, whilst his execution of deforcement bore that he read his warrants, he by his own mouth, stated that he only read part of them. Something was attempted to be made of the fact of Duncan Macrae seizing one of the constables and pulling him away; but this was done in a good-natured manner, and the constable admitted he feared no violence. In short, it would be a farce to call this a case of deforcement. As to the general character of the panels, it was unreproached and irreproachable, and their behaviour on that day was their best certificate.”
The jury immediately returned a verdict of “Not guilty,” and the poor Skyemen were dismissed from the bar, amid the cheers of an Inverness crowd. The families of these men were at the next Christmas evicted in the most spiteful and cruel manner, delicate mothers, half-dressed, and recently-born infants, having been pushed out into the drifting snow. Their few bits of furniture, blankets and other clothing lay for days under the snow, while they found shelter themselves as best they could in broken-down, dilapidated out-houses and barns. These latter proceedings were afterwards found to have been illegal, the original summonses, on which the second proceedings were taken, having been exhausted in the previous evictions, when the Macinneses and the Macraes were unsuccessfully charged with deforcing the sheriff-officers. The proceedings were universally condemned by every right-thinking person who knew the district, as quite uncalled for, most unjustifiable and improper, as well as for “the reckless cruelty and inhumanity with which they were carried through.” Yet, the factor issued a circular in defence of such horrid work in which he coolly informed the public that these evictions were “prompted by motives of benevolence, piety, and humanity,” and that the cause for them all was “because they (the people) were too far from Church.” Oh God! what crimes have been committed in Thy name, and in that of religion! Preserve us from such piety and humanity as were exhibited by Lord Macdonald and his factor on this and other occasions.
A CONTRAST.
Before leaving Skye, it will be interesting to see the difference of opinion which existed among the chiefs regarding the eviction of the people at this period and a century earlier. We have just seen what a Lord Macdonald has done in the present century, little more than thirty years ago. Let us compare his proceedings and feelings to those of his ancestor, in 1739, a century earlier. In that year a certain Norman Macleod managed to get some islanders to emigrate, and it was feared that Government would hold Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat responsible, as he was reported to have encouraged Macleod.
The baronet being from home, his wife, Lady Margaret, wrote to Lord Justice-Clerk Milton on the 1st of January, 1740, pleading with him to use all his influence against a prosecution of her husband, which, “tho’ it cannot be dangerouse to him, yett it cannot faill of being both troublesome and expensive.” She begins her letter by stating that she was informed “by different hands from Edinburgh that there is a currant report of a ship’s haveing gone from thiss country with a greate many people designed for America, and that Sir Alexander is thought to have concurred in forceing these people away.” She then declares the charge against her husband to be “a falsehood,” but she “is quite acquainted with the danger of a report” of that nature. Instead of Sir Alexander being a party to the proceedings of this “Norman Macleod, with a number of fellows that he had picked up execute his intentions,” he “was both angry and concern’d to hear that some of his oune people were taken in thiss affair.”