The Blood is Strong - It Is No Joy Without Clan Donald

the old Jacobite burial ground at Stewart's Ville North Carolina the last resting place for our people who in their own lifetime knew little rest McLaren's McRae's McDonald's exiles from their fathers land parts that once knew the sharp fear of the Hebrides buried in the still eat of the Americans the legacy of Culloden and the clearances hanging over them even beyond the grave few raters have exercised such influence on the new worlds of America and Australia as the Scots yet it could be argued few have received less credit and for the sons and daughters of the pioneer settlers from Galax cutland there is the further ambivalence if the Scottish contribution has been so often blurred by the British contribution how can the unique role of the Highland Scots be understood when it is still shrouded in myth Legend and life within Scotland itself if the promised land lay beyond the Hebrides the road or rather the sea to it was littered by eviction and oppression and ultimately by exile only made tolerable by quinoa's the Gallic for a past which in truth may never have been more than a dream from the long shilling on the misty Islands mountains dividers and the waste at the sea yet still the blood is strong the heart is Highland and we in dreams behold the heavens the Hebrides a scattered of islands on the edge of Europe are at the center of a language and culture whose sons and daughters for the mid-part know live somewhere else a sea-washed land of light and shade myth mr. magic few places on earth called the exiled children in such hopeless trawl as the Gaeltacht the heartland of the Gallic scots as the waves of white sail immigrant ships rounded the familiar headlands for the last time a poet wrote that they're assembled quite tearful handkerchiefs waving that final wrenched goodbye but it was a farewell it was to be far from final goddess mid highlander migratory thunderbird especial has been if i don't sound too arrogant of benefit to the human race as a whole i'm very typical of people with names like mckinnon I've got a very typical accent but people with Highland surnames and Christian names like myself because we've been dispersed we're everywhere throughout the world I'm scholars about per se and I don't see myself as Canadian Scottish my parents are my parents parents are from there and it's it's part of my background I'm stirred by by Scotland I think Scotland it has sent a great many men and women all around the world for the last two or three centuries and they have done remarkable things around the world and it's marvelous to have that blood in your veins it shifts the part they also arrive and it's appropriate that you get to the Hebrides we must still take a boat Tracy surveys from Fort Worth Texas was just won the half million overseas visitors to the Hebrides last summer the crossing to sky takes less than five minutes but for the returning Gale it's a journey that spans the centuries Tracie's Gallic ancestry like that of many who come here is tenuous but for this Texan law student it's enough just to feel Highland the Hebrides are as much an emotional as a physical experience the very place names as melodious because the songs the place but place names to that speak to the language under people as a lien now in most of the english-speaking world as they are natural here in the guild the gal talk today is reduced to the far northwest of Scotland and the Hebrides sky is the historic seat of Calais Miguel the headship of the gale a title synonymous with the name Donald our middle castle the seat of the high chiefs our plan Donald is now a moldering memorial to greater days the ruined symbol of a culture which too may be on the verge of extinction but to understand where you are going it is sometimes important to remind yourself where you have come from to distinguish myth from reality legend from history the truth from the lie now returning descendents of Highland Scots can begin to learn about a heritage thanks largely to the generosity of their dispersed fellow girls who have founded a memorial to the language and culture of Gildan here within that high ruin symbol of the power that once was our middle castle while it is fitting that the exiled sons of Clan Donald have taken a lead armadyl is intended as an opportunity for all of Highland stock to discover their identity for the Exile it's a journey of self-discovery but one that may yet have come too late to save one of the oldest cultures in Europe the standing stones of Cullen ich on the island of Luis here while the ancient Greeks were wrestling with concepts like democracy and even older people were already plotting the course of the Stars and the influence of the moon it was a wild land they had chosen to tame but these early farmers knew the importance of the seasons and how to chart their successors build Cairns and blocks or fortification and shopping they carve their legends with Clyde on lumps of stone and then disappeared from the face of the earth as big an enigma step in when he arrived their successors the Celts from Argyle and Ireland had an altogether higher profile while the Huns and vandals were pillaging across Europe the Irish Celts were illuminating manuscripts and translating Scrolls they were the bards and the philosophers the scribes and the scholars Celtic art was among the most sought-after in Europe the abbey of Iona founded by the Celtic penciling column killer or Columbo it was Columba expelled from his native Ireland who is the graft the coaster of the gale onto this bleak place called Scotland Columbus arrival on Iona in 563 heralded the new age of the gale a priest and at the same time a warrior Columba converted the wild Pictish Chiefs to Christianity traveling by sea throughout the islands of the West and then on to the mainland itself now Iona has become a center of pilgrimage one of the wonders of the Christian faith but all faiths and all people of peace are welcome here some bringing new kinds of worship from the new lands to which their forebears had been dispersed spirit of the Living God present it with us now amen to you body mind and spirit and here you have all the kanji in Jesus name Amen the street of the Dead the ancient route leading to the burial place of 48 kings of Scotland four kings of Ireland and eight kings of Norway from Iona the resting place of kings Columbus monks would eventually travel south to instruct even the pagan English themselves in the world of Christ but by the eighth century in common with the other early Celtic churches Iona was coming under attack from the Vikings as with orkney and shetland the Vikings were to settle in the Western Isles and over the next three centuries a Gallic Nordic aristocracy of independent chieftains emerged but the supreme material legacy left by the Vikings was transformed the fast maneuverable vessels that were to win for the Gaels the mastery of the Seas and ultimately the creation of a sea Kingdom the lordship of the Isles was created when summer read the great Gallic chieftain and later his grandson Tahoe drove the Vikings from the West for the next 300 years Tran Donald as Lords of the Isles were to rule a kingdom separate from the Midland the slowest few are sangria a mole a mirror of all neurs the best people in the round world their joyousness their keenness their effectiveness without them it's no strength it is no joy without Clan Donald a council of the Isles met regularly on the island of Ireland chieftains under the lordship were democratically elected the first University in the north was created here in 1200 but Karin ich on North Uist where the sons of the Chiefs were sent to learn Latin and more poets musicians and craftsmen all flourished under the lordship and by a little of the work and wood metal remains there is a great legacy of Celtic carvings on stone the lordship also boasted its own plan of physicians The Beatles and its lawyers the Morrisons whose jurisdiction extended from the butter brewers to the Moloch entire some 700 miles but as clan donald consolidated its right to chemist and gail the headship of the Gail its greed for territory led it on to the mainland and the annexing of the great Eldon across still visible the remains of the castles and fortresses the legacy of the growing conflict with the kings of Scotland under the lordship the clan system flourished with its concept of equality it's fair laws its code of hospitality and its right to depose a bad chief it was a model form of government h du hassan earning dick translates as kinship will withstand the rocks but when the lordship itself began to disintegrate that rock of kinship became more like shifting sand around 1500 the sea Kingdom was overwhelmed by the kings of Scotland and the language and culture of the Gale began its long decline hi good afternoon I was wondering if by chance he had a room for this evening yes surfing just a single room yeah yes we certainly have come along in travel today would you like some wine with your dinner ah yes I would Godfrey James the eighth Lord McDonald can trace his ancestry right back to Summerland he still lives in Skye just a few miles from his ancestral home add our module right Stephanie um by the way are you actually the Lord McDonald yes I am indeed well it's quite an honor to be served by the Lord of the Isles relevant Offit aura we enjoy having you but the biggest battle the prescient Lord of the Isles has to fight as he cheerfully admits is to earn a living he's clan chief but the riches of the Lords of the Isles are long gone well you enjoy your dinner now get out your wine thank you very much I am Hotel EO in the sky and I like to think I to give the same sort of standard of service to the people that come to my hotel as I do to my clansmen the extraordinary thing about planchette is it's something that's able to transcend all names boundaries arm it transcends boundaries of politics position religion race distance it transcends certainly whether you're a multi-millionaire or whether you're somebody sweeping up the the rubbish from the gutters they're all counting in my eyes and the extraordinary thing also that can ship is how its prevailed through centuries as being totally undemocratic I'm the chief whether they like it or not the Bleak treeless heights of drama see moon outside Inverness the site of the last battle fought on British soil Culloden the feudal system of kinship had survived the collapse of the lordship of the Isles for 250 years but the defeat of the Highland army under the Prince Charles Edward Stuart was to destroy the clans forever even before Culloden the pode highland Chiefs had begun the process of Anglicization but was eventually to divide them from the clansmen Culloden and it's aftermath only served to hasten the process Prince Charles Edward was just 24 when he first made landfall on the island of Eros key in the early summer of 1745 his bold plan was to restore the exiled Catholic House of Stuart to the throne of Britain within a month despite the skepticism of the main highland Chiefs he had raised his father standard at Glenfinnan this was the high summer of the princes ambition and within a few weeks pearl had fallen to the Highland army by September he was proclaiming his father King in a capital heading General Sir John copse government army was no match for the high walls and at the Battle of Preston tons they were totally routed now at the head of an army of over 5,000 men Charles headed south Carlisle hello followed by Penrith Lancaster Preston and Manchester by the time the Highland army reached Derby London was in chaos the shops had closed and there was a run on the bank but few of the English Catholics joined the princes collars and at spark Stonebridge less than 200 miles from London general Lord George Murray and the Highland Chiefs persuaded arsalan Charles to retreat to Scotland in pursuit with a huge government army came the Kings third son William Gustus Duke of Cumberland the end came on April the 16th 1746 on a day of rain with intermittent sleet when Charles's exhausted highland army was cut to pieces by a government force twice its size the battle lasted only an average around 1200 Highlanders were killed and less than 400 government troops codon is still depicted as a battle between the Scots and the English more accurately it was a battle between the Highland largely Catholic Scots and a Hanoverian army joined by many lowland Protestant Scots brother fought brother us with the Sons of the Chisum of Strad class plan fought clan including the McDonald's who fought on both sides more than 50 Campbell's were captured fighting for the prints although the plan itself was firmly on the government side Charles escaped from the carnage leaving Cumberland to write his name in the annals of infamy prisoners were butchered with a savagery such as had never before disgraced a British Army to this day the innocent roadside flower Sweet William is known in Scotland as stinking Billy after the butcher William of Cumberland but what followed was even worse the Highland Chiefs who had fought for Charles were either hanged or exiled and their estates forfeited Lovat the chief of Clan Fraser who had taken no active part in the battle became the last peer to be condemned and executed in Britain a price of thirty thousand poems was put on the prince's head but with the help of loyal friends including flora MacDonald he evaded the government troops disguised as Flores made betty bark he made his escape from the u.s. to sky and eventually by ship back to france with the passing of the disarming act of 1746 no Highlander was permitted to bear arms with Thornton or play the pipes the hereditary judicial power of the Chiefs was stripped from them along with the lands the chain of events was set in motion that would result in a virtual destruction of the Gallic way of life Oh your knee comes to Oh Oh ah it's impossible to put a figure on the number of Scots who have emigrated in the years since cotton the country's population has always been its greatest export but in the 200 years between 1750 and 1950 it's estimated that the Highlands of Scotland lost more than a quarter of a million people many went south to the industrial centers of Glasgow and Edinburgh but still more went abroad on a succession of emigrant vessels some went voluntarily in search of a better life others went unwillingly crossing those who are clearing them from their native land they're not brutes and human people fancy a brute of a man who'd put up woman with seven were family out setting up against the wall are nobody was allowed to go near us he wore people were all worn anybody who'd help us they were out - my father was put in prison for six weeks because he was an educator my mother was put up to the house with some another family I was only a baby on the breast that was in 1886 so Lima Kreskin Alister McGrath Dell brewery must rest he I must rest them column of clothes fluorine explodes the I must load you will not float according to the population role of 1852 more than 100 copters lived here in two adjoining villages in sky sua sheesh and barovik he made a living by raising barley and potatoes and grazing some stock in the place of penguin but in that year Lord Godfrey William Wentworth MacDonald fourth Baron of the Isles and great great grandfather of the present Lord Godfrey decided that the land should be given over to sheep grazing the people had to go the clearance of Bora reg in 1853 was one of the most ruthless in Highland history women and children with their possessions were thrown out in the snow and the doors nailed up they lived like animals for months in the open before accepting their inevitable exile I have paid 66 went to the McDonald's I am NOT one farthing in arrears to be cast out of my house and my home to make waiver his sheep is what I never expected it is breaking my heart the proud boast that there could be no joy without clan donald had never run more Hollow the link between the chief and his kinsmen never more cruelly undermined I think it is a very sad thing when an entire people when an entire way of looking at things disappears and whether it's the Highlanders the gales or whoever is it then the whole world I think the whole of humanity is impoverished if one dimension of it disappears in that way there was nothing inevitable about the Highland Clearances the difference here was that people were pushed out in appalling circumstances very often the people who remained were confined to the worst areas of land all the best one was given to incoming sheep farmers and that was the real tragedy and that was the big big difference as between the Highlands and other parts of Western Europe what came clear when you began looking at the Laird's papers themselves is that some Laird's at least and particularly the ones who tended to save papers had maintained some kind of concern for their tenantry in the course of the enormous economic and social transformations that were going on in the highlands from the 45 until the end of the 19th century a hundred years the fort barovik the first highland immigrants were already settling in the Carolinas after Culloden the tax man class for centuries the link between the chief and his tenantry had quickly recognized but the old order was changing they were the first to hit the emigrant trail in these early days often against the Chiefs wishes before the end of the Napoleonic Wars almost all of the Laird's in Scotland and particularly in the highlands were not at all enthusiastic about their population leaving for overseas it was felt that if you were losing people you were somehow losing a labor force and you were losing wealth and this was not in the long run to be good for you if you're in circumstances where you're being very badly treated where your land is being taken away from you and you then decide as a result of this to go overseas then you may not have been forced in the sense that somebody came along and actually took you by the scruff of the neck and through your eyes but in any other real sense of the word you have been forced its circumstances have been created by other people which have made it virtually essential for you to leave the Highland Chiefs and landlords are discovered through where their true kinsmen foremost among them an Akula board the great long-legged chippy what was happening at for a vague in the 1850s was just a chapter in a tragedy that had been unfolding all over the highlands now the broad valley of strife neighbor and sutherland is given over entirely to sheep the only evidence that people once lived here can be found in the scattered mounds of stones the graveyards of once-popular siliceous sutherland was where the first concerted opposition to the rule of the Sheep flared into open rioting but as the opposition was snuffed out and the crafters decanted to the marginal lands around the coast Sutherland was seen as a model for the new improved agricultural methods when the your child born first Juke died in 1833 he owned not only a million acres of Sutherland almost the whole county but also the fanciful castle don't Robin his annual income mostly from his states in England was three hundred thousand pounds a year a multi-million pound fortune nowadays the most he ever received in rental from his scattered Sutherland tenants was a mere fifteen thousand pounds a year from a financial standpoint his agricultural improvements had been a great success the slopes of Sutherland were white with sheep yet few of those who had been driven from their homes to make way for the Chipettes could bring themselves to condemn the Juke or his Duchess instead they blamed the Jukes factor patrick seller and later James Law the Commissioner of Sutherland estates it wasn't until seven years after the Jukes death that a stunned Briton learned what had actually been happening in Sutherland in the name of progress a local stonemason with a talent for the colorful phrase and anger in his heart found a publisher for his memories of Breanna and wash key the year of the burnings his name was Donald McLeod and McLeod was at the township of Baden wash Caen when Patrick seller and men arrived on June the 12th 1814 I was present at the pulling down and burning of the house of woody Chisholm in which was lying his wife's mother an old bedridden woman of nearly 100 years of age I informed the persons about to set fire to the house of this circumstance and prevailed on them to wait until mr. stellar came on his arrival I told him of a poor old woman being in a condition unfit for removal he replied damn her the old witch she has lived too long better burn fire was immediately set to the house and the blankets in which she was carried were in flames before she could be got out she died within five days MacLeod was to give personal testimony to this and other clearances and strata never when cellar was brought a trial in Inverness on a charge of murder but despite supporting evidence from other Crocker's cellar was unanimously found not guilty and still the burnings went on Donald McLeod and his family were cleared from the old village of Russell his wife became incurably mad and the family was forced to flee to Canada the Sutherland clearances and spasmodic violence continued until the 1840s by which time it was estimated more than 10,000 people had been removed from the county virtually all overseas the bard kenneth mckenzie was to write he McNew ekeus weakest staved and Sabu deity in Bagram he me Tomas betrayed I see the hills the valleys and the slopes but they do not lighten my sorrow I see the bands departing on the white sail ships I see the gale rising from his door I see the people going and there is no love for them in the north but Donald McLeod's gloomy memories had somehow touched the conscience of the nation in 1845 The Times of London carried a report on the clearances the people know are a thin meagre half starved looking and stunted race the worst sign the exhibit however is their abject apathy the fact is they are starved down and kept in such perpetual terror of losing their Crofts their only livelihood that they are spirit broken and hopeless in neighboring Ross Shire cleared crafters were reduced to camping out in the local church yard the church itself was kept locked behind the church in the churchyard a long kind of booth was erected the roof formed of tarpaulin stretched over poles the sides closed in with Horse cloths rugs blankets and plaids on inquiry I found that this was the refuge of the Glencoe V people a fire was kindled in the churchyard round which the poor children clustered to cradles with infants in them were placed close to the fire and shelter drowned by the dejected looking mothers contrasted with a gloomy dejection of the grown-up and the aged was the perhaps not less melancholy picture of the poor children thoughtlessly playing round the fire pleased with the novelty of all around them before they were heralded on board the immigrant ship some of the copters scratched their names and poignant last messages on the church windows the names are still there a mute indictment to landlords who preferred sheep to men Glenn call the people the wicked generation they wrote as they huddled in that bear churchyard awaiting their fate into exile seeming almost to take the guilt upon themselves if the soft rock of kinsman ship had crumbled into the cruelty of Glenn Chaldean poor Eric then perhaps the greatest tragedy was that the fragile flower which had begun at all on the three white Mohave ona the Celtic Christianity of Columba had been turned over the centuries into the ugly doctrinal thistle of a religion and which guilt had replaced forgiveness in which fate had replaced freedom in which the constrictions of Calvinism had replaced the compassion of Christ Glenn Calvi had shown that as little pity could be expected from the church as from the landlord's shallow man who were stir this fake if the hearse then can earth gauntly through again consorted IV look around you and see the gentry with no pity for the poor creatures with no kindness to their kin they do not think that you belong to the land when the SES dr. Samuel Johnson had visited the Highlands with boss well twenty years after cotton he found that he had already come too late the clans retain little now of their original character their ferocity of temper is softened their military ardor extinguished and their reverence for their chiefs abated it affords a legislator little self applause to consider that where there was formerly an insurrection there is now a wilderness a hundred years later and a hundred thousand people fewer the wilderness remained but by the early 1880s a change had come in the temper of the people their patience if not their faith had been stretched too far resignation had given way to a smouldering resentment which finally flared into open rebellion by this time the tenants were in no doubt as to the true identity of their betrayers successive Chiefs of Clan Donald had pushed the men of brazen sky down to the infertile ground along the shore the clan chiefs claimed the higher more fertile ground for sheep grazing and then for deer now the men of blaze were no longer begging for land they were demanding it that demand was to ripple right across sky to Glendale and weak and kill mule then on to other areas - Luis - uist tabara 50 constables from Glasgow had been sent to arrest five crafters embrace who had driven their cattle on to Lord MacDonald's land sala mclean the renowned Gallic poet lives at prays several of his ancestors took part in the battle the police began to retreat towards Palfrey with their five prisoners as it was a fight started properly with sticks and stones and fists and the police were making a fighting retreat with their prisoner and protecting themselves partly who were volleys of stones by exposing the prisoners the whole story got wide publicity throughout Britain the police drew their buttons and with injuries roughly equal on both sides finally made their way with the prisoners to poetry Yellin for a line we on Ellen Maria's Milan Great Island Island of my desire it is not likely that the strife and suffering of brace will be seen requite 'add it is not certain that the debts of the Glendale martyr will be seen made good there is no hope of your townships rising high with gladness and laughter pity the eye that sees on the ocean the great dead bird of Scotland and further land raids took place at Glendale more warrants were issued including one for the arrest of the ringleader Jon McPherson in Glendale there are 500 men prepared for any emergency The Times reported the whole island of sky is in a state of wild excitement by now the government had to take action a gunboat was sent and after negotiations a person and his co-accused agreed to present themselves for trial in Edinburgh and events were now beginning to move in Westminster a fortnight before the so called glendale martyrs were jailed a Royal Commission of Inquiry was set up to look into the crofters grievances this was to become the Napier Commission it was appropriate that the first sitting of the Commission should be in the old church here at brace on Sky among those who gave evidence was Angus Stewart the great granduncle a poet solemn acclaims baron francis napier the chairman of the committee was himself a boarder landowner but showing no fear stewart laid the blame squarely on his own Laird the 6th Lord MacDonald I cannot bear evidence to the distress of my people without bearing evidence to the oppression and high-handedness of the land Lord and His factor it was the first time a crafter had ever publicly accused a landlord when asked what Lord MacDonald could do to help Stewart replied it is easy to answer that give us land out of the 20 that is about for cultivation give us land at a suitable rent moving on from sky Lord Napier also heard evidence on the neighboring island of drazi after Culloden rossi supported some 2,000 people now there are fewer than 200 when my great grandfather Charles McLeod represented the honors crafters of the Native Commission he said this island was formed from ancient times for the rearing of big able men who in the olden times successfully defended their Island their castle was never captured what is their present state know what is in 1883 the inhabitants are turned out of their homes unheard of the set on fire and packed aboard rotten sailing ship and landed on the other side of the globe among savages in part to say the state is far worse than deja Lights where in the fairest bondage column MacLeod can still recite the testimony his grandfather gave to the Napier Commission as accurately as the deed was delivered in 1883 columns cottage here at south garnish on Razi has become a place of pilgrimage for returning exiles and their descendants he corresponds with prossima clothes all over the world colum and his wife are the only people now left in this cleared tone ship when the white sailed ships took the Rossi people away columns for beers refused to go with that kind of bloodline he was not going to give in likely to a local authority which refused to build him an extension of the road to his Croft so over 10 years colum painstakingly built his own road a road capable of taking transport in the process he moved 60,000 tons of stone and went through six wheelbarrows and eleven shovels hello wispy cow yes I'm crazy from where I'm from Fort Worth Texas from capture well it's a long distance from here yes in a sense Callum has become the keeper of the conscience of the island of Razi no visitor escapes without a lecture on the depredations faced by his forebears the crafter who resided up here one of them that I remember an old crafter he said when give you weren't allowed to cut a train on your land and the peasants we're as numerous as the challenges you see about here the landlord said you weren't allowed to touch them or otherwise you would be flown out of the older and for many who come here Kalama clothes few miles of narrow road have become a symbol not only of what can be achieved by people who live in remote places but of the indomitable spirit of the Highland Gale to survive in his home well it was awfully nice to meet you woods - no pleasure thank you very much for everything thanks for your burning all the bugs okay - homework bye bye bye bye speaking of nature' hezonia osaka Sala spin a bacon and also in a rock mother Adam his crew deacon GUI lives been a cleaning is a March there will return the stock of the tenant three who were driven over the seas and the gentry will be righted as the the crafters where deer and sheep will be wheeled away and the Glens will be tilled there will be a time of sowing and reaping a time of reward for robbers and the cold ruins dances of houses will be built on by our kinsmen the dying prophecy of medieval great mary of songs who foresaw a day that has he yet to dawn in the Highlands of Scotland but from 1886 with the passing of Gladstone's clotting act at least tenants could no longer be evicted forcibly there were even greater immigrations still to come but these were sailed under more subtle and powerful eyes incorporated into words like democracy and choice sapped by history and poverty at home thousands were to receive bright letters from America Britain in a strange faltering foreign language English which said that all was well in Carolina of Nova Scotia and asked if anyone had died back home for both sides the pain was so great that all was surface brightness so that all or nearly all was left unsaid Oh you

Channel: TalkieBox Media

Views: 26,680

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Keywords: Clan Donald (Family), Scotland (Country), Hebrides (Island Group), MacDonald, Vikings

Id: J_KfeKhXEI0

Length: 51min 36sec (3096 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2015