THE LAST CROFT
By IAN MACPHERSON
THE Highland clearances were a 'tragedy from every point of view. They were carried out forcibly, and brutally. They raised enmities which have not yet subsided, and will not subside for many years. They bent, perhaps broke, the spirit of initiative in the Highlands. And, it may be worst of all, they gave Highlanders the impression that outcry will in the end gain redress for every evil.
But if there had been no evictions, would circumstances in the Highlands differ radically from what they are today ? There were comparatively few clearances in Upper Speyside. Some townships escaped altogether, and Crathie was one of them. But in Crathie only the other day there was sold the household plenishing and farm-gear of the last croft. Time, the final landlord and most determined of factors, has effected slowly what men spared to do. To say this is not to make any effort to justify the clearances. The fact that time in the long run does all men to death is no excuse whatever for slaying men out of hand. But, as it is the fate of men to die, so, one must ask, is it the fate of crofts to become derelict and crofters to cease ? Crathie says Yes. Forty years ago it was a thriving place. Fifty years ago it carried a dozen families, and sent almost fifty children to school at Gergask by Laggan Bridge. Today it is a rickle of stones, a maze of crooked fences, a thing preserved in memory only. Its last roof, with its mouldering thatch, will in a year come down of its own accord if it is not burned to rid the country of an eyesore and a danger to sheep.
Crathie, and many another crofting township in Badenoch, are evidence enough that although there had never been evictions, there would have been a flight from life on Highland crofts. There are, of course, plenty of crofts and townships still alive in the Highlands. But it is not by accident that most of them are in remote places. For in the wilds of the West the gentler, less laborious example of modern life is slow in penetrating. But Speyside is open to the influence of modern life. At the Crathie sale even those who lamented the passing of the crofts looked askance at the old house, the hovel of a dwelling, and said people would not live in such houses now. And they looked at the little crooked fields, and at the water- tub fifty yards from the door, and said people would not work endless hours for a scanty livelihood any more. The crofting township is an anachronism. Wheie it lives today it is, as it has always been, because women enslave themselves to it. Women are the Highland Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water. It is far from accidental that when repairs are done on a croft, it is almost invariably to the byres and steadings. Amongst the heaps of stones at Crathie there were fairly well-preserved walls here and there, and these had been steadings. In the place where the sale was held the dwelling-house had a,thatched roof, windows less than two feet square, which did not open, a chimney in the centre of the roof. The adjoining farm buildings had new iron roofs with skylights much larger than the house windows— for the men's convenience, not the women's.
Many people who were at the sale (and paid_ very dear for cattle) said that, the land was good, a living could be made. But all agreed, not with these twisted little fields, not in that house, and above all not with common hill-ground and club sheep. And these objections bring one to the exact reasons why crofting townships die even though the evictor spared them. They are anachronisms. They are inefficient under modern, or indeed any, conditions. They represent a manner of farming which grew in a grossly overcrowded country which was well fed only during years of good harvest. In bad years the people hungered. Only fifty years ago there came a bad winter on Crathie, following a bad harvest. At New Year there was only a boll of meal in the whole town- ship. The men, as gay as if they owned the world, were playing shinty in the snow. But the fact that they were light- hearted does not diminish their distress.
Crofts were established to live a communal life which served well enough when the hills were free, when every man was his own tradesman, when there were summer shielings. But at their best they were inefficient. The communal is almost always greedy of communal expense, and careless of communal improvement. It is no libel, it is simply a statement of noted fact, that crofters' shepherds on club grazings are badly paid. The little they get is grudged. And the crofter expects the shepherd to wait for his money—expects him in fact to share his bad times but not his good. Naturally crofters' sheep are not cared for so well as those of a farmer who pays bis shepherds fairly and without quibble. Further, crofters' sheep are as good as the dullest, greediest, and laziest crofter in the combine likes to make them, which is, usually, not good at all. The difference between crofters' sheep, communally reared and tended, and crofters' cattle, individually reared and tended, is glaring at any autumn sale when crofters' lambs get low prices and crofters' calves get high. The crofter, forced into communal ownership of his sheep by the Club system, rebels against it, and as a result it is next door to impossible to get any voluntary co-operation, in the owning of implements, say, or bulls. Now this is not the same dislike for co-operation which almost every Scottish farmer has. It is the result of the difficulties which arise through the enforced co-operation of the sheep Club, a natural reaction towards individual and jealous ownership.
It is often suggested that if capital were supplied to crofts, if their fields were re-arranged for better and more efficient cultivation, if their hill-grazing was fenced so as to give each man his own flock instead of a share in a club flock, and if above all the houses crofters live in were renovated, then men would gladly live in the Highland country. But crofting life is, while it remains, a tenacious and jealous thing. To reconstruct a crofting township reasonably would almost require armed force. The most obvious improve- ment would rouse someone's ire. It is sad to see people leave the country. II is sad to see unroofed houses, even though they were hovels. But when the bad houses are gone, and the crofts closed, we have a much better chance of seeing a reasonable agriculture in their place than while they stand and are open. In Crathie now, with a good deal of capital and a great deal of faith, one could establish three or four comfortable holdings. One could not hope to do that while the vested interest of even the last croft remained.
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