The Highland Clearances

Описание: The war was lost,
the pipes were still,
The redcoats marched away,
They promised peace
across the glen,
A brighter,
kinder day.
But parchment came
with cold intent,
Signed by distant hands,
Men who’d never seen the peat
Decided who would stand.

The chiefs turned
landlords overnight,
The old bond torn in two,
The land held
every crofter’s name
The ledgers never knew.

The law came first,
the sheep came next,
The people driven away,
Roofs ablaze,
the factor’s word,
No mercy left to stay.
No need for bayonets anymore,
No drums to sound the harm
The law came first,
the sheep came next,
And silence claimed the farm.

They nailed the summons
to the door,
In English,
stark and blind,
Measured lives
by wool and rent,
Left hunger
far behind.
The old ones dragged
from dying hearths,
The bairns left in the rain,
Then torches lit
the thatch behind
To burn the past again.

The law came first,
the sheep came next,
The people scattered wide,
From glen to coast,
from hill to ship,
On waves of grief
they ride.
They called it progress,
called it gain,
Called heartbreak
minor cost
The law came first,
the sheep came next,
And all the old ways lost.

Some huddled by
the bitter shore,
Crofts on rock
and weed,
Kelp burned low,
the boats gave out,
No living
left to heed.
Others sailed
the coffin ships
To cold
Canadian snow,
Or choked
in Glasgow’s
factory smoke
Where Gaelic tongues
can’t grow.

Strange how empty
straths grow grand
When viewed
from far away,
The pain
distilled
to mist
and heather,
Romantic
in the grey.
They frame
the view
in golden light,
Sell solitude
as pure
But every glen
holds buried cries
The painters
never knew.

Now tourists tread
the lonely paths,
They praise
the wild
and free,
Call it untouched,
call it wild,
They never speak
the plea.
The silence
isn’t nature’s gift,
It’s carved
by human hand
A beauty
born of eviction,
A scar
across the land.

The law came first,
the sheep came next,
The people
went away,
What lingers now
is emptiness
They learned
to call “today.”
But when the wind
keens through the glen
And stirs
the hidden flame
The law came first,
the sheep came next,
Yet memory
claims the name.

These hills are not serene,
my friend,
They’re wounded,
vast,
and deep
A silence forged
in fire and loss,
A vigil
that we keep.
No sheep can graze
the ghosts away,
No myth can heal
the wrong
The land remembers
every soul
That once belonged.