It is a strange story, almost incredible at times in its vanity and greed and treachery and savagery. Wherever we went in the West we encountered it, until at last we hated the burden of thinking about it.

The key to its understanding turns in the lock of landlordism, particularly the money-landlordism that came in after the ’45 and culminated over half a century later in the unforgivable brutalities of the land evictions or Clearances. Many think that the ruthless driving or burning of the folk from their immemorial homes was peculiar to one or two regions of the Highlands, like Kildonan in Sutherland. This is not so. For over two generations these Clearances went on all over the Highlands.

I once talked to a man from Tiree who, as a boy, had seen his bed-ridden grandmother carried out from his burning home and placed under an upturned boat, while the landlord’s men stood by until the house was consumed. That man should have succeeded his father in the large comfortable croft on Tiree, but now after most of an adventurous lifetime at sea, he had the job of looking after the discharging and loading of boats at a West Coast pier. He could neither read nor write and had such fine character that he was simple and kindly. I remember the day he came across to the harbourmaster’s office, his face white with wrath. An order had come down from The Office up at The Works to stow a miscellaneous cargo in such a way that time might be saved at different ports of unloading. If ‘the Serang’ (as we called him) had obeyed this order the cargo might, in his estimation, have shifted in a heavy sea and so endangered the vessel and her crew. Not only was the fulfilling of such an order unthinkable to the Serang, but I truly believe he would have sacrificed his life rather than have carried it out. When his foreman appeared and publicly reprimanded him, he stood outraged and speechless. Then he found his tongue, gave it to the foreman for a raking minute, and walked off the pier. He came straight over to the harbourmaster and myself who were his friends. His English at such a moment was naturally uncertain. But I remember the culminating sentence: ‘I could have broken the pugger in three halves.’

He lost his job, and what finally became of that great man I do not know.

But somehow he stands in my mind as representative of his race, the race that was outraged and beaten and driven forth by the money-changers of a new age of greed and fear. The civilisation of the Celtic folk. Tenure of the land was the Gael’s by immemorial custom. Decency and character, kindliness to children and to strangers, love of heroic deeds and heroic men, came out in his oral literature and in his music. The chief in ancient times had been his heroic leader, his heroic neighbour, and so it was in his blood to trust and respect him.