Eight years ago, at Buaile nam Bodach on Barra, the landlady at the B&B had said, 'My great-aunt was cleared from Pabbay' - the next island but two to the south, the third-last joint in the backbone of 'the Long Island' of the Outer Hebrides. I was researching my book On the Crofters' Trail at the time, collecting from people whatever their grand or great-grandparents had told them about the High-land Clearances, when landlords desperate to increase the income from their land forced many thousands of small tenants from their homes by a mixture of bribery, threats and the torching of their thatch, their roof-timbers and their looms.

LRB 30 October 1997 | PDF Download