Beauty and tragedy in Scotland

A visit to the clan Gunn museum at the small town of Latheron in Caithness was blessed with sunshine in an area more used to grey skies and howling winds. Life in this part of northern Scotland would have been rough enough before people were forced to move from inland crofts to the coast to make way for sheep. The highland clearances, as this trdagedy has come to be known, must be Scotland’s worthiest claim on man’s inhumanity to fellow man.

The clan museum is housed in an old church beside the main road running north and south. Attractive enough from the outside, the stag’s head and tartan cloth décor at the entrance sets the stage for what’s inside. We arrive early, just as a young man with dreadlocks and a broad northern English accent is unlocking the door. A browse through the graveyard while he finishes his smoko reveals many potential ancestors. This is clearly the homeland and final resting place for many of the old clan.
An hour later, I come away with no souvenirs and a feeling that the people commemorated in this building are more likely to be the ones that chased my humble kin from the land. Nothing suggests otherwise, and there is no specific information about when and why so many of the clan moved south. Most likely it was due to poverty and the clearances. My lot appeared in Leith, the seaport of Edinburgh around the 1840s, so the dates would tie in.

Between Latheron and Helmsdale, which is the wee fishing town where we stayed, a sign points to the remains of a clearance village with the unusual name Badbea. The name is said to be derived from bad = tuft and beithe = birch. A short walk past warning signs about sheers cliffs and high winds leads to a beauty spot with a long dry stone wall separating the land from about 100 metres of uncultivated cliff top. The uncharacteristically calm and sunny weather can do little to mask the harsh reality of life in such a place. The story goes that animals and children had to be tethered against the danger of high winds.
Extended families of Gunns and Sutherlands lived in this godforsaken spot. Their names are now immortalized on a monument erected by a descendant who came back to visit from New Zealand. The last resident left Badbea in 1911 and only a few ruins remain.
Its a beautiful day though, with the sun shining on rocky remains of crofts, a calm sea in the distance, tall digitalis waving in the breeze and other hardy plants in flower.
But the wall brings a sense of sorrow, running miles away over the horizon. Men from Badbea village earned a pittance building that wall to separate good land for the sheep from the miserable cliff edge their families were forced to live and die on. A tragedy indeed!