Skye, variously known as the Winged Isle (An t-Eilean Sgitheanach), or Isle of the Mist (Eilean a' Cheo) is where I was born. As far back as I can remember, my mind has been imprinted with the dark, jagged peaks of the Red Cuillin, the unexpected green beauty of croftlands, the white horses of the wind-lashed sea.
My people were from Suisnish in the south-west of the island. Cleared from their houses by Lord MacDonald's factors for sheep in the early part of the 19th century, they had little choice but to let themselves be re-settled on the unyielding stone and bog of the north-eastern coast.
Little is left of Suisnish now save for a few tumbled stones, but further along the coast as you approach the village of Boreraig via the high track from Kilchrist, your breath is taken away as you reach the final crest and see what lies below. Laid out in the casual pattern with which the people added their houses through the years, the homes of Boreraig still stand. The walls of stone are long without roofs, but round their curved corners you can still see tracks to and from the homes, ghostly memorials to old patterns of friendship and dependence.
"As I was returning from my ramble a strange wailing sound reached my ears at intervals on the breeze from the west. On gaining the top of a hill on the south side of the valley, I could see a long and motley procession wending along the road that led from Suisnish. It halted at the point in the road opposite Kilbride, and there the lamentation became long and loud ... Every one was in tears; ... and it seemed as if they could not tear themselves away. When they set off once more, a cry of grief went up to heaven; the long plaintive wail, like a funeral coronach, was resumed; and, after the last of the emigrants had disappeared behind the hill, the sound seemed to re-echo through the whole wide valley of Strath in one prolonged note of desolation".
(Archibald Geikie - Geologist 1853)
Legend has it that the men of Suisnish and Boreraig had to take part in a foot-race in order to get the best of the new crofts. Whether they got them or not, most families eaked out an existence with a single cow, a share in a rowing-boat, the chance of a good potato harvest and seasonal work on the boats with the merchant marine. This broadly describes the subsistence of my people until for the second time in the 20th century dark war-clouds rearing up from the East took our young men away and this particular way of living began to pass into history.