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IN 1860 the deer forests were
few and far between.
They were mere remnants of the old forests of the
time of James IV., who first put sheep in Ettrick
forest, and was ashamed to own it, although he
gained thereby. He also had brood mares summering in the Inchcallan forest, of which the Black
Mount was an appendage, which mares and their
followers he removed in winter to Falkland and
other Lowland possessions of his. Along the ridge
of Alba, and in mountains elsewhere, deer and shealings held their own stiffly, although with many
changes, down to the institution of the sheep regime
after Culloden days. Even after 1770 scattered
deer were to be met with wherever the shealings
still existed; and by a "timchioll mor" or great
circuit drive-in they could be gathered together at
the "co-sheilgs" and "iollcraigs," which had been
the slaughtering-places from immemorial times.
The Jacobite rebellion of 1715 received its baptism
of deer blood at such a great circuit drive on the
Braes of Mar. When James VI. went to England,
the royal forests in the Highlands were still of large
extent. Bit by bit they were given out or sold
to private owners, and after 1770 nothing but a
shadowy ghost of them remained. It must be
acknowledged that, in the old days, the royal forests
and the forests belonging to the great nobles were
often refugees for outlaws and thieves, and that the
sheep regime marked the full establishment of the
reign of law in what had been the deer forest solitudes of the olden times.
The vacant shealing huts,
within and on the
skirts of the forests, provided the outlaws and
thieves with winter residences, and they killed the
deer for food. When in peril in one place they
could shift off readily to another place. This
shifting about gave rise to a sort of trade-union
between the outlaws of districts widely apart. The
Clan Grigor, with their certainly real, although to
this day not clearly ascertained grievances, from
the turmoils consequent on the disaster of Flodden
to the death of Rob Roy, furnished the outlaws
with the leaders that are most notorious in song,
legends, and Privy Council minutes such as Duncan
Ladosach Gregor of Glenstrae, beheaded at Bealach
in 1570, Alastair, his son, who officiated at the
gruesome ceremony over the head of the murdered
King's forester in the kirk at Balquhidder, and
fought with the Colquhouns at Glenfruin, Gilderoy
and John Dubh Gearr of Charles the First's time,
and Patrick Roy, brother of John of Glenstrae, who
seized upon Menzies of Weem's Brae of Rannoch
lands during the Covenant War disturbances, when
almost all the outlaws, hoping for spoils, made
themselves inlaws by taking the side of the King,
and fighting for him most manfully. Lochaber,
Glencoe, Moidart, Arisaig, the islanders, and Gunns
of the North were much associated with the Clan
Gregor, and the whole of the lawless had a market
in Ireland for such of their spoils as they did not
need for themselves. Until Jacobitism received its
death blow, loyalty to the dethroned dynasty
secured the protection of great chiefs and landowners
to raiders and outlaws. The law-abiding population
could defend themselves, and did defend themselves
in their winter towns, but were never quite safe
from having their cattle stolen from their shealings.
It was not so much as a robber as an insurer against
depredations by other robbers, that Rob Roy raised
his "blackmail," and in Perthshire and Argyleshire,
in a unique way, gained far from ill-deserved
popularity.
When outlaws and raiding
bands were put down,
and individual thieves were got well in hand, thanks
to the combined forces of law and religion, sheep
could for the first time be safely put upon shealings
and on ancient forest lands. Imperative economic
reasons the sure hope of making much profit for
themselves, induced the larger number of the
Highland proprietors of the last thirty years of the
eighteenth century to do so. But still not a few of
them were so tenacious of use and wont that they
declined to move on with the main body of their
class, and went down to their graves leaving their
estate to their heirs much in the same condition as
they found them. The men, however, who would
not go in for change were not the owners of large
farms and shealing stretches, but owners of small
or moderate-sized estates with, for the Highlands,
liberal shares of arable land.
Enlightened self-interest
induced Highland
nobles, chiefs, and other landlords, between 1770
and 1800, to convert the mountain solitudes into
sheep runs until there was nothing left of them unstocked but the few old forests, or bits of them,
which a few magnates kept still under deer for their
own and their friends' hunting. But I question if
any of them thought then of ruthlessly breaking and
brushing aside the thousand kindly ties with the
people who lived on their lands. They were, like
these people, for a long time blind to the impending
doom of the domestic industries on the profits of
which the coal-less districts fairly well participated,
until new machinery driven by steam power, division
of labour, and concentration in towns and mineral
districts, changed the whole industrial order. If
evictions were thought of as they must have been
by the foreseeing they were not much spoken of or
carried out until after Waterloo, when the Highlands
lost their previous value as a nursery for soldiers,
and when the calanas was already suffering from
the blight which was slowly and surely killing it.
Feudalism arid clannishness
in the Highlands
the two always by a mysterious process amalgamated
together, simple habits of life, and simple tools of
industry, gave the superseded order a stability which
the lapse of centuries did not essentially change.
The case is now entirely different. Who of the
landlord promoters of the sheep regime foresaw that
in a century sheep-farming should commence to be
superseded by deer forests in more than the places
which had been of old devoted to shealings and
deer? Change follows change in endless chain. To
change the metaphor, rural life is tossing on a heaving sea of changes in a badly-equipped boat striving
to struggle to land.
When I went to England in
1860, mountain
sheep-farming had reached its highest point of
expansion. Grouse moors and fishings were also
paying high rents, and shooting lodges were being
run up. A few derelict Highland estates had passed
into the hands of new owners, but there was yet no
reason to suppose that the change of ownership
should proceed very far when the rent-rolls of
Highland properties had so remarkably swelled up,
and when old landed families were, or should be,
tenacious in keeping a firm hold on the ancestral
lands. After twenty years' absence from Scotland,
I found when I came to Inverness that the 1860
situation was undergoing a series of changes, the end
of which has not yet been reached. For one thing
the profit and loss scale was turning decidedly
against sheep-runs, the rents of which were falling,
and in favour of deer forests, the rents of which
were rising, and the purchasing demand for which
was far exceeding the supply.
The Earl of Dudley, as tenant
of the Blackmount
Forest, was paying a rent of 4500 to the Earl
of Breadalbane. It was, however, an American
millionaire, Mr W. L. Winans, who "topped
creation" by his taking of moors and forests
between Beauly and Kintail. He took all he could
get regardless of the huge cost he had to pay, and
was vexed that he could not get more. He paid a
rent of 5750 to Lord Lovat, of 2940 to the
Chisholm, and of 1104 to Mr Mackenzie of Kintail.
And for all this extravagance he could not be called
a true sportsman. He believed in drives of deer
and grouse, and in sumptuous hill picnics. Others
of his countrymen who rented Highland forests,
shootings, and fishings, were true sportsmen, and so,
too, were his own sons. Sir John Ramsden, who
purchased 138,000 acres of mountain land in Upper
Badenoch, including Ben Alder Forest, may be
taken to represent the class of new proprietors who
bought estates in the Highlands, mainly for sporting
purposes. Sir John Ramsden was not indeed the
first English purchaser of a great Highland estate,
for Lord Dudley had been before him as owner of
Glengarry, which, however, he did not keep long
before he sold it to the good Scotsman, Mr Ellice.
The earlier purchasers got better bargains than the
later ones. Prices rose as if bidders had gone mad,
and the temptation to sell was too strong to be
resisted by many old owners who were either
burdened with debts and settlements, or anxious to
provide their children with means for making new
starts in life under promising conditions. So all
over the Highlands and Islands land has, bit by bit,
and, sometimes, in big lumps, for now a long period,
been passing from old families to new owners. The
boom is yet on districts where sheep-runs can easily
be changed into deer forests. But I doubt whether
it can last much longer at its present height. It
has slackened already in crofter community districts.
Mr Andrew Carnegie got the estate of Skibo at a
price much reduced from what his predecessor, Mi-
Sutherland, had paid for it.
The same economic reason
natural love of profit
which, at the end of the eighteenth century,
caused shealings and forest lands to be stocked with
sheep, led to the reversal of that process at the end
of the nineteenth century. But when an almost
mad demand arose for the creation or purchase of
deer forests it could not be suddenly and completely
met. Owners who would gladly sell for the fancy
prices readily offered were tied down by strict entail
restrictions, until heirs, born after 1848, succeeded
their father, and regained liberty of sale by compounding with expectant heirs. Sheep farmers of
lands wanted for making new deer forests, had often
long leases, for the expiry of which impatient sports-
men, and profit-expecting landlords wishing to sell,
could not wait. Their tenants had therefore to be
bought out, and between compensation for giving
up their leases and high valuation for their stock,
they went off to pastures new with full purses and
rejoicing hearts.
Lest I should otherwise
overlook a subject which
not long ago was of first class importance, and has
not yet lost all its importance, although restricting
conditions in new leases have changed matters, I
will digress a little to make a few remarks on stock
valuations. It was proper that an acclimatised
stock on a farm should be bought at a higher rate
than an unacclimatised one in open market. From
the first, in granting leases, landlords had made it a
condition that the out-going tenant should deliver
at valuation the stock to the incoming tenant, or
failing such a tenant, to the landlord himself, who
was bound to receive it and pay for it. Up to 1860,
or some years later, in the delivering of sheep stock,
the allowance made for acclimatisation was so
reasonable that landlords and incoming tenants had
little or nothing to complain of except it may be
that in some few instances out-going tenants so
managed that they delivered more stock than the
grazings could regularly carry. I am not quite sure,
but have some reason to believe, that it was in the
hot haste to make new deer forests an upward hitch
was given to valuations, which went higher and
higher over the whole land, until incoming tenants
could not stand it, and landlords thought they had
good reason to think themselves swindled.
The sheep farmers having
their own grievances
and sore trials, defended themselves as they best
could against ruinous losses. Their best weapon of
defence was the high valuations for stock on going
out of their farms, which, having once been
established on the principle of a great difference
between farm-bred stock and flying market stock,
could only be adjusted by resort to new forms of
contract. Looking forward to recovery of losses by
high valuations, they took care to have very full
stocks for delivery. As a class the only relations
between them and their landlords were the purely
commercial ones of contract buying in the cheapest
and selling in the dearest markets. They had
invested much capital in their stock. 1000 meant
quite a small farm, and 5000 a good regulation
one, and 10,000, or upwards, a topping one. In
taking long leases they had not foreseen the
frightful fall in the prices of wool, which fall was
but wretchedly compensated by a rise in the value
of the carcase. Then, as the years rolled on, the
wintering rents rolled up, and so did servants'
wages. The sheep likewise lost much of their old
foraging hardihood, and new diseases got in among
them notably the "crithein," or "trembling."
This disease was unknown, or so rare as not to
be marked, when cattle and horses and goats
ate the coarser grasses, and sedges, and when
the ferns they did not trample and destroy, were
pulled for thatching and cut for bedding. A
steadily, if stealthy, progressive deterioration of hill
grazings went on, which old natives were the first
to notice. They remembered the days when herds
of cattle, with many horses, were mixed with the
sheep stocks, and when every bit of arable land was
carefully cultivated, and even the last of the
shealings had not been left vacant in summer.
They said that the bigger animals manured the
ground behind them, and consumed the rougher
herbage; that the droppings of the sheep had no
manurial value, and that, while incapable of keeping
down the rougher vegetation, they nipped every
patch of fine grass so close to the ground as to lay
its roots bare to be destroyed by winter frosts.
The green spots which marked the old hill shealings,
and abandoned spots of old cultivation, have
certainly, within my own memory, much contracted
or effaced themselves, while rushes arid ferns and
sedges have spread themselves into nuisances. I
have no doubt that there was much truth in what
the ancient natives said. The sheep farmers of
shealing regions, and of big holdings formed by the
turning out of old communities of winter towns,
where arable and pastoral pursuits used to be
conjoined, profited for a long time by the unexhausted manures and other leavings of the old
system which had been superseded by the sheep
reign. Whatever were its passing fluctuations, and
whatever happened to individuals who did not know
their business, or hazarded beyond their means
and credit, that reign for a hundred years was a
profitable one to landlords whose rents were doubled
or trebled, and to farmers who knew how to make
good use of their opportunities, and secure themselves from losses by wintering out the young of
their flock.
At the end of a century of
prosperity for both,
appeared the Nemesis which threw landlords and
large sheep farmers into fierce conflict all on
commercial lines. Smaller sheep farms with arable
land continued to be easily let, generally to the old
tenants, on moderate reductions of rent, but the big
sheep-runs, on the expiry of lease, were thrown on
landlords' hands, because that was the only way
in which the outgoing farmers could hope to recoup
losses, and retire if old to live on that capital, or
if young to take farms again on new conditions if
outgoing, and rents so reduced that they could be
fairly sure of profits, or safe against losses, and
with comfortable homes and the occupations which
suited them. Some who went out came back after
a while into their old farms, on rent reduced from
what they had once been by a third, or in some
cases by a half.
The financially-embarrassed
landlords, on whose
hands sheep-stocks at high valuations were thrown
all in a row as leases usually expire in batches-
saw nothing before them but trouble likely to end in
bankruptcy unless they sold their estates. Some
have done so, and others may follow their example,
which, indeed, is worldly-wise, while fancy prices
can be obtained for Highland forests ; yet it hurts
one to see old landed families disappear from the
places which had so long known them. Political
economists look only to money profit and loss, but
the sentimental associations which they scorn are
binding cords in social life, the value of which cannot
be estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence. On
the political economist's code rules, the embarrassed
landlords who take advantage to sell out when the
market boom for Highland estates lasts are certainly
acting very wisely. They get rid of their burdens,
and recoup themselves like the sheep-farmers who
have pushed them to the wall. Probably when they
have paid all their liabilities, they will find them-
selves financially in a better position than they had
been before. The purchasers, in giving such fancy
prices for Highland estates, thought more of sport
than of making profitable investments. They wanted
forests of their own, spent money freely on planting,
fencing, and other improvements, and some of them,
like Sir Donald Currie on his Glenlyon estate, by joining large grazing
outruns to arable and meadow land, and putting deer fences between these
outruns and the forest hills, formed separate farms of size enough for
giving employment to families all the year round, with chances of steady and
just returns on capital and labour, and have initiated what is undoubtedly an improvement on crofting communities
the plan of separate holdings of the moderate and
manageable size to which it would be most desirable
to resort. There are few obstacles now to sales and
transfers, because successive Acts of Parliament
have, in a majority of instances, put an end to
entails, and in all cases reduced their operations to a
minimum of obstruction.
The owners of estates equal
in area to small
English counties, who had no wish, and, if they
lived within their incomes, no need to sell portions
of their land, found themselves "held up" by their
larger tenants when they, in self-defence, took to
giving up their holdings, on high valuations, unless
they got rents reduced by a third or a half, and the
other concessions they demanded, so to speak, at the
points of their conquering spears. It was a hard
choice between taking over farms and stocks and
agreeing to accept such heavy reductions of pastoral
rents as had not been heard of for a hundred years.
But when the outrageously large farms turned into
white elephants, why were they not at once divided
by landlords into small and moderately -sized, separate
holdings, for which there always continued to be a
good demand by a very good class of people who
had, by industry and frugality, saved sufficient
capital for stocking and equipping, and knew all
which concerned utilising grazings and arable lands? To hereditary landlords
there was a formidable difficulty in going back to smaller holdings by
dividing the big ones which had turned into white elephants. They or their
predecessors, chiefly the latter, had made heavy outlays on building steadings, and farmhouses that might be called gentlemen's
modest mansions, on the big holdings. When these
were sub-divided there would only be one division
of them which would have farm buildings on it, and
to that division the buildings on it would be a vast
deal more than it wanted. The thatched houses,
barns, and byres of former days, which tenants built
for themselves and kept in repair, getting nothing
more than timber from their landlords, had been
swept away. The new tenants of sub-divided huge
holdings expected, as a matter of course, that the
landlord would put up new boundary fences and
comfortable storie-and-lime and slated buildings
when they were to pay rents which, in the aggregate,
would far exceed what he could now get for the
undivided big holding. From such an undertaking
hereditary landlords recoiled, and having re-let at
much reduced rents the more manageable farms, and
having, at a heavy loss, sold at market prices the
stock of the practically unlettable mountain sheep-
runs, they turned them into deer forests for which,
after a stocking interval, they thought themselves
sure to get high rents, or they made sure at once
by selling such lands to people who had made large
fortunes in business and trade, and who, looking
less to investment than to sport, and the strangely
attractive social status of landed gentry, did not
much care what price they paid for their Highland
forest, shooting, and fishing purchases.
Imperative economic causes
brought the old
industrial system of the Highlands to an end and
established the reign of sheep. At the end of a
century similar reasons are, to a great extent,
superseding sheep by deer. Those who hold
Cobden-Club views in logical purity should, there-
fore, rest content; for if true to their professed
creed economic reasons ought to be accepted and
acted upon, without respect to cherished sentiments.
Cobcleuism and science are much alike in excluding
from consideration the innate principles of human
nature and the soul-side of the universe. They
have undoubted truths to teach, but without those
complements they are too liable to be used or abused
as poisonous because imperfect truths. The sheep
reign deeply hurt the Highland people. The
present phase of reversion to deer and the coming
in of new sporting landlords with plenty of money,
and willingness to expend it on their sporting
pleasures, and on such valuable improvements as
planting, fencing, and buildings, are materially
beneficial to the native population. Employment
as foresters, gamekeepers, home-farm servants, and
gardeners has great benefits for young Highlanders,
and keeps them from going away from their birth-
places to towns and colonies.
Previously unsuspected causes
so often lead up
to unexpected results, that it is quite within the
wide range of possibility the placing of mountainside glens, corries, and hill-tops under deer, may
turn out to be the means for creating a great
number of desirable small separate farms, far larger
than crofts, but not too large for being taken and
advantageously worked by people who possess a few
hundred pounds of saved money. The process has
began in other places, as well as in the one already
referred to. It is a natural process to form farms of
the arable lands and hay meadows where cultivation
can be carried on, and to give each of them grazing
outruns, divided from the forest wild lands by deer
fences. Wild talk has been plentifully indulged
in by radical agitators and newspapers, about the
wickedness of dedicating to sport land fit for
cultivation. It would be certainly wicked to do so.
But is the Highland land put under deer, land fit
for cultivation? People who talk so loudly, should
try to know what they are talking about. Before
the installation of the sheep reign in full form,
cultivation was pushed to the farthest limits, within
which it was possible to find small patches of
suitable soil. But even before the sheep put an end
to the shealings, the cultivators of patches of
promising, exceedingly well-manured shealing land,
discovered to their cost that there was a line
beyond which crops would not grow and ripen for
the harvest. Let the decriers of wickedness inspect
the existing Highland forests before denouncing
them on a false cry. Let them watch the making
of new forests, and if they find that cultivable land,
to the extent of an acre in a thousand, is being
included in them, shout for penal legislation. At
present they have no case for calling out for
penalising the owners and tenants of forests by
differential rates and taxes. They are already
paying rates far above what their places would have
to pay if they remained under sheep, and the rents
of them fluctuated down to the lowest pastoral level.
It is safe to confidently predict that the reign of
deer will not last so long as the reign of sheep
has done, and that it will never extend beyond
uncultivable mountain and moor lauds. Were it to
spread itself out, so as to include areas fit for mixed
grazing and agricultural farming, it would, no doubt,
be dealt with by prohibitive legislation. But there
!s no need for legislative interference, as long as only
uncultivable spaces are placed under deer, because
that is the most profitable, selling, letting, and
rating use which can be made of them in present
circumstances. Grouse moors and fishing are in a
different category, and may retain their value
indefinitely. People who are not ranked among
the wealthy, have grouse, hare, rabbit, partridge,
and ptarmigan shootings, and salmon and trout
fishings within their reach. Deer forests are luxuries in which only rich
people can indulge. They are bought at fancy prices, and let by old
proprietors who do not sell lands at fancy rents. Happy are the owners who
have well-stocked deer forests with good lodges in these days to let. But
the new ones which are being formed in places cleared of sheep, take five or
six years, with care and expenditure, to stock with imported deer, and
partly, too, with deer that have strayed in from neighbouring forests. Straying away to pastures new, from
which they do not come back, calls for the erection
of deer fences between adjoining forests. Between
forests and farms the need for such fences is still
more clamant. The deer ravage crops and meadows
to an intolerable degree. Fences and walls which
shut in or shut out other animals are not barriers to
them. Out of their own grounds, they are wild
beasts of nature, whose raiding ravages are to be
stopped by getting killed and eaten by those who
suffer. So deer must be shut in by deer fences in
their own grounds if they are to be saved from the
fate they deserve. And when fenced in they have
still to be guarded by hosts of foresters, reinforced
in the hunting season by many gillies.
After new forests have been
fenced, stocked, and
furnished with sumptuous lodges, the heavy cost of
upkeep will remain; and the more new forests are
made, the less will become the letting value and the
less the selling price of former forests. It is quite
easy, by multiplying them, to exceed the demand
for deer forests, for that demand will always be
restricted to the very rich, who can afford to please
themselves, or to the reckless who march on the
road to ruin. There are changes of fashion in sports
as well as in ladies' dresses. With fast steamers on
sea, airships in view, and railways, and roads for
motor-cars opening up formerly sealed countries, and
bringing all parts of the earth in close proximity, it
is not at all unlikely that hunting elephants and
other large game in what used to be called "Darkest
Africa" will come into deadly competition with deer-
hunting in the Highlands. All things considered, I
look upon the present process of converting sheep-
runs into deer forests as a passing phase in a period
of general transition, the end of which it is impossible
to foretell. But if nothing more than a passing
phase, it is, at any rate, for many reasons a good one
for the children of the Gael, and it promises, if left
to run its course, to be a helpful factor in keeping
Highlanders on their native land, and in leading up
to the formation of much-to-be-desired moderately-sized, separate farms. |
