The money’s still out there

Letters

Vol. 33 No. 21 · 3 November 2011

From David Craig

Neal Ascherson was right to argue that most emigration from Scotland has been ‘aspirational’ rather than forced (LRB, 6 October). What jars is the slant of his piece. Does he still not know that whole glens were depopulated and turned into sheep ranches long before the collapse of the kelp industry (1820s) and the Potato Famine (1846)? I have interviewed direct descendants of people evicted from Strathnaver (in 1814 and 1819), who survived by licking oatmeal dust from the floor after their dwellings had been nailed up; from Strathfleet a few years earlier, where houses were torched by estate heavies while the men were away at the French wars; and from Kildonan, where people drove their sheep for miles to a temporary place only to have them savaged by dogs. By all means let us remember the majority of emigrants who made it through to a decent life in America and Australia – as long as we also remember the thousands rough-housed out of their homes (looms burned, fires dowsed with the day’s milk), or the one in six who died of typhus, smallpox and cholera on the emigrant ships.

David Craig
Burton-in-Kendal, Lancashire