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Strathnaver Novels
Consider the Lilies
The Highland Clearances, the eviction of crofters from their homes between 1792 and the 1850s, was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland's history. In Consider the Lilies, Iain Crichton Smith captures its impact through the thoughts and memories of an old woman who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community. Alone and bewildered by the demands of the factor, Patrick Sellar, she approaches the minister for help, only to have her faith shattered by his hypocrisy. She finds comfort, however, from a surprising Donald Macleod, an imaginative and self-educated man who has been ostracised by his neighbours, not least by Mrs Scott herself, on account of his atheism. Through him and through the circumstances forced upon her, the old woman achieves new strength.
Written with compassion, in spare, simple prose, Consider the Lilies is a moving testament to the enduring qualities which enable the oppressed to triumph in defeat.
Written with compassion, in spare, simple prose, Consider the Lilies is a moving testament to the enduring qualities which enable the oppressed to triumph in defeat.
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
145 people are currently reading
1025 people want to read
About the author
Iain Crichton Smith
158 books23 followersIain Crichton Smith (Gaelic:
Iain Mac a' Ghobhainn
) was a Scottish man of letters, writing in both English and Gaelic, and a prolific author in both languages. He is known for poetry, short stories and novels.
He was born in Glasgow, but moved to the isle of Lewis at the age of two, where he and his two brothers were brought up by their widowed mother in the small crofting town of Bayble, which also produced Derick S. Thomson. Educated at the University of Aberdeen, Crichton Smith took a degree in English, and after serving in the National Service Army Education Corps, went on to become a teacher.
He taught in Clydebank, Dumbarton and Oban from 1952, retiring to become a full-time writer in 1977, although he already had many novels and poems published. He was awarded an OBE in 1980.
He was born in Glasgow, but moved to the isle of Lewis at the age of two, where he and his two brothers were brought up by their widowed mother in the small crofting town of Bayble, which also produced Derick S. Thomson. Educated at the University of Aberdeen, Crichton Smith took a degree in English, and after serving in the National Service Army Education Corps, went on to become a teacher.
He taught in Clydebank, Dumbarton and Oban from 1952, retiring to become a full-time writer in 1977, although he already had many novels and poems published. He was awarded an OBE in 1980.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews
December 7, 2022
I devoured this short novel in a single sitting, which is very unusual for me as I'm a slow reader. Books also don't usually make me cry, but the ending of this story was so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. Just wonderful!
June 8, 2024
Murdina Scott is 71 and has lived in the same house all her life. She was born there and so was her father. They were Highland Crofters and the Duke who owns the land is turning everyone out to use the land for sheep. Murdina's husband is dead, her son immigrated to Canada and she's all alone. She hasn't had an easy life, and is bitter and unpleasant to the villagers, especially Donald MacLeod, an outspoken atheist.
In this short novella, Murdina is disappointed in the local minister, who is hypocritical and refuses to help, saying that maybe the crofters brought this on themselves by their sinful doings. The only people who offer any sympathy or understanding is the MacLeod family, who care for her after an accident.
What I really loved about Murdina is her ability to do a complete about face late in life, when she faces the realization that she may have been wrong in her strict adherence to rules and biblical teachings, and that there is goodness everywhere, even in "godless" MacLeod.
I know and have known some bitter older people, and this book made me realize that there are sometimes reasons for their bleak outlook, and a little kindness can go a long way.
In this short novella, Murdina is disappointed in the local minister, who is hypocritical and refuses to help, saying that maybe the crofters brought this on themselves by their sinful doings. The only people who offer any sympathy or understanding is the MacLeod family, who care for her after an accident.
What I really loved about Murdina is her ability to do a complete about face late in life, when she faces the realization that she may have been wrong in her strict adherence to rules and biblical teachings, and that there is goodness everywhere, even in "godless" MacLeod.
I know and have known some bitter older people, and this book made me realize that there are sometimes reasons for their bleak outlook, and a little kindness can go a long way.
January 6, 2014
I got this book because I wanted to learn about the Highland Clearances in Scotland between 1790 and 1850, in which untold numbers of crofters were displaced from the land. This, according to web reviews, was the definitive novel on the period. I found it to be fascinating, both as history and as literature.
The book is told by a 70-year-old widow who is being forced from her home, where she was born, and generations before her had been born. The voice is a simple one, at times confused and rambling. At first, I was put off by the extreme negativity of her character, and her general bitterness towards life (even before the notification of being displaced). She had led a really hard life.
As the introduction to the book points out, however, the fact of her joylessness is really one of the main points of the book. For the author is writing about the effect of religion on the Scots people just as much as about the Clearances. He paints a picture of a church that has warped the souls of the people, making them live in guilt and fear of hell, begrudging them even the simplest of pleasures such as a little music on a Saturday night. The greedy landlords and their agents are certainly portrayed as villains. But an even greater villain is the church, which actually goes so far as to say that the people are being evicted as punishment from God for their sinfulness.
What makes this a memorable book is the gradual change of heart in the old woman, where she sees how she was at fault in many of the tragedies in her family relationships -- yet was a victim in other circumstances, which previously she had taken for granted. This gives the book a richness and depth, rather than being just a social commentary. We see a poorly educated woman gaining clarity on a social situation, and shifting her prior attitudes -- a wonderful sign of growth despite the dire circumstances she is in.
Upon concluding the book, you can't help but ask similar questions about our current times. How are we victims of, or passive witnesses to, terrible iniquities in our own era? And how have we been blinded to ways in which our own attitudes have led to the demise of valued relationships?
The book is told by a 70-year-old widow who is being forced from her home, where she was born, and generations before her had been born. The voice is a simple one, at times confused and rambling. At first, I was put off by the extreme negativity of her character, and her general bitterness towards life (even before the notification of being displaced). She had led a really hard life.
As the introduction to the book points out, however, the fact of her joylessness is really one of the main points of the book. For the author is writing about the effect of religion on the Scots people just as much as about the Clearances. He paints a picture of a church that has warped the souls of the people, making them live in guilt and fear of hell, begrudging them even the simplest of pleasures such as a little music on a Saturday night. The greedy landlords and their agents are certainly portrayed as villains. But an even greater villain is the church, which actually goes so far as to say that the people are being evicted as punishment from God for their sinfulness.
What makes this a memorable book is the gradual change of heart in the old woman, where she sees how she was at fault in many of the tragedies in her family relationships -- yet was a victim in other circumstances, which previously she had taken for granted. This gives the book a richness and depth, rather than being just a social commentary. We see a poorly educated woman gaining clarity on a social situation, and shifting her prior attitudes -- a wonderful sign of growth despite the dire circumstances she is in.
Upon concluding the book, you can't help but ask similar questions about our current times. How are we victims of, or passive witnesses to, terrible iniquities in our own era? And how have we been blinded to ways in which our own attitudes have led to the demise of valued relationships?
October 26, 2024
I kept this book, face-down, open to its last page for five days. The last paragraph is an absolute stunner. My recommendation is to get to it by way of reading the preceding paragraphs, purely lovely stuff all.
August 9, 2022
An interesting character study…
Mrs Scott is elderly now, living alone in her small cottage since her only son emigrated to Canada. One day a rider comes to visit her – Patrick Sellar, the factor of the local landowner, the Countess of Sutherland. He tells Mrs Scott she must leave her home and go to live by the sea where the crofters will have to learn to live by a new trade, fishing. The crofters’ land is wanted for sheep – a more profitable venture for the landlords. As Mrs Scott seeks help from her neighbours and the church, we learn about her past and see her gradually come to understand herself better than she had. And eventually we see how she faces up to an uncertain future…
The story is set in Sutherland in the early 1800s at the height of the Highland Clearances, which is one of those landmark events by which Scotland defines itself, and which still provides food for the sense of grievance that feeds the socialist aspirations of a large majority of the population and the nationalist aspirations of a large minority. Patrick Sellar is a real historical figure, though Mrs Scott is fictional. Unfortunately Crichton Smith’s grasp on historical facts is somewhat tenuous – not unusual in a nation where history is distorted too readily into a propaganda tool and where truth is rarely allowed to get in the way of the grievance mythology. His glaring timeline errors irritated me so much that I found it distracting. Crichton Smith claimed his purpose was not to write a historical novel – fair enough, but even if the Clearances are only background to Mrs Scott’s story, a little bit of historical credibility would have been good.
However, indeed the Clearances are not Crichton Smith’s main target. The story is mostly about another recurring theme of Scottish literature – the stranglehold of the reformed Church on the people and its abuses, and here he does a much better job. Mrs Scott naturally turns to her church in her trouble, but finds that church and landlords are in a symbiotic relationship, each upholding the other, and neither showing much concern for the poor and powerless. Circumstances lead her to take help from a local man, Donald Macleod, who is seen as a troublemaker by those in authority, as an atheist and as a man who stands up for what he sees as his rights. (Donald Macleod was apparently also a real person but not one familiar to me.) And as she spends time with him and his family, Mrs Scott comes to re-assess her own church-driven moral rigidity and stern humourlessness, and to realise that this may be what caused first her husband and then her son to leave her.
It is written in simple language, in third person but from Mrs Scott’s perspective. Her age and the circumstances in which she finds herself gain her sympathy from the beginning, but initially the reader too sees her as her son must have done, as a woman so determined to judge others by her strict moral code that she makes the lives of those around her miserable. As we learn her story, though, our sympathy grows – her life has been hard and perhaps her natural liveliness and humour were driven out by her early experiences. Abandoned by her feckless husband, she has devoted her life to her son, but her emotional repression means that she shows this devotion through nagging and criticism rather than through gestures of love and affection. And when he too abandons her, all she has left is her church – a church that preaches hell and damnation more than love and salvation, that rules through authoritarian fear. It is her final abandonment by the church that is the catalyst for her to re-assess her life. So there is a sense of hope in the end, not that life will be easier nor that eviction can be avoided, but that Mrs Scott may free herself of the shackles of misery in which the church has bound her, and learn a more open way of thinking even at her late age.
After a very shaky start caused by the historical howlers, I eventually became absorbed in Mrs Scott’s story. It’s a short book and isn’t saying anything particularly new or profound – it is covering ground that has been well travelled in Scottish fiction, one might say trampled into a mire. But Crichton Smith keeps the story intentionally intimate by showing the effects of large events on one individual, and that makes it an emotional read, especially in the second half. I’m not convinced it really has the weight or quality to be considered a true classic, but it works well as a character study and an interesting, if slight, commentary on the way the church in Scotland has been used as a tool to keep the underlings under. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Mrs Scott is elderly now, living alone in her small cottage since her only son emigrated to Canada. One day a rider comes to visit her – Patrick Sellar, the factor of the local landowner, the Countess of Sutherland. He tells Mrs Scott she must leave her home and go to live by the sea where the crofters will have to learn to live by a new trade, fishing. The crofters’ land is wanted for sheep – a more profitable venture for the landlords. As Mrs Scott seeks help from her neighbours and the church, we learn about her past and see her gradually come to understand herself better than she had. And eventually we see how she faces up to an uncertain future…
The story is set in Sutherland in the early 1800s at the height of the Highland Clearances, which is one of those landmark events by which Scotland defines itself, and which still provides food for the sense of grievance that feeds the socialist aspirations of a large majority of the population and the nationalist aspirations of a large minority. Patrick Sellar is a real historical figure, though Mrs Scott is fictional. Unfortunately Crichton Smith’s grasp on historical facts is somewhat tenuous – not unusual in a nation where history is distorted too readily into a propaganda tool and where truth is rarely allowed to get in the way of the grievance mythology. His glaring timeline errors irritated me so much that I found it distracting. Crichton Smith claimed his purpose was not to write a historical novel – fair enough, but even if the Clearances are only background to Mrs Scott’s story, a little bit of historical credibility would have been good.
However, indeed the Clearances are not Crichton Smith’s main target. The story is mostly about another recurring theme of Scottish literature – the stranglehold of the reformed Church on the people and its abuses, and here he does a much better job. Mrs Scott naturally turns to her church in her trouble, but finds that church and landlords are in a symbiotic relationship, each upholding the other, and neither showing much concern for the poor and powerless. Circumstances lead her to take help from a local man, Donald Macleod, who is seen as a troublemaker by those in authority, as an atheist and as a man who stands up for what he sees as his rights. (Donald Macleod was apparently also a real person but not one familiar to me.) And as she spends time with him and his family, Mrs Scott comes to re-assess her own church-driven moral rigidity and stern humourlessness, and to realise that this may be what caused first her husband and then her son to leave her.
It is written in simple language, in third person but from Mrs Scott’s perspective. Her age and the circumstances in which she finds herself gain her sympathy from the beginning, but initially the reader too sees her as her son must have done, as a woman so determined to judge others by her strict moral code that she makes the lives of those around her miserable. As we learn her story, though, our sympathy grows – her life has been hard and perhaps her natural liveliness and humour were driven out by her early experiences. Abandoned by her feckless husband, she has devoted her life to her son, but her emotional repression means that she shows this devotion through nagging and criticism rather than through gestures of love and affection. And when he too abandons her, all she has left is her church – a church that preaches hell and damnation more than love and salvation, that rules through authoritarian fear. It is her final abandonment by the church that is the catalyst for her to re-assess her life. So there is a sense of hope in the end, not that life will be easier nor that eviction can be avoided, but that Mrs Scott may free herself of the shackles of misery in which the church has bound her, and learn a more open way of thinking even at her late age.
After a very shaky start caused by the historical howlers, I eventually became absorbed in Mrs Scott’s story. It’s a short book and isn’t saying anything particularly new or profound – it is covering ground that has been well travelled in Scottish fiction, one might say trampled into a mire. But Crichton Smith keeps the story intentionally intimate by showing the effects of large events on one individual, and that makes it an emotional read, especially in the second half. I’m not convinced it really has the weight or quality to be considered a true classic, but it works well as a character study and an interesting, if slight, commentary on the way the church in Scotland has been used as a tool to keep the underlings under. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
May 11, 2023
*Outlier Rating Alert* 2.5 stars, rounded up for the final few chapters.
“In the Highlands one got used to bearing burdens.”
This short novel took me forever to finish. I went into it hoping to learn a bit about the Highland Clearances of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s in Scotland. Instead, I got the life and thoughts of 70-year-old Murdina Scott who faces eviction from her lifelong home as the clearances begin. I put the book aside several times out of boredom and dislike of Mrs. Scott. Her own husband summed up my feelings about her pretty well: “You hate everybody. You hate to see anybody enjoying themselves.” Granted, she had a rough time caring for her invalid, demented mother alone - those were dark years - but she never rebounded from it, never found any joy, even in marriage. She depressed me, and I felt awful for her only child, Iain. She tried to spoil his joy as well. I did soften towards her a bit near the end and was generally satisfied with the way Smith ended the story.
Donald Macleod provided a refreshing breath of intelligence and kindness here, particularly in the end, and Big Betty gave us a big personality and needed good humor. Patrick Sellar and John Loch were perfectly drawn antagonists. I did enjoy the small village feel of the book and felt it was quite authentic to this time and region, so the book wound up as an “okay” read for me. But it is 5-star excellent reading for many readers and is considered a classic with a 50th Anniversary Edition issued in 2018. Don’t let my rating discourage you from trying this one - there is some outstanding writing in these pages.
“In the Highlands one got used to bearing burdens.”
This short novel took me forever to finish. I went into it hoping to learn a bit about the Highland Clearances of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s in Scotland. Instead, I got the life and thoughts of 70-year-old Murdina Scott who faces eviction from her lifelong home as the clearances begin. I put the book aside several times out of boredom and dislike of Mrs. Scott. Her own husband summed up my feelings about her pretty well: “You hate everybody. You hate to see anybody enjoying themselves.” Granted, she had a rough time caring for her invalid, demented mother alone - those were dark years - but she never rebounded from it, never found any joy, even in marriage. She depressed me, and I felt awful for her only child, Iain. She tried to spoil his joy as well. I did soften towards her a bit near the end and was generally satisfied with the way Smith ended the story.
Donald Macleod provided a refreshing breath of intelligence and kindness here, particularly in the end, and Big Betty gave us a big personality and needed good humor. Patrick Sellar and John Loch were perfectly drawn antagonists. I did enjoy the small village feel of the book and felt it was quite authentic to this time and region, so the book wound up as an “okay” read for me. But it is 5-star excellent reading for many readers and is considered a classic with a 50th Anniversary Edition issued in 2018. Don’t let my rating discourage you from trying this one - there is some outstanding writing in these pages.
March 18, 2024
I think this book has been on the periphery of my consciousness for most of my adult reading life.
It's a Scottish classic and I can't believe I only discovered it now.
This book deals with the traumatic period of Clearances in the Highlands of Scotland. Starting in the mid 18th Century and continuing for approx 100 years, crofters were forcible evicted from their land to make way for (more profitable) sheep. The area of Sutherland was particularly notorious for brutal and inhumane evictions, spearheaded by the Duke of Sutherland's factor, Patrick Sellar.
In Consider the Lilies, Iain Crichton Smith, illustrates these events through the eyes of one old woman - Mrs Scott. There is so much more to this book however. It showcases the culture and community of the Highlanders and their way of life which was being obliterated. It highlights the severe religion of the day and the hypocrisy of some religious leaders.
It also shows that humanity can come from the most unexpected of places.
I'm from the Highlands and grew up, not only with tales of the Clearances, but with the physical evidence left behind. I could walk out the door of my childhood home and see the ruins of croft houses dotted over the hillside. It's always impactful to think of the people affected.
This book is written in spare, gentle prose. It captures the voice and prejudices of the old woman perfectly, but despite her flawed character we can still empathise with her and with the community in which she exists. There is insight into the daily habits of life and the importance of the church. A light is shone on the perception of status and worthiness, based either on monetary, religious or moral grounds. The story deals with how it feels to be lonely and powerless and how people retain their values in the face of this.
A beautiful book about a tragic time, which feels all the more poignant in the face of what's happening in the world today.
Some quotes I liked:
"And what had the girl said? Something about the 'burning of houses'. She had heard of this before but it hadn't seemed possible to her. She had never believed it would happen to her. Things like that happen to other people. Anyway, they just couldn't put people out of their houses, and then burn the houses down. No one had ever heard of that before. not in the country."
"You see, Mrs Scott,' he went on, weighing his words carefully, 'to them we're not people. That's what we've got to understand. They don't think of us as people. When I go through to Edinburgh I learn it. Whenever they hear my Highland tongue they half-smile as if I were a fool and they could cheat me as a matter of course...."
" 'The truth!' Sellar had laughed. 'The truth? What's that? Don't you knowthat the day has come when the truth is what we care to make it?' "
It's a Scottish classic and I can't believe I only discovered it now.
This book deals with the traumatic period of Clearances in the Highlands of Scotland. Starting in the mid 18th Century and continuing for approx 100 years, crofters were forcible evicted from their land to make way for (more profitable) sheep. The area of Sutherland was particularly notorious for brutal and inhumane evictions, spearheaded by the Duke of Sutherland's factor, Patrick Sellar.
In Consider the Lilies, Iain Crichton Smith, illustrates these events through the eyes of one old woman - Mrs Scott. There is so much more to this book however. It showcases the culture and community of the Highlanders and their way of life which was being obliterated. It highlights the severe religion of the day and the hypocrisy of some religious leaders.
It also shows that humanity can come from the most unexpected of places.
I'm from the Highlands and grew up, not only with tales of the Clearances, but with the physical evidence left behind. I could walk out the door of my childhood home and see the ruins of croft houses dotted over the hillside. It's always impactful to think of the people affected.
This book is written in spare, gentle prose. It captures the voice and prejudices of the old woman perfectly, but despite her flawed character we can still empathise with her and with the community in which she exists. There is insight into the daily habits of life and the importance of the church. A light is shone on the perception of status and worthiness, based either on monetary, religious or moral grounds. The story deals with how it feels to be lonely and powerless and how people retain their values in the face of this.
A beautiful book about a tragic time, which feels all the more poignant in the face of what's happening in the world today.
Some quotes I liked:
"And what had the girl said? Something about the 'burning of houses'. She had heard of this before but it hadn't seemed possible to her. She had never believed it would happen to her. Things like that happen to other people. Anyway, they just couldn't put people out of their houses, and then burn the houses down. No one had ever heard of that before. not in the country."
"You see, Mrs Scott,' he went on, weighing his words carefully, 'to them we're not people. That's what we've got to understand. They don't think of us as people. When I go through to Edinburgh I learn it. Whenever they hear my Highland tongue they half-smile as if I were a fool and they could cheat me as a matter of course...."
" 'The truth!' Sellar had laughed. 'The truth? What's that? Don't you knowthat the day has come when the truth is what we care to make it?' "
March 14, 2020
This is a deliberately simply-written tale of an old woman who is about to be evicted during the Sutherland Clearances. It's poignant, it makes you angry and sad, and it makes you wonder (as I have been a lot over the last few months, writing my own novel which touches on the subject) why this mass forced migration is so little known.
The Countess of Sutherland, who later became the Duchess when her husband was elevated, 'led' the first wave of the Highland Clearances. Her factor Patrick Sellar is reviled for his role in it, though the main architect was James Loch. Stewart features in this story as the threatening, vile man on the white horse who goes round each cottage in the village telling everyone they're going to have to leave or be burned out. Donald McLeod, another real-life character, one of the rare commentators and opponents of the time, also features. But the main protagonist is Mrs Scott, a woman in her 70s who has lived all her life in the same cottage and now faces eviction at the end of a troubled life.
Though the Clearances are central to the story, Iain Crichton Smith's main vitriol is against the church and its ministers of the time. The Church of Scotland preached co-operation. They told their flock that being evicted was a punishment for their having deserted God, and that they'd be going on to better things in the new villages (which didn't actually exist). They were the mouth pieces of the landlords, in other words. Out of this was born the Free Church, ministers who supported their tenants against eviction - but the 'baddy' in this book is of the Establishment. And so, at the beginning, is Mrs Scott, until the minister turns agin her and she turns agin him.
I found the historical inaccuracies (a matter of timing) slightly irritating, but they didn't spoil the emotional impact of this salutary tale. It is dated and I suspect has probably even been abandoned by schools as a text, which is kind of a shame. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, it's not a subject to be enjoyed, but it was moving, extremely moving, and it's made me determined that the book I've just written won't be the last to feature this period in history.
The Countess of Sutherland, who later became the Duchess when her husband was elevated, 'led' the first wave of the Highland Clearances. Her factor Patrick Sellar is reviled for his role in it, though the main architect was James Loch. Stewart features in this story as the threatening, vile man on the white horse who goes round each cottage in the village telling everyone they're going to have to leave or be burned out. Donald McLeod, another real-life character, one of the rare commentators and opponents of the time, also features. But the main protagonist is Mrs Scott, a woman in her 70s who has lived all her life in the same cottage and now faces eviction at the end of a troubled life.
Though the Clearances are central to the story, Iain Crichton Smith's main vitriol is against the church and its ministers of the time. The Church of Scotland preached co-operation. They told their flock that being evicted was a punishment for their having deserted God, and that they'd be going on to better things in the new villages (which didn't actually exist). They were the mouth pieces of the landlords, in other words. Out of this was born the Free Church, ministers who supported their tenants against eviction - but the 'baddy' in this book is of the Establishment. And so, at the beginning, is Mrs Scott, until the minister turns agin her and she turns agin him.
I found the historical inaccuracies (a matter of timing) slightly irritating, but they didn't spoil the emotional impact of this salutary tale. It is dated and I suspect has probably even been abandoned by schools as a text, which is kind of a shame. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, it's not a subject to be enjoyed, but it was moving, extremely moving, and it's made me determined that the book I've just written won't be the last to feature this period in history.
May 26, 2018
I think there's no kind of book I love more than a short, perfect novel, and this is certainly one. The slow, quiet development of the central character, Mrs Scott, is stunning as her small, steady life is buffeted by forces of change initially beyond her understanding. Nothing is overstated but everything matters here, with images, gestures, and subtleties doing so much. This, for instance, when Mrs Scott's rigid faith has been shaken and she has come to doubt the self she has been for so long:
I know this is a book I'll reread and reread, and I already look forward to it. (And great thanks to the wonderful Hitchhiker's Guide to Scottish Literature for the introduction.)
The moon seemed to be slowly moving away and she couldn't stop it. It was going off and leaving her. She didn't want this to happen, but she couldn't stop it. It had looked her full in the eyes and was now departing as if it had seen enough.
I know this is a book I'll reread and reread, and I already look forward to it. (And great thanks to the wonderful Hitchhiker's Guide to Scottish Literature for the introduction.)
November 16, 2024
3.5 Stars!
They don't have my edition on up here so we'll go with this one...
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this short novel. Smith, or should that be Crichton Smith?...really gets under the skin of the character and her bleak and isolated environment and the even harsher political and commercial forces which are trying to force her out of her home.
There's some really nice writing and we get a true sense of what it must have been like to endure the callous hardship of the Highland clearances as well as seeing that religion had nothing to offer beyond silly useless cliches.
July 25, 2025
A lovely little book about the highland clearances. I was so surprised to be touring the exact castle where the Duke of Sutherland lived during that time (and members of the family still do.)
April 10, 2025
When I ask my Scottish friends about which books they got to read at school many recall 'Of Mice and Men' or 'The Lord of the Flies' as the designated choices in their curriculum. Feeling like Scottish literature is oftentimes forgotten or disregarded, it is such sweet surprise to find a novel written in 1968 concerning the clearances and what life for a Highland woman could have very possibly been then. This is a simple story which concerns a historical event that still casts a shadow over current politics and cultural disagreements in the country, a story that helps us remember what Scotland was like and why it is the way it is today.
This is a book that Sol lent me.
This is a book that Sol lent me.
January 14, 2022
This one's a real beauty. I recommend reading it in one sitting, preferably late at night. It took me about 3.5 hours. I considered splitting it in two, but it felt like a story you really settle into. Waiting a day might have broken something.
Reminded me of Paul Harding's 'Tinkers' for its take on memories being something almost removed from the life we live now. And Annie Proulx's 'Postcards' for its archetypal lead: a person we know and yet one who is original to the story. And John Banville's 'The Sea,' again with the memories.
Of course this precedes those books by a few decades and while Consider the Lilies doesn't seem notorious enough to be a direct influence (but maybe!) it sure felt like it might have put something in the water.
Sometimes I told myself 'You are reading a strongly above average character study,' but the introduction's notes on "the Calvinist ideology" gave it context. And I kept dog-earing wonderful passages. Some of which are below. And the whole last two pages, which I've just reread are pretty serious chef's kiss emoji.
"She felt that her slow movements irritated the man. But then he didn't know what it was to be old. You had to be old to know what it was to be old. The earth began to pull at your feet as if it wanted to get you inside, and the sooner the better."
"Life was always difficult and one didn't expect luxury."
"Alasdair had often said to her that she couldn't see a joke, that she took everything too seriously. But life was serious, wasn't it? You couldn't feed and clothe yourself on jokes."
"And now this girl, hatched heaven knows where but quite suited to Glasgow with its lights like the fires of hell, had come to her home and was only half listening to what she had to say."
"You couldn't eat flowers; and as for beauty - what was that?" (This one is brutal and possibly the best single line about poverty I've ever read.)
"But as he stood there listening - no, by now he was kneeling, as if like a child at the breast of a mother who would tell him everything in the form of a story he would never forget - he knew that his hatred was not simply for those who were bent on destroying the Highlands, not simply for the Patrick Sellars, but for the Patrick Sellars in the Highlanders, those interior Patrick Sellars with the faces of old Highlanders who evicted emotions and burnt down love."
"He hadn't found the spell which would release them, the word that he could say and she could understand. And this tormented him. Obscurely he felt that it was important to him to find the word and be able to say it, so that he would be united with her and what she was. Perhaps only the poets would be able to find that word. Or perhaps it didn't exist. But it must exist. Somewhere it lay concealed under lies and differences, like the soot in a black house which could be used to fertilize the land. Somewhere, if he could tear the beams apart, the dry old beams, he would find it and build a new kind of house. For after all, he was a mason. He would find it if he was worthy."
"'Oh, I'm not so strange. It's just that because I'm playful people don't think I'm serious. They think in the Highlands that only serious people are serious.'"
Reminded me of Paul Harding's 'Tinkers' for its take on memories being something almost removed from the life we live now. And Annie Proulx's 'Postcards' for its archetypal lead: a person we know and yet one who is original to the story. And John Banville's 'The Sea,' again with the memories.
Of course this precedes those books by a few decades and while Consider the Lilies doesn't seem notorious enough to be a direct influence (but maybe!) it sure felt like it might have put something in the water.
Sometimes I told myself 'You are reading a strongly above average character study,' but the introduction's notes on "the Calvinist ideology" gave it context. And I kept dog-earing wonderful passages. Some of which are below. And the whole last two pages, which I've just reread are pretty serious chef's kiss emoji.
"She felt that her slow movements irritated the man. But then he didn't know what it was to be old. You had to be old to know what it was to be old. The earth began to pull at your feet as if it wanted to get you inside, and the sooner the better."
"Life was always difficult and one didn't expect luxury."
"Alasdair had often said to her that she couldn't see a joke, that she took everything too seriously. But life was serious, wasn't it? You couldn't feed and clothe yourself on jokes."
"And now this girl, hatched heaven knows where but quite suited to Glasgow with its lights like the fires of hell, had come to her home and was only half listening to what she had to say."
"You couldn't eat flowers; and as for beauty - what was that?" (This one is brutal and possibly the best single line about poverty I've ever read.)
"But as he stood there listening - no, by now he was kneeling, as if like a child at the breast of a mother who would tell him everything in the form of a story he would never forget - he knew that his hatred was not simply for those who were bent on destroying the Highlands, not simply for the Patrick Sellars, but for the Patrick Sellars in the Highlanders, those interior Patrick Sellars with the faces of old Highlanders who evicted emotions and burnt down love."
"He hadn't found the spell which would release them, the word that he could say and she could understand. And this tormented him. Obscurely he felt that it was important to him to find the word and be able to say it, so that he would be united with her and what she was. Perhaps only the poets would be able to find that word. Or perhaps it didn't exist. But it must exist. Somewhere it lay concealed under lies and differences, like the soot in a black house which could be used to fertilize the land. Somewhere, if he could tear the beams apart, the dry old beams, he would find it and build a new kind of house. For after all, he was a mason. He would find it if he was worthy."
"'Oh, I'm not so strange. It's just that because I'm playful people don't think I'm serious. They think in the Highlands that only serious people are serious.'"
December 20, 2021
I did a bad thing (again) and bought a book that I knew nothing about based solely on its shiny cover. I know what people say about not judging a book by its cover but I think that, if we're truly honest, sometimes it really pays off to just give in and buy the pretty book. Consider the Lilies by Iain Crichton Smith is a prime example of that so, if you see it around and you're tempted, just say yes to the temptation. You can thank me later.
📚
Consider the Lilies is set at the time of the Highland Clearances. The Clearances saw the eviction of vast numbers of people from their homes in the hundred years or so following Culloden, and are generally considered one of the cruellest times in Scotland's history. There's no better way to emphasise their barbarity than to have, as Smith does, a frail seventy year old woman as your story's protagonist. Mrs Scott has lived in one cottage her whole life, never having spent so much as one week away from it until a man on a white horse appears heralding her eviction.
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Here, these events of immense historical significance are told through the narrow perspective of an isolated and confused old woman, and we see larger events become reduced to a meditation on a life drawing to its close, on choices made, and on beliefs held. Mrs Scott is inflexible, unlikeable, and disposed towards pessimism. Yet, in her hardship, she undergoes a crisis of faith which brings about a profound shift in her being as she starts to recognise both her own role in her isolation, and the complicity of the Church in the Clearances, seeing for the first time its hypocrisy and the fear and guilt it has instilled in its congregation.
📚
Books like this make me wonder why I am wary of the classics. The whole story and its neat, precise narrative was really enjoyable to read - every word had a function, and there was no padding at all. For such a short book, it packed an impressive amount of depth, wisdom and warmth into one of the most subtle and wonderful character developments that I've ever read.
📚
📚
Consider the Lilies is set at the time of the Highland Clearances. The Clearances saw the eviction of vast numbers of people from their homes in the hundred years or so following Culloden, and are generally considered one of the cruellest times in Scotland's history. There's no better way to emphasise their barbarity than to have, as Smith does, a frail seventy year old woman as your story's protagonist. Mrs Scott has lived in one cottage her whole life, never having spent so much as one week away from it until a man on a white horse appears heralding her eviction.
📚
Here, these events of immense historical significance are told through the narrow perspective of an isolated and confused old woman, and we see larger events become reduced to a meditation on a life drawing to its close, on choices made, and on beliefs held. Mrs Scott is inflexible, unlikeable, and disposed towards pessimism. Yet, in her hardship, she undergoes a crisis of faith which brings about a profound shift in her being as she starts to recognise both her own role in her isolation, and the complicity of the Church in the Clearances, seeing for the first time its hypocrisy and the fear and guilt it has instilled in its congregation.
📚
Books like this make me wonder why I am wary of the classics. The whole story and its neat, precise narrative was really enjoyable to read - every word had a function, and there was no padding at all. For such a short book, it packed an impressive amount of depth, wisdom and warmth into one of the most subtle and wonderful character developments that I've ever read.
📚
June 4, 2016
A novella that flows from beginning to end, Crichton Smith provides a compelling narrative of a simple village life untarnished by the world.
The narrative follows an old woman, Mrs Scott, in the third person, occasionally switching to the viewpoints of other characters. The novella has a loose structure simultaneously following two narratives; one in the present, the other in the past. These allow us to see the main character's backstory and how she became the woman of the present.
Fundamentally, the story is about the corruption of the lives of people from a world that they have no comprehension of. Mrs Scott is painted as a simple god-fearing woman, suspicious of all hints of the modern world until it is violently thrust upon her. As she reflects on her life, she is forced to confront her prejudices and her beliefs which leads to her changing her ways.
Overall, the novel is a solidly written, although I found some of the switches in character viewpoints difficult to follow at times. However, Crichton Smith makes good use of language to keep things flowing, and gives a convincing narrative from the head of a rambling old woman. Whilst other novels fulfil this slightly better (such as 'Elizabeth is missing'), this work is filled with symbolism and is a solid critique of the Highland clearances, as well as issues such as corruption and the idea of modernity.
The narrative follows an old woman, Mrs Scott, in the third person, occasionally switching to the viewpoints of other characters. The novella has a loose structure simultaneously following two narratives; one in the present, the other in the past. These allow us to see the main character's backstory and how she became the woman of the present.
Fundamentally, the story is about the corruption of the lives of people from a world that they have no comprehension of. Mrs Scott is painted as a simple god-fearing woman, suspicious of all hints of the modern world until it is violently thrust upon her. As she reflects on her life, she is forced to confront her prejudices and her beliefs which leads to her changing her ways.
Overall, the novel is a solidly written, although I found some of the switches in character viewpoints difficult to follow at times. However, Crichton Smith makes good use of language to keep things flowing, and gives a convincing narrative from the head of a rambling old woman. Whilst other novels fulfil this slightly better (such as 'Elizabeth is missing'), this work is filled with symbolism and is a solid critique of the Highland clearances, as well as issues such as corruption and the idea of modernity.
May 3, 2021
An OK read for me, nothing more or less, just OK. I didn’t know anything about the Highland Clearances before I started reading it and I’m not much the wiser now, but that’s all right because Consider The Lilies doesn’t profess to be an educational historical novel. I was, however, expecting to have a better connection with the main character by the time I finished, and I don’t really have that either.
Maybe I was expecting more because of its ratings on Goodreads. Maybe 140 pages is just too short for me to become fully immersed in a novel and empathise, like or dislike the characters within it. If a story doesn’t have much of a plot, for me there needs to be the opportunity to have a level of emotional engagement with the characters instead, but this time round there just wasn’t enough of it for that to happen.
I’m glad I’ve read it as part of my diverse list of novels for 2021, but would I recommend it? I’m not so sure.
Maybe I was expecting more because of its ratings on Goodreads. Maybe 140 pages is just too short for me to become fully immersed in a novel and empathise, like or dislike the characters within it. If a story doesn’t have much of a plot, for me there needs to be the opportunity to have a level of emotional engagement with the characters instead, but this time round there just wasn’t enough of it for that to happen.
I’m glad I’ve read it as part of my diverse list of novels for 2021, but would I recommend it? I’m not so sure.
March 6, 2019
While set during the Highland Clearances, "Consider the Lilies" isn't really about them, rather it's a character portrait of 70 year-old Mary Scott, and the family and cultural influences that lead her to be living a lonely, embittered existence. The Clearances are a shock, causing Mary to confront her assumptions about social and religious authority, to re-evaluate her life relationships, and her moral judgements about her neighbours. A resounding 5/5 🌟
September 7, 2025
Consider the Lilies strikes me as remarkable in its capacity to divorce considerations of intelligence despite or through simplicity (the term is used without any negative connotation). It flawlessly renders on the page the intelligence of an old woman who happens, for lack of education and exposure to the world, to view life through the prism of simple doctrines, habits and practical concerns. It is commonplace to think that there can be much intelligence in a person's plainness, at least if we follow that line of thinking which rather paternally posits that because what is transparent and straightforward does without the verbose and the general, it often finds its way to the truth more easily. Taking this into consideration, I was less interested by the historical context in the novel, (which was in any case not explored in much depth), than by the author's capacity to describe the workings of a non-intellectual intelligence outside of this straighforwardness of spirit which often characterises those deemed less educated in fiction. Mrs Scott's intelligence is a terribly stubborn and complicated thing, a sort of patchwork which, remarkably, is set into motion by the loosening of temporal barriers caused by old age, which in the novel becomes not a sign of decadence but of a renewed grasp on reality; it is smothered by doctrine and lack of sentiment, emboldened by empathy, attune to deceit through other channels than that of the recognition of lettered and rhetorical dishonesty, and is, at times, extraordinarily self-aware of its paradoxical nature and inflexibility. Being aware of all the facts, which is a rare sign of intelligence indeed, does not necessarily mean substantial change can arise. In the end Mrs Scott, considering her own life, is no different from Donald Macleod considering the Clearances and the soon to be Bliadhna an Losgaidh. The system that made most highlanders "sheeps" is discarding them all for real ones - Smith clearly enjoys this straightforward irony, and looks keenly at the eldest of the herd for any sign of rebellion. The importance he gives to fruitless rebellion, that of Mrs Scott's who still ends up living on her own and is thrown out of her house, or that of Macleod's who writes papers "that no one will read", is another element which I found worthy of praise.
I was somewhat put off by a lack of coherence regarding degrees of subtlety in the narrative, with some passages and images and metaphores being too heavy-handed for my taste, although they always sustained the weight of their meaning, while the majority worked as a half-processed but keenly felt understanding passing through both Mrs Scott and the reader. Because the motions of Mrs Scott's cognition work through superposition and non-chronological successions, the first few chapters also struggle to be as appealing as the later ones, and although they set the mood effectively, the imbalance, plus the lack of coherence mentioned before, made me take away one star.
I was somewhat put off by a lack of coherence regarding degrees of subtlety in the narrative, with some passages and images and metaphores being too heavy-handed for my taste, although they always sustained the weight of their meaning, while the majority worked as a half-processed but keenly felt understanding passing through both Mrs Scott and the reader. Because the motions of Mrs Scott's cognition work through superposition and non-chronological successions, the first few chapters also struggle to be as appealing as the later ones, and although they set the mood effectively, the imbalance, plus the lack of coherence mentioned before, made me take away one star.
August 29, 2019
A quiet, powerful work about the exploitation of the powerless serfs in the Scottish Highlands during the Clearances seen through the thoughts of an aging woman crofter. The increasing confusions of old age are compounded by the sudden change in her circumstances and her impending eviction. Processing this confusion commands the greater part of the narrative and her final act of defiance comes not as a imposed plot device, but the inevitable accumulation of her limited experiences at the hands of her antagonists and newly-found allies. Crichton does a good job of working within the boundaries of her character's powers and of keeping out any Dickensian saviour mechanics that would have spoiled his realistic portrait of this dark chapter in Scotland's history.
August 19, 2025
4.5 stars.
Found this hidden in the garage. Amazing and heartbreaking short novel detailing an elderly woman's experience during the highland clearances. Fantastic writing on this one, got completely sucked in!
Found this hidden in the garage. Amazing and heartbreaking short novel detailing an elderly woman's experience during the highland clearances. Fantastic writing on this one, got completely sucked in!
January 9, 2018
Quite a moving story about the Scottish clearances. I did like the getting to know the old lady and can only guess at the outcome.
February 6, 2021
Moving tale of an event surrounded by myth and misinformation; an interesting insight into the Presbyterian church’s culpability in the affair. Poor old Mrs Scott.
August 12, 2023
Een boek over een stuk geschiedenis van Schotland. Love it. Maar dat einde… men.. ik heb een deel twee nodig
February 5, 2025
damn well my life definitely could have been worse
December 19, 2025
veloce, abbastanza indolore ma povera mrs scott.
March 2, 2023
I am disappointed in this book, unfortunately. It is not often that I get to read a book set in my country, Scotland. Even less so that it takes place in a rural community such as that that I call home. I have always felt a great pain and anger for how those rural folk were treated during the Highland Clearances and I am always keen to deepen my knowledge of Scotland's history - be it through a work of fiction or nonfiction.
For those who don't know, the Highland Clearances took place between 1750 and 1860, keeping very close to the time of the industrial revolution. The landlords of these rural hills were keen to maximise their profits, and those who had lived there for generations upon generations no longer generated enough money. Therefore, the first of two large-scale evictions began: the first saw many families across the highlands and islands forced from their homes to coastal villages; the second came following the Highland Potato Famine, in which these coastal villages had become overpopulated and could no longer sustain themselves, thus emigration was encouraged.
Scotland was far from innocent when it comes to the growth of the British Empire, the transatlantic slave trade, nor the destruction colonialism has wrought upon land and community. Yet the rural communities of Scotland were cast aside and not taken seriously, and the destruction of the Highland Clearances both on our land and communities can still be felt today.
This book didn't work for me at all, mostly due to the clumsy use of English throughout. There were some great ideas and themes echoing throughout the text, but the execution did not do them justice. If the clumsy use of language was to reflect the thoughts of uneducated Highlanders, I think a first-person narrative would have worked better. If it's a case of perhaps the writer being more adept at the Gàidhlig, rather than English, I think this novella could've done with a good combing through by the editor.
For those who don't know, the Highland Clearances took place between 1750 and 1860, keeping very close to the time of the industrial revolution. The landlords of these rural hills were keen to maximise their profits, and those who had lived there for generations upon generations no longer generated enough money. Therefore, the first of two large-scale evictions began: the first saw many families across the highlands and islands forced from their homes to coastal villages; the second came following the Highland Potato Famine, in which these coastal villages had become overpopulated and could no longer sustain themselves, thus emigration was encouraged.
Scotland was far from innocent when it comes to the growth of the British Empire, the transatlantic slave trade, nor the destruction colonialism has wrought upon land and community. Yet the rural communities of Scotland were cast aside and not taken seriously, and the destruction of the Highland Clearances both on our land and communities can still be felt today.
This book didn't work for me at all, mostly due to the clumsy use of English throughout. There were some great ideas and themes echoing throughout the text, but the execution did not do them justice. If the clumsy use of language was to reflect the thoughts of uneducated Highlanders, I think a first-person narrative would have worked better. If it's a case of perhaps the writer being more adept at the Gàidhlig, rather than English, I think this novella could've done with a good combing through by the editor.
August 30, 2020
I absolutely adore Crichton Smith's storytelling in this book and I loved viewing the world through Mrs Scott's eyes. She is a very interesting character with such a rich history and so when she judged a person or situation I could always sympathise with her even though we have very different values. The story describes a sad and cruel part of scottish history but does so in a very human an simplistic manner. The events depicted may seem random or arbitrary but it all makes sense once you realise where they fit into the bigger picture.
If you enjoy reading classics and don't mind "difficult" language this is a must read! English isn't my mothertongue but if it is yours, I don't think the language will be a problem at all. I only had to look up a few old-fashioned words. I loved reading this book and I'm so happy I picked it up on a visit to Scotland!
If you enjoy reading classics and don't mind "difficult" language this is a must read! English isn't my mothertongue but if it is yours, I don't think the language will be a problem at all. I only had to look up a few old-fashioned words. I loved reading this book and I'm so happy I picked it up on a visit to Scotland!
May 2, 2022
The novel’s focus is on seventy year old, God-fearing widow Mrs Scott (who is only once referred to, by her neighbour Big Betty, as Murdina.) Mrs Scott is one day visited by the Duke of Sutherland’s agent Patrick Sellar and informed she will have to leave her house in a mutually uncomprehending conversation; uncomprehending partly because she speaks Gaelic and he English but also because each has no understanding of the life of the other. The intention is to have the inhabitants move to the coast and take up fishing. And so unfolds a story set in the Highland Clearances which took place mostly in the county of Sutherland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Mrs Scott feels embedded in her home. “If you took (a potato) out of the earth before its time it would die.” It was where she tholed her mother’s illness till her death, married her husband (before driving him into the army) and brought up her son. “It isn’t easy for a woman to rear a boy. It’s easier when it’s a girl.” She decides to try to alleviate her confusion by first consulting the local elder and then the minister, but both are of no use and indeed seem, the minster in especial, to be in favour of the proposed change. In the meantime Big Betty has heard stories of those already cleared off the land further south finding no houses and no boats at their destinations and having to build their own.
It is only with the family of atheist (and stirrer-up of trouble via newspaper articles) Donald Macleod to whose house she is carried to recuperate after a fall that Mrs Scott finds compassion. He tells her, “To them we’re not people. That’s what we’ve got to understand. They don’t think of us as people,” and Smith articulates Macleod’s feelings as, “His hatred was not simply for those who were bent on destroying the Highlands, not simply for the Patrick Sellars, but for those interior Patrick Sellars with the faces of old Highlanders who evicted emotions and burnt down love.”
Restored to her own home and invited by the Duke’s agents to denounce Macleod, Mrs Scott realises, “There are far more defeats than victories, victories last only a short time and the defeats last for ever.”
In his preface Smith states he has not written a historical novel as he was “not competent to do a historical study of the period” but was interested primarily in the person of his main character. He mentions the problem of language - the displaced crofters would all have spoken Gaelic - and his conclusion that a clear, simple English would best encapsulate her mind. Yet while the Clearances are the ostensible subject of the novel (and probably account for the inclusion of this book in that 100 best list) I agree with Isobel Murray whose introduction argues that the real target is religion. Then again, in the traditional Scottish novel when isn’t it?
Mrs Scott feels embedded in her home. “If you took (a potato) out of the earth before its time it would die.” It was where she tholed her mother’s illness till her death, married her husband (before driving him into the army) and brought up her son. “It isn’t easy for a woman to rear a boy. It’s easier when it’s a girl.” She decides to try to alleviate her confusion by first consulting the local elder and then the minister, but both are of no use and indeed seem, the minster in especial, to be in favour of the proposed change. In the meantime Big Betty has heard stories of those already cleared off the land further south finding no houses and no boats at their destinations and having to build their own.
It is only with the family of atheist (and stirrer-up of trouble via newspaper articles) Donald Macleod to whose house she is carried to recuperate after a fall that Mrs Scott finds compassion. He tells her, “To them we’re not people. That’s what we’ve got to understand. They don’t think of us as people,” and Smith articulates Macleod’s feelings as, “His hatred was not simply for those who were bent on destroying the Highlands, not simply for the Patrick Sellars, but for those interior Patrick Sellars with the faces of old Highlanders who evicted emotions and burnt down love.”
Restored to her own home and invited by the Duke’s agents to denounce Macleod, Mrs Scott realises, “There are far more defeats than victories, victories last only a short time and the defeats last for ever.”
In his preface Smith states he has not written a historical novel as he was “not competent to do a historical study of the period” but was interested primarily in the person of his main character. He mentions the problem of language - the displaced crofters would all have spoken Gaelic - and his conclusion that a clear, simple English would best encapsulate her mind. Yet while the Clearances are the ostensible subject of the novel (and probably account for the inclusion of this book in that 100 best list) I agree with Isobel Murray whose introduction argues that the real target is religion. Then again, in the traditional Scottish novel when isn’t it?
July 25, 2025
“Consider the lilies; they toil not, neither do they spin” from the Bible, Luke 12, verse 27.
I have read this short book more times than I can remember, this time because it follows on naturally from other books I have recently been reading and reviewing on The Highland Clearances in Scotland. (“Not again, my GR friends must be thinking) but this is not an account, but a novel, and it’s hauntingly beautiful. Andy Marr’s review captures it:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The story takes place during the week prior to the burning of an old woman’s home, of which she has been given warning by the Duke of Sutherland’s notorious factor, Patrick Sellar, who did in fact commit the outrages in Sutherland. Other salient characters are also real, although fictionalised to some extent here; James Loch, whom we might today call an influencer or a planner, and Donald MacLeod, who was a journalist whose family was also evicted. The old lady, Mrs Scott (seventy was old in those days!) is representative of the quiet Highland person who did not look beyond what the hereditary chieftain asked of them and who was unquestioningly obedient to him and to the church ministers who were his vassals. As Daniel has pointed out in his review of the novel Clear, by Carys Davies,
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
the Church of Scotland split over the issue of patronage, where a minister was given a parish and a manse by the overlord and expected to toe his line. If he didn’t, his own family would also be ‘put out’.
I have already written about the Clearances, and all I want to say here is that the daily lives of the old woman and her neighbours in the village really came to life for me. The history of earlier emigration is included in a very personal way, as is the military service demanded of his tenants by the former chieftains or by the new owners, the old hereditary loyalties having already been eroded in The Highlands in the aftermath of the Jacobite uprising that ended so disastrously with the Battle of Culloden. It is history written as poetry; it is a slow, traditional way of understanding in this old woman that is being forced to grasp the implications of the new rule of profit, in which, as Donald MacLeod remarks, they are not thought of as people, just as unwanted commodities, standing in the way of progress and the new wealth.
Her life has been hard, her troubles many, her resistance determined. She suffers a terrible betrayal of everything she once believed in. Yet, even though she will most probably be one of the hundreds to die from homelessness and destitution during these years, there is a certain quiet triumph in the last chapter, beautifully, powerfully drawn. This story is like a time capsule to be carried in the heart.
I have read this short book more times than I can remember, this time because it follows on naturally from other books I have recently been reading and reviewing on The Highland Clearances in Scotland. (“Not again, my GR friends must be thinking) but this is not an account, but a novel, and it’s hauntingly beautiful. Andy Marr’s review captures it:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The story takes place during the week prior to the burning of an old woman’s home, of which she has been given warning by the Duke of Sutherland’s notorious factor, Patrick Sellar, who did in fact commit the outrages in Sutherland. Other salient characters are also real, although fictionalised to some extent here; James Loch, whom we might today call an influencer or a planner, and Donald MacLeod, who was a journalist whose family was also evicted. The old lady, Mrs Scott (seventy was old in those days!) is representative of the quiet Highland person who did not look beyond what the hereditary chieftain asked of them and who was unquestioningly obedient to him and to the church ministers who were his vassals. As Daniel has pointed out in his review of the novel Clear, by Carys Davies,
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
the Church of Scotland split over the issue of patronage, where a minister was given a parish and a manse by the overlord and expected to toe his line. If he didn’t, his own family would also be ‘put out’.
I have already written about the Clearances, and all I want to say here is that the daily lives of the old woman and her neighbours in the village really came to life for me. The history of earlier emigration is included in a very personal way, as is the military service demanded of his tenants by the former chieftains or by the new owners, the old hereditary loyalties having already been eroded in The Highlands in the aftermath of the Jacobite uprising that ended so disastrously with the Battle of Culloden. It is history written as poetry; it is a slow, traditional way of understanding in this old woman that is being forced to grasp the implications of the new rule of profit, in which, as Donald MacLeod remarks, they are not thought of as people, just as unwanted commodities, standing in the way of progress and the new wealth.
Her life has been hard, her troubles many, her resistance determined. She suffers a terrible betrayal of everything she once believed in. Yet, even though she will most probably be one of the hundreds to die from homelessness and destitution during these years, there is a certain quiet triumph in the last chapter, beautifully, powerfully drawn. This story is like a time capsule to be carried in the heart.
February 5, 2022
Having read books detailing the highland clearances, I was interested to discover Crighton Smith's novel based on this topic. This did not disappoint and in a relatively short book (144 pages) he manages to condense so much background and detail to the characters that it feels as if you have read something significantly longer. Although the central character (Mrs Scott) is a simple old woman of limited education, she proves she is not so simple as to be misled by the Duke of Sutherlands men, who's sole objective is to evict the householders, or to see that the church (or at least the minister) have been bought by the powerful with no thought for their parishioners. The latter must be a particularly difficult to bear given Mrs Scott's lifelong churchgoing and bible reading activities. In the end, her strength of character is shown as she reject the offers of her husband's pension and an extension to remain in her home in return for her signature on a declaration against Macleod, a fellow villager whose family have cared for her after her fall. I very much enjoyed this book although was disappointed that it ends rather abruptly leaving us to imagine what happens to the characters given the scenarios created in the final chapter.
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