To reach the Kirk by the second bell, Catrìona NicAoidh and her father, Iain ùr,  must leave her cott at Ruigh Ruibhaich before eight in the morning.  The sun has been up for a few hours now. On a weekday, she would have already she stirred the fire, milked the cow, fed the chickens, ground meal and thrown the night soil on the midden.  But it is the Sabbath.

Her mother hips ache more and more these days and Iain’s solution is to leave her in  Ruigh Ruibhaich to mind Catrìona’s child and take Catrìona with him to the Kirk.  The minister is not fond of bairns interrupting his sermon but the absence of all three of them would still be noted by the Elders.  The father & daughter arrangement is an acceptable compromise between piety and shame.

The summer is ending and the weather growing damp and chill.  Not that her father will countenance discussion of the weather.  He is of the mind that reflecting on the weather on the Sabbath would be a symptom of frivolity.  And anyway, the steepness discourages any conversation as they climb the winding path out of the township, skirting the shoulder of the forked hill[i] and ascend towards Loch a’ Bheallaich.

From here they can look down toward An Loch Beag to their South and West towards the Strath and the big house at Dundonnel.  To the North, the gentler slope reaches down towards Loch a’Bhraoin[ii].  The new village of Ulapul is compact on the North shore of the loch, four tidy rows of cottages squared out on the hill above the new pier. [iii]  A ragged vessel is moored at the pier, probably  buying salt herring to feed the Irish.  The Minch and Eilean Siar are invisible behind the bulk of Beinn Ghobhlach.

These new villages are laid out quite differently from the baille the MacAoidhs and their neighbours are accustomed to, even now.  After the Earl of Cromarty forfeited his estates after 1745, the government settle soldiers in Ulapul, built roads and began the construction of a harbour, bringing in artisans and merchants.  Down there, no one is self-sufficient.  All must trade.

Even in the new townships onto which the MacAoidhs and their neighbours have been cleared, at least a family has a sufficient patch to grow some tatties and a bit of flax.

At the Beallach, Iain ùr pauses, gazing down at the new village.  His new gaelic bible is in his hand but he need not open it.

And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:

And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.

And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.

Catrìona wonders at the piety of that as they set off downslope towards down towards Loch nam Badan Boga crossing the burn of the fence[iv] barefoot, high up where the burn is shallow.  In the distance, here and there across the landscape, up from Dundonnel or across from Annat, other small groups trail East towards Inverlael.

The MacAoidhs are have only been ten years on Scoraig.  Incomers.  Refugees.  Their folk came from Sutherland[v] – Strathnaver – cleared almost a decade before by the Countess of Sutherland’s commissioner, James Loch, and his agent, Patrick Sellar. 

In March, six years before, the Countess’ factor gave her father and all their neighbours

notice to flit, in the usual manner[vi]. But this year, having taken the land for himself by then, Sellar bade his men set fire to the common pastures, depriving their starving cattle, grown lean over winter, of any sustenance.  Then, near May Day, when the able-bodied men were away after their remaining cattle or otherwise to seek employment, Sellar and his men came to cast down all their houses, barns, kilns, and mills, except a few necessary to the new tenant Their homes were burnt destroyed over their heads and no shelter was left to them.  Contrary to custom, the factor’s men prevented folk from saving the bog-fir roof trees of their homes. Women and children, the infirm and the elderly were left without shelter, at the mercy of the elements. Old men took to the hills, wandering insane. Pregnant women miscarried and several children did not long survive their sufferings.   Catrìona and her mother saved what furniture and blankets they could from the blazing cott: the rest burned and their walls were toppled. 

They were left, destitute, then driven off the land they had cultivated for generations.  First to the coast  but, rather than take ship to America, Iain ùr choose to seek a lot on the coast, finally settling on Scoraig.  There Catrìona caught the eye of a local cheil, Iain a’ Chrùbag McLeoid…or he caught hers.  But her fond eye has not lighted on him in three months.  He is away at the fishing[vii].

In the past, the Scoraig men had only fished to feed their families.  Whitefish were taken on long-lines from the banks off of Gruinard Island in winter. 

On good years, the sea lochs swarmed with herring early Summer and in the Autumn.  But unless one or other of the Dutch curing busses appeared in the vicinity, the local fishers had no means of selling their catch.  And the Dutchmen dictated the price on the day.

Then the East Coast fishers came, seeking herring and lobsters.  Tense times.  The Scoraig men wrecked their creels, threatened their boats.   But more and more the Scoraig cottars needed silver for rent or trade. 

On good years, herring shoals arrive in a predictable cycle.  They feed in the West Coast lochs in early May for about 6 weeks.  In June, they move North towards Orkney and Shetland, then on to the East coast in July.  By now, September, the season was over on the Moray coast and, Catrìona hopes, Iain and his companions are heading back to help bring in the hairst. Catrìona and the other fishers wives are left with all the domestic and agricultural work during the summer[viii].

The path winds down towards the Southern shore of Loch a’Bhraoin, flattening out below Dun Ladaigh.  Slowing so that her father walks on a few more paces ahead of her, Catrìona recites the prayer.

Christ be between me and the fairies.

My frown upon each tribe of them!

This day is Sunday on sea and on land.

My trust, O King, that they shall not hear me[ix].

Ancient folk built their forts along this shore, here are Ladaigh and further on at Rhiroy. And the fairy folk, the Sithean, they too have their strongholds, beneath the hill at A’Chathair Bhan so it is pleasing to see Iain Polla Mor MacLeoid and Fionnalagh McCoinnich from Annat on the path ahead of them.  Others were descending behind them from Scoraig.

It is by now late morning and in the distance they can hear the first bell ringing at the kirk at Clachan.

Folk wandering this path in twilight or in the dawn disappear, it is said.  The Sithean abduct them – or replace them – inducting the foundling into their fairy banquets beneath the hill.

Catrìona hurries on a little, closing the gap with her father, noticing his own surreptitious gestures.  The Scoraig folk straggle past half-built cotts at  Rhiroy, Ardindrean, Letters, whose folk are assembling themselves, in bigger clumps with their older children and their old folk. Its only three miles to the kirk from here and the rough path picks its way along the shoreline at the head of the Loch. 

A year ago, these cottars farmed on the Strath, close to the mouth of the river.  Like the McAoidhs six years before, the Inverlael tenants were evicted by their landlord, Sir George Steuart MacKenzie, last Martinmas.  After centuries of cultivation, the Inverlael folk who did not have the money to migrate are being forced to start again on poor, unbroken ground, straggling along the southern shore of the loch.

Catrìona recalls her father’s curse up at the Beallach two hours before:

And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:

And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.

But the curse seems to be on the poor folk. The Lord’s Providence.

Catrìona can see the manse and the kirk in the distance now.  It is a fine big manse on a rich Glebe.  The minister, Reverend Thomas Ross, married the proprietor’s sister, Jane, ten years ago so Jane’s father has bigged up the manse in grand style and given Ross a fine glebe, evicting tenants to create a living for his son in law. A glebe from which Ross extracts a fine living: and better still from the quantities of fish he takes from his yair in the Loch, depriving honest cottars of their sustenance thereby.

But, a Sutherland man from Creich, at least Ross has the Gaelic, preaches in the Gaelic.

When Catrìona was a child, the kirk’s evangelists [x]  insisted that the word of God, should only be preached or read in English.  Which made their preaching incomprehensible to those, like Catrìona, who had no Beurla.

Now, though, they have a Gaelic Society School close by and a bible in Gaelic and the folk can reflect on God’s word in their mither tongue.[xi] 

 Morning and night, her father reads from his bible to the McAoidh’s and, on occasion, their neighbours and visitors[xii].  And recently a prophet has come to them on the peninsula, an unruly unkempt man inspired who preaches the Word without the book, from memory and with a stirring passion.  His hair is grown and long and tied back in a red and ochre kerchief.  He lives on the hospitality of true believers.  His eyes sparkle with his inspiration.

On the hill, the shore or in common folk’s houses the man will preach.  Not in the Kirk of the proprietors brother in law.

The reader is reading as they congregate at the back of the kirk at Cladach.

Near the pulpit, in the McCoinnich’s pew, the proprietor, Coinneach na Cearc, and his wife sit side by side.  On the laird’s lap sits a large speckled cockerel which clucks contentedly as he strokes its hackles.  The Scoraig cottars say Coinneach na Cearc[xiii], was never meant to run the estate.  But his older brother,  Alexander, died young, seven years ago and when his father died the estate passed to Coinneach who was, to say the least, eccentric.  And then there were those who said his eccentricity – and his fondness for hens – might prove a blessing.

Until, to everyone’s surprise and consternation, Coinneach married a woman named Isobel Roy a year after his father’s death. Her father was a soldier at Fort George.  Coinneach was no sort of a catch as a man: but he did own the Dundonnel Estate.

It turned out the wife was far more able than her husband – able in the manner of the Countess of Sutherland, Iain ùr would mutter.  Able but, apparently, barren.

The Reverend Ross, severe in his black garb, climbs the steps into his pulpit.  He has a fine strong voice and an inspired eloquence which can be alarming for folk who still have a 12 mile walk back across the hill after his sermon and the nights already drawing in.

“Le mo ghrasa mise agus liomsa mo ghra,” he announces[xiv].  The cock crows and so it begins.

[i] Beinn Ghobhlach

[ii] Loch Broom

[iii] The attention […] paid [after 1745] to this area by the Commissioners for the Forfeited Estates, and especially their encouragement of road-building, may, though their settlement of 12 veterans at Ullapool failed, as did their linen industry nearby at Lael […], have been among the reasons for the inclusion of Ullapool in the British Fisheries Society [BFS] tour of 1787. This was undertaken by representatives of the Society for the purpose of selecting a site for a fishing port on the NW coast. Economic theorists at that time favoured bringing people together in large villages, where division of labour might make possible the production of goods for market. Hoping, apparently, to attract elements of the reduced and unsettled Highland population into such a village in preference to the migration which so many chose after American Independence in 1783, the Society purchased, in 1787, 1300 English acres [526ha] at Ullapool from the proprietor of Cromarty, by then Lord Macleod. The nearest Customs House was then at Fort William […] with an outpost on Isle Martin […] near the mouth of Loch Broom, which became independent in 1789. Isle Martin was mainly a fish curing station, and the Collector and Surveyor lived at Ullapool. It may be an indication of wider trading interests in this area that the Commissioners for the Forfeited Estates had granted a 41-year of Isle Martin to John Woodhouse, a merchant of Liverpool.

Another significant incomer at this time was Robert Melville, nephew of a fish merchant in Dunbar, who chose to settle at Ullapool in preference to the West Indies, and in 1788 contracted to build the village for the Society to house its settlers. Melville angled for every advantage available to him from his experience of the different way of life of the S and E of the country. Visiting London in 1789, he achieved the siting of a pier and breakwater half way along the S-facing shore from the Point of Ullapool […], immediately opposite his own store house […].  The jetty […] 1968, at the E end of the village, may have occupied the site of the landing place for droved cattle from the islands, for which Haldane records Ullapool as one point of entry).

Melville contracted to build a [pier] designed by Call, a director of the BFS. […]. Further out, beyond the head of the pier and parallel to the shore, a breakwater […] was to be built. No preliminary survey was carried out, and the foundations spread outwards on the soft sea bed, so that the finished pier was larger, and the breakwater had to be built further out than was intended. Telford, appointed engineer to the BFS in 1790, was nevertheless satisfied with the pier, only criticising the breakwater for being too big. Shingle soon began to be washed up against the pier, so that modifications were made, with some success, in 1794. The completion of the pier and breakwater, as originally planned, in May [1794] , was announced by the BFS in an advertisement for settlers, printed on May of that year, which described the existing amenities, firstly ‘An excellent HARBOUR, which is now improved by the addition of a Pier and Breakwater, at the Society’s expense’. Until the herring left Loch Broom, and migrated, at the turn of the century, round the N coast into the North Sea, ships came to buy the salted fish, many from Ireland having nothing to bring except ballast. This was used to make up the grounds of the Society’s village, and is still traceable in its gardens.[Canmore]

[iv] Alltnaharrie

[v] McGregor

[vi] Sequestration, using the precept of Removing and Ejection, required a tenant to “ Fflitt and Remove himself,  his Wife, Bairns, Family, Subtenants, Cottars, Dependers, Goods and Gear furth and from occupation and possession of the said lands..” The removal of a tenant, in the interest of increasing estate revenues, therefore had impacts on the entire community living in the plot of land in question.

[vii] The mainland sealochs of Wester Ross were less productive of kelp than the western shorelines of the Hebrides so fishing rather than kelping became the local source of income for cottars on agriculturally unsustainable plots.

[viii] The pattern of following the fishing, as in kelping, blocked men from participation in activities which might have improved the productivity of their leased plots,

[ix] Carmina Gadelica, Carmichael.

[x] led by the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK)

[xi] The bible had effectively been translated into Gaelic in 1801 and the Gaelic Society proceeded to set up peripatetic schools teaching communities in their native Gàidhlig.  There was a Gaelic Society School in the Loch Broom area in 1815.  By 1841, the Society estimated that it had taught 90,000 Gaels to read the bible in their native tongue.

[xii] A protestant emphasis on a patriarchal nuclear family and the remoteness of family homes from a minister or kirk led to widespread practice of family bible readings morning and evening, with the expectation that these readings would be led by the father of the house.  Of course, in the context, ‘family’ would include visitors, servants and other boarders at the dwelling.  And the better literacy of children compared to parents often resulted in the readings being led by adolescents ‘on behalf’ of their fathers. The practice, which quickly became a social expectation across communities, fulfilled under the peer pressure and scrutiny of small communities, encouraged the development of charismatic lay-preachers – na Daione^[xii] – prophetic figures clearly differentiated from mainstream ministers.  Na Daione dressed distinctively: many grew their hair long, tied back with colourful kerchiefs.  Na Daione were self-consciously grass-roots revivalists with the ‘gift’ of oratory and a comprehensive knowledge of the Gaelic Bible.  

[xiii] due to his ‘inordinate fondness for hens’, McGregor

[xiv] Song of Songs, chapter 2, verse 16