But before Johnson came, Flora was writing to the Duke of Atholl: ‘My husband by various losses and the education of our children . . . fell through the little means we had, so as not to be able to keep this possession, especially as the rents are so prodigiously augmented; therefore of course must, contrary to our inclination, follow the rest of our friends who have gone this three years passed to America. . . .’

Prodigiously increased rents and America. It is the true Highland story: the tragedy, without the fine legendary air, of the folk themselves.

She is begging His Grace’s help for her son Alexander, who ‘is bordering on nineteen years of age . . . your Grace’s doing something for him would be the giving of real relief to my perplexed mind before I leave (with reluctance) my native land, and a real piece of charity. . . .’

It does not appear, however, that His Grace provided the charity, for a few months after the learned Doctor’s visit, Flora with her husband Allan and some of her family were on the high seas, and within three years Allan was writing, ‘I am here with one (Alexander) of my Sons, seventeen months a Prisoner. My wife is in North Carolina seven hundred miles from me in a very sickly under state of health, with a younger Son, a Daughter and four Grand Children.’ Allan Macdonald had helped to raise a Highland force in the American War, and after the defeat at Widow Moore’s Creek was taken prisoner with his two sons.

‘Always the same old story,’ said Eoin. We were heading in the Dunvegan direction. ‘Take Borreraig over there, the home of the MacCrimmons, the greatest pipers the world has ever known or ever will know. And not only the greatest pipers—but the greatest composers of pipe music. Creators. Think of their piobaireachd. My God!’ said he reverently. ‘And to think of the Macleod chief coming in the end to MacCrimmon and demanding a rent! He must not only retain him as his piper but he must at last have a rent, even if it was to be only half a rent. Nicely calculated, what! That finished Borreraig. They put up a fine commemorative tablet to the MacCrimmons there, short ago, in great style, pipes blowing an’ all.’

I laughed at the change in tone.

‘And what happened,’ I asked, ‘to Mary Macleod, your greatest Skye poet, and a great lyric poet anywhere? Didn’t she write a poem or something that the reigning chief thought was hardly respectful enough to him, and didn’t he banish her from his realm?’

‘He did,’ said Eoin.

‘You took that turn a bit sharp,’ I suggested.

‘Never mind,’ said Eoin. ‘Did you ever find the chiefs doing anything else?’

I had once heard him give a talk on the rising of the Glendale crofters, and as the car sped along, we spoke of our kinsfolk and of the way the chiefs or lairds had dealt with them.