DEER OR MEN?

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 136, 10 June 1922, Page 17

DEER OR MEN?

A HIGHLAND PROBLEM IN HISTORY AND VERSE. (By CYKAXO.) Aud if love had bought it clear, the Maeka\s were thick as grain, Where wild run the deer ill Stratunaver. In the apparently prosaic wording ot a GoveniLUL'iit report there may t>c strains or echoes or romance and tragedy, oIJ wrongs and 'bitter memories. Whorever Highland hearts beat or Highland history is studied, men and women will find in the recently issued reports of the Game aud Heather Burning Committee and the Departmental Committee on Lands in Scotland, something touching the soul of the Highlands and the oft-lamented story of their depopulation. Old griefs will be remembered, and old songs resung. According to the member of the first-named committee who writes the minority report, a fifth of the whole area of Scotland, or from three and abalf to four million acres (the second report put it at 3,432,000) is devoted exclusively to deer forests. Almost entire counties are embraced; at least nine such forests have an area of over 40,000 acres and othere extend to 80,000 acres; and "one alien formed into a deer forest within recent years about 200,000 acres of land, stretching across Scotland from sea to sea." Scathingly he condemns the extensive damage to crops done by deer, and the waste ot pasturage on which cattle and sheep formerly grazed. Even the majority re- ' port recommends that farmers adjoini ing deer forests should be given protection against the depredations of the deer. The second committee goes further, and its report will warm the hearts of those who for many a year ha%-e been warring against the preference by landowners for deer over men. It recommends that the extension of deer j forests bo forbidden by statute, and the restoration to pastoral uses of deer forests suitable for such purpose. It may be explained that the most conspicuous thing about a deer forest in Scotland is that there are few trees in it. The term i 3 applied to large stretches of open country. Much of it is unfit for the pasturing of sheep or cattle, but much once carried such stock and paMies of crops, and was dotted with crofters' cottages. To make deer forests men were turned away from the land, and those -who did not find employment as ministers to the sport of rich, sportsmen were scattered over the world. Tho depopulation of the Highlands, ■which bas been going on from the eighteenth century until the present day, Is the theme of many a song and tale. , What is perhaps tho most famous of Scottish songs of exile: From the lone shieling of the misty Island Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas — Tet still the Mood Is strong, the heart Is Hlchlanil, And we In dreams behold the Hebrides. illustrates the earlier phase of the "clearances." In the good old days, says this poet, no one foretold "that a degenerate lord might boaet his sheep." Replacing the crofter population by sheep was one result of the changes that followed on the conquest of the Highlands after the '45. The. heads of clans ceaeed to be such and became modern landlords, and they found that it paid hand- j somely to run sheep on their holdings. 1 Much of the change made was inevitable, nnrl in tho end beneficial to both sides. The glens were over-populated and the standard of living very low. "To-day Lochiel's gamekeeper." says a writer who shows much sympathy for the victims of these evictions, "is better housed, better clothed, and better fed than Lochiel himself was a hundred and fifty yeans ago." I But the clearances wero made with x ! great deal of cruelty. Scott says of one landlord, whose property had been enormously increased in,value by the economic change, that to get his higher rental he. had to turn out several hundred families who had lived under him for many generations and whose swords had won and kept the land from which their 1 descendants were now banished. Tens of thousands of Highlanders emigrated in those days, sometimes amid ecenes heartrending in the extreme. It is related that some of those who saw their clansmen go "lay on the ground and tore the grass with their teeth." Every one who knows the poetry of Miss Jessie Markay remembers her poignant "'For Love of Appin," written about the evicted and deported Highlanders who sang "Lochaber Xo More" long after they put to sou, and of whom it is said that "the older men never smiled again lest they should be thought to have forg-otten Scotland." Then and later this Highland depopulation touched our own history in New Zealand. The Waipu settlers w*ere a. hiving off from a community of evicted : Highlanders who went to Xova Scotia. John McKenzie had seen Highland evictions before he came to Xew Zealand to make history. His hatred of land monopoly and private landlordism had been kindled in the glens of Scotland. The age of deer forest extension came later. Deer and grouse paid better than sheep. Thanks largely to Scott, the Highlands had been discovered, and added to the liking of the native chieftain for game-shooting, was the demand of the wealthy Englishman for pastimes that were both sporting and fashionable. No father here but would give a son Kor the old country, And his mother the sword would have girdPil on To tight her battles; Muuy'.s the battle that has been won By the bruve tarttuis, Ulenaradale. But the big-homed stag and his hinds, we know. In the hlcu eorrles, And the salmon that swirls the pool below Where the stream rushes, ire more than the hearts of men, and so We leave thy creeti valley Glenaradale. Southern gold and Southern craving foi social mountaineering did much to replace men by deer, "in 1812 there were only five deer forests in Scotland, but seventy-five years later there wero 111. As much as £15,000 lias been paid for I shooting rights for a season, or £:?D0 per working day. How could sheep, or own men, compete against such prices? In one of Keene's "Punch" joke* an obvious i little Cockney in the Highlands is asked I why. seeing trhat his name is Torakyne, lie wears a certain historic tartan. "Be- ' cause I paid for it," he replies crossly. • I The system has been defended. Deer, it !is argued, are the only crop the land ! will bear, and the work of looking after the animals and "gillieing" for sportsmen proviJes employment. Like many defences it. seeks to prove too much. The land, at ii- worst, one might think, could be made to grow trees. Besides, it is notorious that men have been driven j from the land to make room for demand there are the reports of those com mi tiers Iffore us. '•The hi-auty of h nmuiitains. of the lonely moors, of the brown swirling rivers," runs the melanciiolv conclusion ox one who knows and i " .

loves the Highlands, "is dimmed when one remembers the vanished races, the dying tongue, the legends and beliefs that linger now only in the memory of one or two old women crouched over their fires of peats." The Britains beyond the seas have benefited by this accumulation of wealth and decay of men in the hotnelar- , " " * the Scottish Gael. Also it is v of note that tragic memories o: possession have not embittered tht of the exile and his descendants, or him hostile or even lukewarm to the flag under which he lives. But we think of those three and a hal lion acres of deer forests and the = drain on the best blood of the _-. o - lands—the- pity of it!