Two Voices from the Highlands: Crofter Testimony and the Duke of Argyll’s Defence - with lessons from history

Will Allan
Aug 12, 2025
7 min read

Updated: Aug 13, 2025

Reflected Through the MacGillivray Family in Echoes of the Clearances

By Will Allan, Mull MacGillivray Heritage Project

In the summer of 1883, crofters from Bunessan on the Isle of Mull gathered to speak before the Napier Commission. Their words were raw, direct, and deeply personal. Men who had known hunger and hardship stood and told their stories—stories of removal, of rents they could not afford, of watching their communities slowly disappear. That same year, the Duke of Argyll published Crofts and Farms in the Hebrides, a carefully constructed justification of his estate management. It offered a polished and confident account from the top down, where the crofters’ voices were reframed or dismissed.

As I explored both these records during the writing of Echoes of the Clearances, I found myself returning again and again to the families themselves, those who lived this history not on paper but in peat smoke and along tracks that today run between ruined walls and scattered stones. In my book, the MacGillivrays of Mull are not statistics or arguments. They are flesh and blood. They are what history often forgets. And as I wrote, I realised that these three voices—the official record, the landowner’s defence, and the lived experience of families like my own—together create a more complete story of what happened in the Highlands.

In 1883, men like Allan MacInnes, Malcolm Ferguson, Donald MacDonald, and John MacKinnon described the reality of their lives before the Commission. They spoke of being forced from the land, of losing their grazing rights, of rising rents and declining soil, of watching sheep farms replace people. When I wrote the scene in Echoes where John MacGillivray stands at Ardmeanach and whispers, “We are worth less than a few sheep,” I had these men in mind. As he watches Mary gathering whelks along the shore, he understands they are surviving on scraps—cast off by a system that once promised them security.

The Duke of Argyll, in contrast, presents a different view entirely. His argument is confident and deliberate. He insists that the crofters’ hardship came from their own choices,subdividing land, (although this was also what his ancestor had done when more labourers were required), clinging to outdated methods, resisting progress. He describes small crofts not as ancient rights but as modern mistakes. He argues that landlords had no choice but to intervene, to manage, to improve. His voice, published and circulated widely, attempted to drown out the quieter voices from the Ross of Mull. And yet, it is the lived experience of the people—not the rhetoric of the powerful—that tells the deeper truth.

In Echoes, when Mary MacGillivray confronts the Factor and says, “We’ve lived on this land for generations. You’d cast us off for sheep?” I was thinking of the many testimonies from Bunessan that spoke of loyalty to place and community. The Factor’s reply—“Toiled, yes. But bled? Not enough, I think.”—echoes the cold logic used to justify eviction after eviction. Donald MacDonald and others testified that landlords enriched themselves while tenants slipped into deeper poverty.

The idea that crofters had a real choice in their circumstances quickly falls apart when you read their testimonies or consider their options. In the novel, Archie MacGillivray says, “A good meal won’t pay the rent or keep the Factor from our door.” That line came directly from what I imagined hundreds of Highlanders must have felt. The Duke insisted they were offered opportunity and failed by their own laziness, but anyone who knows the history of famine, crop failure, and rising rents can see that the choices available were few, and none of them fair. As John McKinnon detailed in his evidence to the Napier Commission, “A crofter holding five crofts, and paying a rental of £18, 15s., lost almost all his stock by the biting of rabid dogs, brought to the place by the gamekeeper. He was advised by the chamberlain to make his case known to his Grace, which was done after a copy was provided by himself. The crofter restocked in full; but the proprietor acknowledged his petition by a summons of removal depriving him of three crofts. A settlement was refused, and he was obliged to bring his stock of three crofts to Bunessan for sale. The auctioneer was prohibited by the factor from crying the sale, which left the alternative of selling to his own drover,”

Nowhere is the contrast sharper than in the discussion of emigration. The Duke describes it as a humane and voluntary solution to overpopulation. But for the people of Mull, leaving was often an act of desperation, not freedom. In Echoes, Mary faces that decision, wondering how long their stories can survive if no one is left to carry them. Angus Black tells her, “They’ve scattered our people to the winds… sending them away for no crime but being born on land others covet.” That, to me, is the truth behind the so-called emigration schemes. They may have cleared people, but they did not care for them. The Standard on May 27th 1852 questions “The Duke of Argyll affirms (that the labourers) are in a flourishing condition. Why, then, send from their native land 518 of them. And how happens it that these so lately in a flourishing condition had not money to pay for their passage,...............we are….. compelled to the conviction that his 518 emigrants did not withdraw themselves from a flourishing condition, but were fugitives from utter famine to the half starvation which they encountered.”

When the MacGillivrays arrive at Shiaba after being evicted from Burg, they find only ruins. And yet, there is still a sense of belonging, of continuity, of hope. “The cluster of stone ruins lay scattered across the slopes, their roofs long gone... but amidst the desolation, there was life.” That moment reminds me that history often uses soft terms like “depopulation” or “consolidation,” but the reality is always harder, families torn from their homes, communities broken, grief made ordinary.

Looking back, the Napier Commission offered a rare moment when crofters were able to speak in their own voices. But even then, they had to fight to be believed. The Duke of Argyll used his influence to frame their hardship as a necessary stage in a larger story of progress. With Echoes of the Clearances, I wanted to show how it actually felt to live through that story, to sit by the fire knowing your tenancy could be taken, to say goodbye to a neighbour leaving for far away lands, to watch your children grow up learning to live without land.

The testimonies tell us what happened. The landowner’s account tells us why it was justified. But family stories like those in Echoes tell us how it felt, and that emotional truth, too often left out of history books, has its own power. Somewhere between the reports, the justifications, and the memories passed down through generations, we can find something closer to the truth.

As I spent time researching and writing Echoes of the Clearances, I found myself thinking more and more about how these stories from 19th-century Mull still resonate today. At first, it was a personal journey, an attempt to understand what my own ancestors lived through. But gradually, I began to see deeper lessons. Not just about the past, but about the present. And not just for Scotland, but for the world, including the country I now call home, Australia.

One of the clearest lessons is how the stories are told, shapes how history is remembered, and how people are treated. In the Highlands, landowners like the Duke of Argyll controlled the narrative. They described crofters as idle, incapable, and unwilling to change. That version of events stuck for generations and is repeated and supported by some historians. Today, in Australia, we’ve seen how similar patterns can emerge. The Voice referendum reminded us just how powerful narratives can be. Despite decades of truth-telling and advocacy, many people still didn’t hear or trust the voices of Indigenous Australians. “If you don’t know - Vote No” was a mantra that was oft repeated by those unwilling to even consider change. A mantra of “If you don’t know - Ask” was never even considered. That matters deeply. When people are denied the right to tell their own story, or when their story is twisted by others, real understanding becomes almost impossible.

But being heard isn’t enough on its own. In 1883, the crofters gave powerful testimony to the Napier Commission. It was a turning point, but things didn’t truly begin to change until laws were passed to protect their rights. In Australia, the Voice was meant to be one such legal step: not just a symbolic gesture, but a practical way to ensure Indigenous voices were included in decisions that affected them. Without structures to support voice, stories risk becoming background noise, acknowledged, but not acted on.

There’s also something important to remember about what was actually lost. When crofters were cleared from the land, they didn’t just lose homes, they lost connection. Communities were scattered, languages began to fade, and a way of life was disrupted beyond repair. That same depth of loss is still being felt by many Indigenous communities in Australia. Dispossession isn’t just physical, it’s cultural, spiritual, and generational. It’s something that can’t be fixed by compensation or apology alone. It needs recognition, and space to heal.

What concerns me most is that, in both cases, meaningful action was, or is, too slow. By the time crofting reform arrived, many families had already left Scotland. For some, it came too late. In Australia, we risk repeating that mistake. The longer we delay real change, the more damage is done, to trust, to connection, to hope. Delay doesn’t equal neutrality. It simply deepens the wound.

And yet, despite all that, I see hope in the reclaiming of stories. That’s what Echoes of the Clearances became for me. A small act of remembering and re-voicing something that was nearly lost. In Australia, I’ve seen similar acts of revival of traditional names being spoken again, e.g. Meanjin for Brisbane. These are powerful things. They show that the past is not gone, it’s waiting to be carried forward.

So while the crofters and the First Peoples of Australia come from different lands and histories, there’s a shared truth between them. That voice, land, and dignity are bound together. When one is taken, the others are weakened. When one is restored, the others begin to heal.

This isn’t just history. It’s the story we’re still writing now.