Crofters Quotes

“What does his lordship dae? He buys up a bunch o' islands in the Hebrides; carts in the native crofter population to Stornoway; runs them through a sapple o' Sunlight Soap, cuts their nails; learns them the English language; gets them an eight-'oors day, and starts them fishin' on scientific principles. Stornoway becomes the Port Sunlight of the North; every man has a nice wee red-tiled cottage, and a picture palace at the door, and the cod fish is fair worried oot o' its life.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“that this dying landscape belongs
to the dead, the crofters and fighters
and fishermen whose larochs
sink into the bracken
by Loch Assynt and Loch Crochach? -
to men trampled under the hoofs of sheep
and driven by deer to the ends of the earth
- to men whose loyalty
was so great it accepted their own betrayal
by their own chiefs and whose
descendants now
are kept in their place
by English businessmen and the
indifference
of a remote and ignorant government.”
― Norman MacCaig, Between Mountain and Sea: Poems from Assynt