Disembedded
The Highland Clearances
They are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall.
General James Wolfe
Green blankets a warmth of womb. Barren rock scattered like dice shreds through time in an echo of memory whose arms are folded over the chest of dream.
The sea sings to the dead.
There is nobody here.
The birds own the land, ruling from their towering sea stack thrones. The sheep don’t look up. They are devoted to devouring the green. There’s nobody here. There are bones; in the ground and above it. Some decomposed, others still turning to dust in the slow dance of being left behind, to be reclaimed by the earth. Nobody comes to visit them anymore. Nobody leaves flowers. The grave stones have long fallen over. Names eroded. Nobody knows they are there. Nobody knows that they were ever here. The remains of the buried still breakthrough after the storms lash the hillsides. There is nothing here. The remains of the stones that once held a family in the hearth of a home have long been claimed by the moss and the Gorse. Those that do come this way walk right past and right over what remains so that they can take pictures of the birds and feed the sheep.
Highlanders.
The laughter and the lilt breakthrough the loneliness of loss on the back of a briny breeze. The ghosts of the Gaels breakthrough the salt stained scars to scream. We were once here. We lived. Felt the sun kiss warm on our faces. We knew the smell of the sea. We were once here. We loved.
I can taste the mist of their tears as I kneel on the ground to offer palms to earth in recognition. I feel their song. Even the sheep who dance above them sing along.
Where is everybody?
The rest got sent away. Evicted? Even saved, depending on what or whose words that you have read. Saved by sword and circumstance. Rescued by fire and by blame. The first waves of removal were by brute force and much later the rest, were maybe by choice. Survival has children to feed. Don’t get in her way. The rent collecting factors of the land barons proclaimed that they were saving a disheveled hopeless barren lot. They cleared them. Removed to improve they claimed. The sheep did make much more money and caused significantly less scuffling strife.
Can we ever truly know the truth? We weren’t there. Context is King. Dissonance is always reduced to a story. His-story. History. There are always winners and losers. Who writes the book? Does history tell lies? Follow the money.
“You are from the clearances”, the locals now say as if it were a place and us an apparition.
We met this world thousands of miles away. Yet the groan of breathing bone tells us we were born here. Removed before we even arrived. Thrown to the sea. Sink or swim. “No great mischief if they fall”. Yet here we are. Standing on a hill at Handa. Something deep inside always knows the way home.
The Highland Clearances form one of the most controversial conversations of Scottish history. The term refers to 1750-1880 when 150,000 Highlanders and Islanders were displaced from the lands that their families had occupied for more than generations. Initially most were moved to coastal settlements to feed the growing industrial needs of the machine of the time. As viability marginalized so did their worth and they were emigrated to the fates of their own fortunes on the boats to everywhere.
There are so many different accounts of the Highland Clearances, and within them just as many conflicting stories about what actually happened. The aftermath of 1746 Culloden collided with the empire’s ongoing need for highland swords while fear of the clanned culture of the kilt crashed into the industrial revolution creating a tsunami. Unfortunately some got washed back out to sea. Even the tales of those of mine own still conflict. Some saying we were lucky to get out and others lamenting a loss that has never rested in peace. Maybe the stories are telling us now? Do the facts still have the capacity to speak, even if just a whisper?
We move on in our own migration. We write on.
We still know the way home. How, you ask?
Just ask the birds.
Disembedded
(Standing on a Hill at Handa)
Fire and time can never hide the lies
The Gorse grows over the scars in the land
Her thorns a crown of defiance
To cover up the damp tears of the moor
that mist up over the mountains
The spade cut through the peat
yet the rock broke the blade
The sword can never evict
the soul of the soil
The kilt sold as fodder for profit
in the empty promises of salvation
The stone bears witness
to what got cleared away
A sacred tongue
A people
disposed in the dispossessed deception of progress
The wind always brings back
what gets thrown in the sea
Even the sheep
still sing in Gaelic
© Jamie Millard
The trees were long cleared. Yet standing on the exposed barren rock, I felt the story of a deeper knowing moving through me. Something is always left behind as a witness. Whole villages can be moved out with fire and sword. They can be starved out. The people were cleared. Yet something stays behind. The soul of the place remained. The rock knows. The rock waits. The rock sings. Something ancient was still very much alive and active. On a hill at Handa, I heard the sweetness of Gaelic, singing softly through the stone.
Not all those who wander are lost; sometimes we are just finding our way- home.
Thank you for Being-Here.
The full audio can be found under the main titles above.
Lots of love,
Jamie
The rocks know; the moving waters know; the trees of the fields know; as do all the birds and all the land animals. Humans that want to know are the few of us who listen to the sounds of the past to help close the gap of alienation between ourselves and Nature. It is a tall order.
Thank you a million times, Jamie, for your work in closing that gap. It begins the healing, the removing of the dross of industrialization and computerization. It is important work, the work of a poet and seer.
Beautiful writing Jamie. If history lessons at school had looked more like this I probably would have liked them better. 😅 I wonder how history would around different if we were telling the stories of what went well as opposed to keeping the stories of injustice and madness alive. What we focus on we get more of, I have witnessed that a thousand times. Sometimes I wonder if we keep the cycle going by how we tell our stories. Thanks for this poetic and philosophical excursion. Places carry energy, I can totally agree. Keep shining!